Are you listening?

I went on a four mile run yesterday.  Well, let's be honest, I walked more than half of it.  I've never been much of a runner and I've let my fitness go lately, so pair those together and it was a struggle for me.  But I know that any journey begins with one step, and the fact that I did four miles--whether or not I had to do it in intervals--was an accomplishment.  
I took the path behind our house towards a State Park nearby.  The path is about 1.75 miles to the entrance of the park, all of it paved.  It follows the creek that runs behind our home so it's very convenient.
It is also beautiful and serene.  There is a multitude of wildlife (including the coyotes that snatched our neighbor's dog and ate it last year) and the sound of the rushing water is calming.  I was never one that liked to run/bike/rollerblade next to traffic;  it's counterintuitive to think that breathing faster and deeper is healthier when you are next to car smog.  Thankfully, this path is next to traffic for only a short time.
I had my iPod (yes, I finally gave in to popular culture on that) and was really enjoying the upbeat workout music.  I've found that having music with a faster beat than my normal walking pace is a great motivator and keeps me from getting lazy.  
When I got to the entrance of the state park, I felt the need to remove the earbuds and listen to more nature.  I veered off onto a dirt road that leads toward the dog park area.  I stopped when I could see the dogs on the horizon and plopped myself right down in the middle of the prairie grasses.
The ground was just barely damp and bustling with activity from worker ants to buzzing bees.  The prairie grasses were about 12" tall and sprinkled with wildflowers.  The aroma was a mixture of wet earth, wildflowers and the air after a rainfall.  
I bowed my head to pray.  I've been doing more of that lately, taking more time to pray.  I rarely ask for something specific, just for God to lead me to His will and help me find my mission.   As I was finishing my prayer, I started to hear more sounds beneath those I'd heard before.   I could hear at least 5 different bird calls, someone shooting at a range in the distance, a woman with dogs walking, but what hit me the most was the sound of the prairie grass.
It startled me at first because it almost sounded like someone walking toward me.   I sat still and focused until I could pinpoint the sound.  It was right next to me, in the grass.  It was the sound of one blade of grass rubbing against another...or four or five.  
I sat there quiet and still for at least 15 minutes before a woman and her dogs approached.  One dog ran straight to me and started sniffing, seeming rather startled by me.  I let him sniff me for a minute then put out my hand to him.  He was very friendly and accepted the affection.
The lady said, "It's unusual to see anyone out here sitting on the ground in the grass!"  That explained why the dog was a little startled.  I told her that I really just wanted to stop and take it all in, to hear the sounds and experience the smells.  She said her brother had read a book about the 12 types of quiet (I haven't been able to find anything related to this) and that she realizes that few people are able to hear quiet.  She was very kind and said she'd let me get back to the quiet before the trail became too busy for solitude.
I sat there for a few minutes longer.  I could now hear more people and dogs and realized my quiet solitude was ending.  I stood up, brushed myself off, put the earbuds back in my ears, and began to run for home.
The entire time, though, I couldn't stop thinking about what it meant to accept quiet into our lives.  How many of us are really able to just sit, relax, meditate and ponder?
I recently attended the seminar "Face to Face with Greatness: A Thomas Jefferson Education."  Along with the many other invaluable things I learned, one was about discovering your mission.  I've always been a firm believer in knowing your mission, but I haven't always been sure of mine.  Motherhood, of course, is one and teaching my children is another.  The professor presenting the seminar asked us if we've ever sat, quietly, and asked God to help us find and fulfill our mission?    Have we ever been quiet enough to hear it?
As I sat still in the meadow and listened...really listened...those words hit home.  I haven't been listening to the sound of the blowing prairie grass.  Perhaps if I can do that on a regular basis, things will become clearer.
Remember the lady with the dogs?  Although I started down the same path just minutes later, I never saw her again.  She wasn't running, just walking leisurely.  I kept looking for her.

Read more...

100 Classics in 3000 Days

I'm starting a new endeavour: A Classics Education. This book list is from "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by Oliver Van DeMille and is a jumping off point for a classics education. My education wasn't poor, but from reading this list, I realize my education is not rich in the classics.

THE GOAL: Complete all 100 classics in 1000 days (June 5, 2017)
That's an average of 1 book a month, in addition to my other reading endeavors .

After reading, they are marked in orange. If I've previously read them and have a good memory of them, they are marked (those that were thoroughly studied in college). If I only vaguely remember (from high school), I am rereading the book.

