CPQ November Newsletter
I cannot believe it is already almost advent—a very fast-approaching advent on the tail-end of a late Thanksgiving holiday which is making everything seem a bit mushed together—but still my favorite time of the year. While in yesterday’s wake, I wanted to say thank you for being a part of what we do, however imperfectly, here at CPQ. It has been a beautiful six years of curating articles and discussions and living ideas alongside so many like-minded families. I am grateful. I hope you’ll come along with us for the next six.
Some years I have found this time of year to be just more than I have the bandwidth to engage in. Some years we’ve thrown parties and lavishly spread feasts. Other years we have barely decorated, doing everything we could to keep our heads above water into the new year. But usually, we do a little something advent-wise regardless of outside influence, namely we intend to read through the Jesus Storybook Bible and light our nightly candle. My kids tease me because we only ever make it about half-way through the beginning stories and then we end up double and triple reading the end stories, skipping a few and sort of stumbling into the birth of Jesus on Christmas Eve. It is not something to Instagram about, but it makes for good laughs and my kids for sure know about the Tower of Babel, Noah, and that the Old Testament foretells the coming of Jesus.
This year there will be hand bells and Little Christmas Carol by Joe Sutfin and Christmas Schooling with some of our best friends using Read Aloud Revival’s wonderful resource. And, to add to the merriment, I found out this evening that my youngest has never seen The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, a book and movie we absolutely wore out with our oldest three. So, now I am simply beside myself that we get to add a first-time Narnia introduction to our Christmas Season. It’s going to be fun.
I hope you have a restful, wonderful Advent with your families. CPQ has some really exciting changes coming up that we can’t wait to tell you all about, so be sure to look for notifications from us in the near future.
😊 CARA
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Goodness is at the printers
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Coming up in the Goodness issue
I am not going to be shot in a wheelbarrow for the sake of appearances, to please anybody.” - Pickwick Papers
I believe grace comes in all forms—the wild and the tame, the light and the dark. When you read a Charles Dickens novel, you get extras: side characters, fog and lots of hearty meals with beer, goblins and ghosts. You get a whole world. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, author Annie Dillard calls all these extravagances “fluted fringes.” To include fringe, to describe all the wild romps you possibly can, even if it takes a wheelbarrow ride through a shooting party because you have rheumatism, is creative honesty because these things are just as true as cold, hard facts. And it’s all very important because excess is just as real (or more) than want. Hold on, hold out, look for the light. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but fringe usually doesn’t.
Fluted fringe is an icon of grace. The lines curve, the road turns, but often we want facts, data, and razor sharp points that dull our minds. Then when things don’t add up, we despair. We are given more than we bargained for and we are wrapped in injustice; but a single sunlit morning holds more gold than anyone needs, economically speaking. It depends on our perspective; do we accept the gift of a golden sun or do we demand actual gold for our lair to hoard against want? There is no commerce to grace, and dragons shun it. The Circumlocution Office doesn’t understand it, and to find goodness we must run away from the ledger lines to the horizon or we perish.
-JoAnn Hallum
Blast from the Past
At this point, we have departed far from our duty. We are trying to do everything we can, yet we have neglected to do what we should. We have replaced our Best with our Most—seeking out printables, guides, and activities. Trying to implement the things that seem to work beautifully in other people’s homes, without considering we are not them. Comprehension questions are well-intended conversations. Education becomes a juggling act of books, assignments, lists; often followed by feelings of failure when something gets dropped, like nature study, or composer study, or handicraft. We begin to evaluate success by how much we have gotten done rather than how long we have sat with beautiful ideas. We have lost our balance because we have lost sight of principles and replaced them with expectations. So how do we find our way back?
Doing our Best Without Doing our Most
-Pauline Chung
December’s Recitation Printable
Did you know we have free recitation printables on our website? We are working on our 2025 recitation printables behind the scenes! Grab the December printable below.
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What’s Cara…
Reading: The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin, How People Grow by Cloud and Townsend, Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton by Ryan Whitaker Smith
Eating: Thanksgiving leftovers. I made every recipe Lisa Burns (ThisPilgrimLife on IG) had on her website and now I am reheating them all.
Listening to: my kids laugh in the other room
Drinking: generic sparkling water from Frys
Watching: A Man on the Inside
Buying: A replacement microwave
Learning: how to build medieval castles
Thinking about: this quote Sheila Atchley posted earlier today: “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be original in your work.”
What’s Mariah…
Reading: The Someday Birds by Sally Pla, Before We Forget Kindness by Kawaguchi, and Come, Let Us Adore Him by Paul David Tripp
Listening to: my husband untangle the Christmas lights
Eating: a cherry breakfast cake I made this morning
Watching: the latest season of The Great British Bake-off
Drinking: Coffee
Thinking about: cutting back and letting go…. again and some more
Learning: some days, we study art, and some days, we do written narrations on Plutarch, and some days, we learn about the trajectories of space rockets and enjoy King Arthur, but some days, we don’t get much past life skills like emotional regulation. Accepting this daily unknown is the hardest part about special needs.
What’s Sarah…
Reading: Cry the Beloved Country and Shakespeare of London by Marchette Chute
Listening to: a gospel Christmas Carol channel on iTunes and lots of Handel concertos
Drinking: Rasa Cacao. My husband got me a sample of this weird mushroom, cacao, tea…mix. And I surprisingly like it.
Learning: all about gelli printing
Eating: all the soup I can make—soup season is the best season
Watching: The Chosen Christmas episode and lots of YouTube tutorials about gelli printing
Buying: books for Christmas presents. Amazon is having its 3 for 2 sale right now.
Thinking about: how sometimes “the middle” is the rest.