Quiet Beginnings
“It is only as we recognize our limitations that our work becomes effective; when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do, and what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage; we have an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards that end, and a way to an end is a method. It rests with parents not only to give their children birth into the life of intelligence and moral power, but to sustain the higher life which they have borne.” Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 33
It is no small thing to change a life, especially when it is your own. It’s miraculous, really, to look in one day and know, deep in your bones, what you are about. Who you are about. It is humbling to work inside that miracle day in and day out, serving your family and those around you, despising the world and focusing on the prize of what lies ahead.
Maybe it began during a casual conversation at the park with a family you’d never seen before. Or maybe you stumbled upon the ideas in a used bookstore or on a new-to-you parenting group online—the idea of born persons or of nature study, the concept of guiding by standing to the side or of teaching through living words, those black and white building blocks that will someday form castles in the sky and bridges from the past to the future. The basic tenants of a Charlotte Mason education caught you by surprise and never let you go. Did you know right away that it would change your life? Could you see what was about to happen?
The beginning of this thing called home education is quiet, the unfolding of ideas that lead to conversations, first in your own heart and mind, then maybe with your husband in the evening hours after the kids have been tucked into their tiny toddler beds, or maybe over coffee with your friends. There are so many options. So many questions…What books? What curriculums? What to do first? What is happening? Does this really work? What about x? y? z? Why is this all so new? How have I never heard of this before? How does a person begin again? Of course tomorrow these ideas will be the reason that you, perhaps, quit your job or read new books, take up painting, repurpose the playroom, maybe even begin collecting dead things to set next to Grandma’s heirloom china (for research purposes, of course.)
It is no small thing to realize that it is possible to see with new eyes—scary, even. After all, to educate our children is about more than just the reading and the writing. It is also about the living, both the living-out and the living-in of great ideals. It requires change. It requires courage. It requires flexibility. To educate well is to expect the same growth in your own life that you expect in your child’s. Because, after all, you and I are born-persons, too. Our learning is the same. These ideals begin to grow inside us, curling around our toes and spouting out of the recesses of our minds and hearts. We create notebooks of well-written sentences, subjects and predicates carefully selected to remind us of what is true, good, and beautiful. We collect specimens, old stories, not-so-beautifully crafted 1st grade projects and senior thesis papers that we want to share with the world. We learn how to hold on and when to let go. We are changing and it is only partly because we finally understand how to teach subtraction using addition. Mostly, it is simply because we are aligning our hearts with ancient truths and the truth is beginning to set us free.
That quiet beginning must become strong enough to stand against the challenges that come, remain gentle enough to cushion the blows, and grow wise enough to know when to step out of the way. For that quiet beginning will beget a whole blessed life.
by Cara Williams, 2023
I HAVE LOST MYSELF
by George MacDonald
Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.” “I have failed,” I said, “I have lost myself—would it had been my shadow.” I looked round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned that it was not myself but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will it barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is even something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?