What's in a Name?

For years I've wanted to be able to name our home. But it just isn't something that's commonly done in Canada. So, even if I did name it, the likelihood of the name ever coming into common use was pretty slim.

Then I moved to Uruguay.

People in Uruguay name their houses! Practically every home you see has the house name posted on the gate or on the lawn. In fact, the houses don't have numbers in most neighbourhoods of our city, just names. So when you get an address it sounds something like:

     Bay Street

     between Brunswick and Douro

     House: Talsma

     City

     Postal Code

(makes me a bit curious about mail delivery, but it seems to work)

The home we have rented already had a name: Yuchan. Yuchan is a variety of tree here that is growing in the front yard. But there was no sign, and we thought this might be my chance to name a house. 

Before long we had chosen a name.

When my Dear Man and our colleague went to work out the final rental agreement with the owner and the lawyer, they asked if we could choose our own name. The owner balked.

"You can't change a house's name! It's bad luck! It would be like changing the name of a ship or boat; it just isn't done!"

We thought that was the end of it, and I resigned myself to living in a place called "Yuchan".

And I tried not to be too disappointed.

Later that same day the two men met again with the owner about something else, and he brought up the naming question. "You go ahead and give it a name if you'd like," he said. "In all the years we've lived there we never even made a sign for it. It will be fine."

So, here we are, in a home we love, quirks and all, AND I was allowed to give it a name!

A couple of days later we realized that we needed to work fast: the telephone company was sending their workers to install our phone line and the address we'd given included the new name.

One of the teen-aged boys on our team got out his sautering iron and burned the name into a leftover piece of lumber that was in their yard. On our next trip to our house we set up the new house sign.

It is my prayer that everyone who enters our door will find refuge: a place of sanctuary and peace, welcome and safety:

Bienvenido a El Refugio

Welcome to The Refuge

50(5x2 + 6) + 5x17 + 5x5 = stress

The morning began the night before.


I stood in the living room, tears in my eyes, and sobbed to my Dear Man "It's not going to work!"


The reply came with a gentle hug. "You go to sleep. And imagine that while you're sleeping the packing elves will be hard at work."


So I did go to sleep, lying beside a tearful daughter, praying silent prayers of peace and comfort for a girl who is aching.


Wakefulness came early, just as sleep came late. The autumn sun wasn't yet risen when I returned to the living room.


Sure enough, the packing elves had been busy through the night. There were more bins sitting ready to go on the airplane with us. Unfortunately, the little piles of personal belongings seemed to be just as plentiful as they were the night before. And so the tears returned.


Another trip to the hardware store to purchase two more bins.


Another period of rearranging the binned items to keep the weights below the magical 50 pounds.


Loved Ones came to give last minute assistance and to give good-bye hugs; their help was like gold.


And by the time our scheduled departure came we were ready with our 10 allotted bags (2 each at 50 pounds) plus 6 extras (50 pounds each) and carry-ons (one carry-on of 17 pounds plus one personal item each - we quickly learned not to call those 'purses' for the sakes of our little boys!).


Let the travelling begin!

Temporary Lodgings

It was late August and we had nowhere to go. All we knew was that we had to be out of our home on the 15th of September and that there was no way we'd actually be leaving Canada until at least the end of that month. We had no place to live once we left Bay Street, and our home in Maldonado wasn't going to be ours until our support was at 100%. 

And it wasn't.

In the last week of August we put a note in our church's bulletin making people aware that we needed a temporary home for our family, that it would be at least for two weeks (probably more, but indefinite), and that we were willing to consider anything from a camper parked in someone's driveway to house-sitting for someone.

By the end of the afternoon we had received three offers of places to live, and a week later we knew where we would be.

Our temporary home has been provided by families from our church who have a large home with 3 apartments. Each apartment is fully equipped for a family, but the three units are joined by an additional kitchen: the Big Kitchen. Our apartment is the upper level of the original farmhouse on this 60 acre property, and, we are overwhelmed with the way God provided for us in this time of transition.

Our front door

We were originally told that our apartment wouldn't have appliances in the kitchen, and we were prepared to go downstairs and do our cooking in the Big Kitchen. But on the day my Dear Man began to move our belongings into the apartment, the owners told him that they had just arranged for a fridge, stove, and dishwasher to be installed before we moved in! 

Once again we were flooded with thankfulness. We had been ready to 'make do' camping in a driveway, and here we were going to be living in an apartment larger than the home we'd moved out of, with space for the kids to play, and fully equipped with all we could want - including living-room furniture brought in from the family room of one of the other homes.  

(And again we cry out a mighty thank you to the fellows who brought all those items up: the furniture from two floors below, and the appliances, including two trips for the fridge!)