THE LIST:

Source: appendix A of Oliver Van DeMille's

A Thomas Jefferson Education:

Teaching a New Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century, © 2000.



1. Acton, The History of Freedom

2. John Adams, "Thoughts on Government"

3. Aquinas, "On Kingship"

4. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

5. Aristotle, Politics

6. Aristotle, Rhetoric

7. Augustine, The City of God

8. Aurelius, Meditations

9. Austen, Pride and Prejudice

10. Austen, Sense and Sensibility

11. Bacon, Novum Organum

12. Bastait, The Law

13. Bastait, "What is Seen and Not Seen"

14. Benson, "The Proper Role of Government"

15. The Bible (Ongoing project)

16. Boethius, The Consolidation of Philosophy

17. Bronte, Wuthering Heights

18. Bronte, Jane Eyre

19. Carson, The American Tradition

20. Capra, The Tao of Physics

21. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (currently reading)

22. Churchill, Collected Speeches

23. Cicero, The Republic

24. Cicero, The Laws

25. Clausewitz, On War

26. Confucius, Analects

27. The Constitution of the United States (ongoing project)

28. Copnicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

29. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

30. Dante, The Divine Comedy

31. The Declaration of Independence (ongoing project)

32. DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe

33. Descartes, A Discourse on Method

34. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

35. Dickens, Great Expectations

36. Douglas, Magnificent Obsession

37. Durant, A History of Civilization

38. Einstein, Relativity

39. Emerson, Collected Essays

40. Euclid, Elements

41. Frank, Alas Babylon

42. Franklin, Letters and Writings

43. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

44. Galileo, Two New Sciences

45. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

46. Goethe, Faust

47. Hobbes, Levathan

48. Homer, The Iliad

49. Homer, The Odyssey

50. Hugo, Les Miserables

51. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary

52. Jefferson, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

53. Keegan, History of Warfare

54. Kepler, Epitome

55. Martin Luther King, Jr., Collected Speeches

56. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

57. Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry

58. Lewis, Mere Christianity

59. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

60. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

61. Lincoln, Collected Speeches

62. Locke, Second Treatise of Government

63. Machiavelli, The Prince

64. Madison, Hamilton and Jay, The Federalist Papers

65. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

66. More, Utopia

67. The Magna Charta

68. Mill, On Liberty

69. Milton, Paradise Regained

70. Mises, Human Action

71. The Monroe Doctrine

72. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

73. Newton, Mathematical Principles

74. Nichomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic

75. Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

76. The Northwest Ordinance

77. Orwell, 1984 Read in 1988, will read again, even if I run out of time

78. Plato, Collected Works

79. Polybius, Histories

80. Potok, The Chosen  4/09

81. Plutarch, Lives

82. Ptolemy, Algamest

83. Shakespeare, Collected Works (Read: Hamlet, MacBeth, Richard II, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice) Re-reading Taming of the Shrew for a Face to Face with Greatness Seminar 3/09

84. Skousen, The Five Thousand Year Leap

85. Skousen, The Majesty of God's Law

86. Skousen, The Making of America

87. Smith, The Wealth of Nations

88. Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart"

89. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

90. Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy

91. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

92. Sun Tzu, The Art of War

93. Thackeray, Vanity Fair

94. Thoreau, Walden

95. Tolstoy, War and Peace

96. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars

97. Tocqueville, Democracy in America

98. Washington, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

99. Weaver, Mainspring of Human Progress

100. Wister, The Virginian

Add ons:

101.  Little Britches, Ralph Moody  4/09

After creating this list, I'm actually excited to get started. I remember studying classics in High School and my impression was that they were "boring required reading." In retrospect, I think it was the mandatory multiple-choice tests that were boring. As an adult, the idea of reading to grow, learn and tap into the great minds of the past really motivates me.

Read more...

Further Insight on TJEd

From A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver DeMille:
"Professional training and job skills are all thatpeople seek from “education,” and the concept of leadership educationis considered quaint, outdated, frivolous, or absurd."  "Teaching, not education, should be our focus,3 because greatteaching inspires students to educate themselves."
"Teachers teach and students educate. Students are the onlytrue educators. Historically, every other method of education hasfailed. Education occurs when students get excited about learningand apply themselves; students do this when they experiencegreat teachers."
"Without great teaching, through mentors and classics, the mostthat schools can offer is socialization, which they often defend asthough it were the primary objective of learning"
"Schools were historically created by parents to allow greatteachers—mentors and classics—to inspire students to seeklearning and then guide students on their path to a quality education.Then schools were attacked by political agendas from bothsides: Conservatives felt that the expense of education should bejustified by training students for the job market, and Liberals sawschools as a perfect place to gain support for social agendas rangingfrom civil rights to environmentalism."
"...I have learned that all education boils down to twothings: the student putting in the work to educate himself, andthe teacher getting the student’s attention long enough and deeplyenough to get him started and help him keep going."
Part of TJEd is being educated as an adult to pass it on.  If you didn't learn it as a child (which I would say 95% of us did not) it is an opportune time to learn it!  It's never too late to be a Scholar and a Statesman.

