The Maiden Phoenix

 This royal infant--heaven still move about her!--
 Though in her cradle, yet now promises
 Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,
 Which time shall bring to ripeness: she shall be--
 But few now living can behold that goodness--
 A pattern to all princes living with her,
 And all that shall succeed: Saba was never
 More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue
 Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces,
 That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,
 With all the virtues that attend the good,
 Shall still be doubled on her: truth shall nurse her,
 Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her:
 She shall be loved and fear'd: her own shall bless her;
 Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
 And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her:
 In her days every man shall eat in safety,
 Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours:
 God shall be truly known; and those about her
 From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
 And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.
 Nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when
 The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
 Her ashes new create another heir,
 As great in admiration as herself;
 So shall she leave her blessedness to one,
 When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,
 Who from the sacred ashes of her honour
 Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,
 And so stand fix'd: peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,
 That were the servants to this chosen infant,
 Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him:
 Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
 His honour and the greatness of his name
 Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
 And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
 To all the plains about him: our children's children
 Shall see this, and bless heaven.

William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Sir Walter Scott: on Cats

One reason I enjoy reading great literature is the gems of description often found interspersed throughout the story.  Here is one we found this week while reading Quentin Durward. I would say Scott pretty much nailed it. Our cat has done all these things, although for him, he pursues geckos and flies and crickets rather than mice. I would not trust a courtier who acted like a cat!

The aptest resemblance of his motion and manners might perhaps be to those of a domestic cat, which, while couching in apparent slumber, or gliding through the apartment with slow, stealthy, and timid steps, is now engaged in watching the hole of some unfortunate mouse, now in rubbing herself with apparent confidence and fondness against those by whom she desires to be caressed, and, presently after, is flying upon her prey, or scratching, perhaps, the very object of her former cajolements. 

Scott on Leaving Something to Imagination

"...he was startled by a strain of music which was suddenly waked by one of those doors, and which, at least in his imagination, was a combination of the same lute and voice by which he had been enchanted on the preceding day... These delightful sounds were but partially heard-- they languished, lingered, ceased entirely, and were from time to time renewed after certain intervals. But, besides that music, like beauty, is often most delightful, or at least most interesting, to the imagination when its charms are but partially displayed and the imagination is left to fill up what is from a distance but imperfectly detailed, Quentin had matter enough to fill up his reverie during the intervals of fascination."

--Sir Walter Scott, Quentin Durward

Commonplace Book: A Working Philosophy of Education

"We want an education which shall nourish the mind while not neglecting either physical or vocational training. 

"...the mind of a child takes or rejects according to its needs... the mind, in fact, requires sustenance––as does the body, in order that it increase and be strong; but because the mind is not to be measured or weighed but is spiritual, so its sustenance must be spiritual too, must, in fact, be ideas (in the Platonic sense of images).

"...education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind and thought begets thought and that is how we become educated. For this reason we owe it to every child to put him in communication with great minds that he may get at great thoughts; with the minds, that is, of those who have left us great works; and the only vital method of education appears to be that children should read worthy books, many worthy books.

"...The teacher affords direction, sympathy in studies, a vivifying word here and there, help in the making of experiments, etc., as well as the usual teaching in languages, experimental science and mathematics."

--Charlotte Mason, Volume 6, Towards a Philosophy of Education

Quotes on Understanding (or not)

Negative Capability:  when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason (Keats, excerpted from a letter)

"A work of (whatever) art may be 'received' or 'used'.  When we 'receive' it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we 'use' it we treat it as assistance for our own activities."  --C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (quoted in All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes, pages 89-90)

"It is not necessary to understand."  --one of the Three Wise Men to the Little Drummer Boy

I'm not sure how these fit together, but they keep bumping into each other in my mind, so I'm parking them here.

Romans 8:35-39

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 

shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, 
For thy sake we are killed all the day long; 

we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded, 

that neither death, 

nor life, 

nor angels, 

nor principalities, 

nor powers, 

nor things present, 

nor things to come,

Nor height, 

nor depth, 

nor any other creature, 

shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 

which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Far Too Easily Pleased

Now I am thinking about this:

If you asked twenty good men to-day

what they thought 

the highest of the virtues, 

nineteen of them would reply, 

Unselfishness. 

But if you asked almost any 

of the great Christians of old 

he would have replied, 

Love. 

You see what has happened? 

A negative term 

has been substituted for a positive, 

and this is of more than philological importance. 

The negative ideal of Unselfishness 

carries with it the suggestion 

not primarily of securing good things for others, 

but of going without them ourselves, 

as if our abstinence 

and not their happiness 

was the important point.

I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. 

The New Testament has lots to say 

about self-denial,

but not about self-denial as an end in itself.

We are told to deny ourselves 

and to take up our crosses 

in order that we may follow Christ; 

and nearly every description 

of what we shall ultimately find if we do so

contains an appeal to desire. 

If there lurks in most modern minds 

the notion that to desire our own good 

and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it 

is a bad thing, 

I submit that this notion has crept in 

from Kant and the Stoics 

and is no part of the Christian faith. 

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward 

and the staggering nature of the rewards 

promised in the Gospels, 

it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, 

not too strong, 

but too weak. 

We are half-hearted creatures,

fooling about with drink and sex and ambition 

when infinite joy is offered us,

like an ignorant child 

who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum 

because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer

of a holiday at the sea.