The upper floor is ours - the first three windows on the left are the living room,  the next two are from our bedroom, and the last two are My Girl's room. The kitchen, bathrooms, sun room, and two more bedrooms are at the back of the house.

For five weeks now we have lived in this gift of a home. Little Man and Brown Eyed Boy have revelled in the spacious property: woods with a tree-fort, fields to play baseball in, and a ditch explore! 

A glimpse into the forest from the 'baseball field' that's next to the barn where The Ones I Love keep their bikes.

My Girl has also enjoyed the outdoors: soaring in the tire-swing that hangs from a large tree just across the driveway from out door, space in her bedroom (the room she chose because the colours were exactly the same as those in her old room and matched her hand-made quilt) to do her school work in peace, and a place to entertain friends.

It has truly been home, which is so much more than 'temporary lodgings' could ever be.

Last looks over our shoulders at a home that echoes with empty silence:

50 Bay St.

Home for nine years.

The home where we went from being a family of three to a family of five.

The home which saw hours of effort to make it all we wanted it to be.

The home whose colours were chosen with care.

The home that shows the mark of each occupant.

The home that saw love and laughter, tears and pain, joy and sorrow, prayer and rejoicing.

One chapter closes.

Another begins.

Listen Earlier

I ask a question of my Lord and wait for His answer.  

Nothing.  Silence.

But I continue, pressing on with the guidance of others who are more experienced listeners. 

And then the sky opens over me as I realize that while the question is still in my mind and the words are still on my tongue, the answer is being given!

The blessing of His answer is ready for me even before I speak the question!  I don't need to listen more closely.  I don't need to listen longer.

I need to listen earlier.

I have a God who wants to speak to me, is longing to hear my heart, and to pour His words into my heart!

He waits for me to be ready to listen, but He knows the question before it is formed and His answer comes.  His answer comes.

"Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear."  Isaiah 65:24

Digitization of the Charlotte Mason Archives

There has been extensive work done in recent years to digitize the collection of documents related to Charlotte Mason that are currently held at the Armitt in Cumbria, UK.  Dr. Deani Van Pelt and Redeemer University in Ontario have been part of that process, and here you will see a video produced by Deani which explains the significance of the collection and the importance of having a permanent digital record.

If you have read works about CM, some of names of CM scholars may be familiar to you, and in this video you will see some of the faces that belong to those names:

Dr. Jack Beckman

Dr. John Thorley

Dr. Carroll Smith

Dr. Deani Van Pelt

There are, of course, others in the video, and others who are instrumental in bringing Charlotte Mason's work to the forefront of modern education.  We are privileged to have people who are committed to the value of this work, who are making the original documents accessible to all of us, and who are giving so much of their time and energy with little or no compensation.  

Enjoy the video!

This post has been published concurrently on the Whole Hearted Home Educators blog.

Without a Net

This year I'm trying something very new. Well, sort of new and sort of old, but very different. Well, not as different as it might be, but . . .

I've been using Charlotte Mason's principles and methods of education in our home school since before My Girl began officially schooling, and this fall she's entering grade 9. This year, because our lives won't already be interesting enough (ahem), I was inspired to go textbook-less with our Science curriculum and go entirely with living books.

Several years ago I was convinced of the idea of Nature Study being the natural precursor to science in the early years of school, and have done only Nature Study and living science with the boys. But when My Girl entered grade 8 I felt a sudden panic to make sure that she was getting all the foundational science in and turned to a well-known science program. And we didn't like it. It was memorization and dry reading (even when the author was being conversational). And it took at least 45 minutes every single day to complete it! I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue in that framework for the next four years.

One of my friends had participated with her daughter in a pilot project for a CM-style living books science course and loved it. And then in June I went to the ChildLight USA Charlotte Mason Conference in Boiling Springs, North Carolina and heard a wonderful-fantastic presentation about stepping away from the safety net of a textbook based curriculum and using living books and keeping notebooks. There was a lot more to it that the workshop presenter spoke about, and it inspired me to step onto the high-wire of a truly Charlotte Mason science course.

I've spent much time these past weeks selecting and ordering my books (not just for science, and for much more than just the next year, but that's for another post), and now that I'm through that, I'm ready to take that first scary step off the platform and begin travelling along that wire: pre-reading selected books, scheduling readings, planning out the note-booking process. I am so eager to have this work, and I can't wait to begin!

I am incredibly thankful to Jennifer G. for her presentation at CLUSA's CM conference, and hope to be able to share here at PeaceLedge some of the experiences of walking the high-wire of science without a net.

::

Okay, the photos don't have anything at all to do with the post, but I couldn't stand having yet another post without pictures! These three are from our recent trip to Vernon, BC, where we spent a full 24 hours with my sister and her family. Much too short a visit, and much too long since the last one. But, again, that's for another post.