{bits & pieces}
The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
(This will all look and work better if you click on the actual post and do not remain on the main page.)
I’m stash-busting and apparently my stash consists of very colorful sock yarn!
Today I am highlighting one of the bits and pieces because I think it sheds a light on something I am always trying to say here, that you can and should protect your children from what we call, using a shorthand that has Biblical echoes, “the world.” By this I mean not the all-good creation that God has given us, but the side of life that increasingly threatens even the innocence of a child — and sometimes his life.
I get criticized because I say that it can be done — not perfectly, but with God’s grace, well enough. And that it should be done — that we should try! Maybe there was a time, when there were simply more children, that society as a whole did a pretty good job of giving them their chance to grow according to their development, without burdening them with adult problems and evils. No more. So it’s entirely up to us — help is not on the way.
“We lived a miracle, where grown-ups preserved our childhood.”
One of our readers, dear Helen, told me about this podcast episode, “Cookies and Monsters.”
It is like a “Life is Beautiful” story but for real, told by a man who discovers just how serious the determination to live out their motto, “be cheerful and sing,” was for some girl scouts who ended up in a Japanese concentration camp in WWII. It’s a story of how simple standards and the knowledge that “God is nigh” saved them.
But as you listen, I hope you will not consider their spirit a quaint relic of the past. Consider what these teachers, women also under a duress the extremity of which they were keenly aware, gave their girls.
Today, while not the time of Japan-occupied China, we live in what is becoming a spiritual concentration camp of sorts, where, true, children aren’t forced to keep warm by means of laboriously collected coal shavings, hauled bucket by bucket from behind the guard house. If anything, our children are so comfortable and warm that we can congratulate ourselves on a job well done and think we’re doing well by them.
Nevertheless, our children are hard put to make some sort of interior life for themselves, if they can escape the screens and the scheduling and the relentless assault on their very nature. Many of our children find that they may, if they are lucky, only warm their hearts by means of the shavings of reality that they glean from what has been left in the dust — the reality of boy and girl, of beauty, of harmony and order, of the possibility of a sweet life that isn’t a war of all against all. Children today are increasingly left in a state of spiritual starvation.
Let’s be that other kind of grown-up — the kind who give them the miracle of preserving their childhood.
(Note: I’m only vouching for “Cookies and Monsters,” not the other portions of the podcast, and it’s only a half an hour, though it looks like it will be an hour when you queue it up.)
On to our other links:
An interview with Edward Short, author of Newman and History.
“I am often reminded of poor Ray Monk choosing to write the life of Bertrand Russell and finding halfway through that he actually loathed the man. The great thing about Newman is that one never tires of him. He was such a force in his own time that there is an unsurpassably rich mine of information from which to draw.”
It’s time, if you haven’t already, to get informed about the “transgender” epidemic and its causes and drivers. This article looks at how it is growing and why:
“Elliott was suggesting that it is possible that our culture is not just revealing transgender individuals, it is creating them. If so, we can expect tremendous growth, as an entire industry is emerging to meet the growing need.”
And this one reveals the incentives for the medical establishment to go ahead and fuel the craze to mutilate healthy bodies rather than treat hurting psyches (or intervene in cases of abuse).
In homeschooling thoughts:
Board games can really teach history well. (And don’t involve screens.) There are some embedded links that take you to suggestions.
When you get to the part of school where you discuss churches, watch this series of videos on Sacred Architecture by Denis McNamara. Each one is short (under 10 minutes) and examines a different aspect of what makes a church a church, including what Scripture tells us. Prof. McNamara’s delivery is lively and to the point — I learned a lot! (These videos are also a great companion to my Spirit of the Liturgy posts which are here and here — the last posts in each series with the others linked within.)
Here is the first in the video series — I’ve embedded it here for you, and if you don’t see it, you can use the link in the previous paragraph:
Have you seen the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature? It has digitized versions of thousands of 19th century children’s books. You can find more children’s resources here.
Elsewhere:
Will it work to try to make suburbs more family-friendly, new-urbanism style?
I just thought this hidden spring on Rt. 66 was charming. (I haven’t seen it in person — have you?)
From the archives:
My series on the moral life of the child and how to nurture it (the links to all the posts are in this one.) Remember: The family is the “school of virtue” and “the domestic Church.”
A good soup for Lent: Butternut Apple Quinoa.
I had a great time talking to Mary Ellen Barrett on her Refresh virtual conference. This post gives you some idea of how I tried to avoid that late-winter burned out feeling in our homeschool, if you are interested in more practical advice from me. And I’m pretty sure you can register with her and hear the recordings, even if you missed the live version.
Tomorrow is the Second Sunday of Lent — don’t forget your St. Joseph prayers. How can it only be the Second Sunday?? Sukie’s Freddie (age 3), with a sigh: “I need a break from Lent.” haha Freddie! Remember: Just live your Lent along with the Church. The desert is… a desert… (not to be confused with dessert, which, no.)
But! Thursday is the feast of St. David of Wales! A nice treat is to go ahead and buy those daffodils at the grocery store if there are none in your yard (which, if you live at my latitude, there are not), and make a nice dish with leeks in it!
While you’re sharing our links with your friends, why not tell them about Like Mother, Like Daughter too!
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