We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory

If God be for us...

A friend sent me this quote today:

Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men.  Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.  

                                                                        --Phillips Brooks

Faithfulness (Numbers 9:15-23)

¹⁵And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning.

 ¹⁶So it was alway: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.

 ¹⁷And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.

 ¹⁸At the commandment of the LORD the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the LORD they pitched: as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they rested in their tents.

 ¹⁹And when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, then the children of Israel kept the charge of the LORD, and journeyed not.

 ²⁰And so it was, when the cloud was a few days upon the tabernacle; according to the commandment of the LORD they abode in their tents, and according to the commandment of the LORD they journeyed.

 ²¹And so it was, when the cloud abode from even unto the morning, and that the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they journeyed: whether it was by day or by night that the cloud was taken up, they journeyed.

 ²²Or whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed.

 ²³At the commandment of the LORD they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the LORD they journeyed: they kept the charge of the LORD, at the commandment of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

A Principle of Science

In science we must be cautious and modest, and ready to alter our minds whenever we learn fresh facts; only keeping sure of one thing, that the truth, when we find it out, will be far more wonderful than any notions of ours.

--Charles Kingsley, Madam How and Lady Why

Look and Think

"I want you to look and think. I want every one to look and think. Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking. And I do not want you to be miserable.

"But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little things as this?

"You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little things: because then you will not be able to understand great things when you meet them. Children who are not trained to use their eyes and their common sense grow up the more miserable the cleverer they are."

--Charles Kingsley, "Field and Wild", from Madam How and Lady Why

Obedience

"All God’s revelations are sealed to us until they are opened to us by obedience. You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking. Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes. Let God’s truth work in you by soaking in it, not by worrying into it. Obey God in the thing He is at present showing you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. We read tomes on the work of the Holy Spirit when…five minutes of drastic obedience would make things clear as a sunbeam. We say, I suppose I shall understand these things some day. You can understand them now: it is not study that does it, but obedience. The tiniest fragment of obedience, and heaven opens up and the profoundest truths of God are yours straight away. God will never reveal more truth about Himself till you obey what you know already."  (Oswald Chambers)

(As quoted in this blog post.)

One Last Post for 2011

"I think it's important to have a good, hard failure early in life."

Walt Disney

"...human nature needs the discipline of failure 
as well as of success."

Charlotte Mason

"It is good for a man 
that he bear the yoke in his youth."

Lamentations 3:27

We visited the Walt Disney Family Museum on our Christmas trip home to California this past week.  The first quote is displayed in the museum.  Disney's story is inspiring.  If you are ever in San Francisco, you should take half a day to visit.

Look at the similarity of the three quotes.  The verse from Lamentations comes from a chapter that describes what I have heard termed the "dark night of the soul".  The CM quote comes from Principle 17 which deals with the Will.

Commonplace Book

"Easy writing, hard reading; easy reading, hard writing."

(Robert Louis Stevenson, William Zinsser and Lord Byron have all been credited with saying this.  Also Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway and Alexander Pope.  Perhaps others too.)

Shakespeare On Adversity

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.

Doing One's Duty

By this time her old disposition had begun to rouse again. She had been doing her duty, and had in consequence begun again to think herself Somebody. However strange it may well seem, to do one’s duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one’s duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

--from "The Wise Woman" by George MacDonald

Reading Shakespeare

"Shakespeare plays should be read throughout our lifetimes, not just once. Children may not understand all of Shakespeare, but who does?"

From Leslie N.'s summary of CM's Volume 5 (section entitled, "Poetry as a Means of Culture")

CM's original words:

Shakespeare is not to be studied in a year; he is to be read continuously throughout life, from ten years old and onwards. But a child of ten cannot understand Shakespeare. No; but can a man of fifty? Is not our great poet rather an ample feast of which every one takes according to his needs, and leaves what he has no stomach for?

These days, it seems like educators are mostly concerned about making it easy for the mind to work. But I must urge that, while physical activities like hand crafts, gardening, dancing, etc., are useful to train the nerves and muscles to be ready and responsive, physical exercise does nothing to keep the mind alive. We also must not put the focus of children's education on drama--even when it's Shakespeare--or poetry--even when it's beautiful, lyrical poetry. Yes, children need these things, but they come into the world waiting to connect with lots of different things. They need to establish relationships with places far and near, with the expanding universe, with the long-gone days of history, with current social economics, with the earth we live on and all of its delightful plants and trees, with the affectionate families who love them, with their home country and foreign countries, and, most of all, with the highest of all relationships--their relationship with God. With all these things to learn about, only the most ignorant teacher will let his students spend most of their time on math, or crafts, or singing, or acting, or any one of a hundred specialized subjects that try to pass for a complete education.

--from Leslie N.'s paraphrase (pages 72-73) of CM's Volume 6

Contentment

"Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the worlds holds, and be content without it."

--George MacDonald (_George MacDonald: An Anthology: Readings_, compiled by C.S. Lewis)

Christianity in Community

"...Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detailed political programme for applying "Do as you would be done by" to a particular society at a particular moment. It could not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular programme which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow, that is not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry, it does not give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures, it does not give you lessons in Hebrew and Greek, or even English grammar. It was never intended to replece or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director that will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 3, "Social Morality"