Read more...

A Thomas Jefferson Education

Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me to read a book called "A Thomas Jefferson Education." She was inspired by the book and thought I (we-other members of our homeschool group) would be inspired as well.

Quite honestly, I read parts of it, but with the busy holiday season I didn't really absorb it. From her descriptions, though, I knew it might be something I'm interested in. From the little information I had, we decided to attend the first colloquium she hosted which included the seminar: "Face to Face with Greatness: “The Four Lost American Ideals” by Dr. Demille. It was really informative and, quite honestly, sparked a passion in me I haven't felt in a couple years.

This set me off on a reading mission. I didn't find many of the books I need at the bookstore, so I've had to order them online. They include the book I mentioned above and the book Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning. I also bought a bound book/reproduction of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton and a book about the founding fathers.

To round out my week of inspiration, I attended an online class called "Inspiring and Responding: Nurturing a Love for Learning in the Hearts of Our Children." Which led me to read a bit more about TJEd online.

The result? A re-evaluation of my educational philosophy.

I know, from personal experience, that when I'm passionate about something I will literally spend hours and hours learning about my passion. If I need to know the answer to something, I will go to great lengths to learn the answer.

And important facet of a TJEd education is:

"Inspire instead of Require."

I've done my share of requiring over the last few years, but for the most part, I've tried to inspire. We started with a Math curriculum that was so very repetitive it was making ME crazy so instead of requiring all of the silly repetitiveness, we picked a few problems per lesson and solved them, then moved on to the next. Even that got boring, so I found a Math Games book at the library and we started playing math games that the kids love. We spend time at the zoo, museum, park and camping as a family, we read and learn things together.

But I've also made the mistake of gross overscheduling. After taking a three month hiatus from most of our activities, I realized that I had fallen into the public perception trap: that unless I socialize my children OFTEN they will have problems. Because, after all, kids should be in school to socialize.

In my core, I just felt that something was wrong with the way we were doing things. We had little time at home together--which was one of the main reasons we homeschool. The girls had less and less time to just "play" together and our home was falling into complete disarray.

I read something after our first colloquium that just "clicked" for me:

"The establishment of the Core occurs roughly between the years of 0-8; the maintenance and nourishment of the Core is a life-long process. …This consists of the lessons of good/bad, right/wrong, true/false, and is accomplished through work/play....Spend most of his time at home with his family, being nurtured and loved" ---Oliver Van DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education, 2nd Edition, pages 31-32

A-ha! That's why I was feeling unsure about our direction. Before our hiatus, we had two music classes on monday (one for A and one for K), A 3-4 hour co-op on Tuesday morning with a few other families then an hour of playtime followed by an hour of gymnastics, on Wednesday we often had a field trip and then later swim lessons, Thursday was our only down day (though we often filled it with a field trip) and Friday K has an all-day once-a-week school. Our weeks were packed!

And just when I was receptive, TJEd dropped in my lap. God works in mysterious ways. Another facet of TJEd is a center around your "core book." You decide what that core book is. Of course for us, it's The Bible. It's what teaches us our morals and values. It's the basis for how we decide our mission in life.

TJEd is leadership education. One of our reasons for homeschooling is to create adults who can think critically, are leaders, and have a sense of the purpose and mission that God has for them.

From the TJEd.org website:

"Leadership Education has three primary goals. First, to train thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and statesmen—those with understanding and competence to lead society (do things right) and the moral character to act with integrity in the areas they lead in (do the right thing). Second, to perpetuate freedom by helping people understand what freedom is and what must be done to maintain it, and inspiring them to actually do the difficult things required to make it happen. Third, teach students how to think, which is how the first two goals must be accomplished. Those who know how to think are able to lead effectively and help a society remain free and prosperous, while those who know only when or what to think will be unable to do so."

I could ramble on and on, but it's late.

Read more...