I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Archives for September 2014
Building the Bridge
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies.
The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a bridge as we cross it. No way!
But there’s a problem with the problem – Kids aren’t all ‘here,’ and you don’t know exactly where ‘there’ is, so you must bridge from everywhere to nowhere. No wonder you’re exhausted!
We’ve got to rediscover particularity, because the individual has been lost in generalities, norms, averages. St. Pope John Paul suggested that what is necessary in our world today is the “recapitulation of the inviolable mystery of the human person.”
What is the role of ‘recapitulation’ in the education of our children? How do we educate for ‘betweenness’? Why is wonder the foundation for philosophy, and how does poetry play a pivotal role in the development of our interior life?
In this talk, I address these and many other questions you may not have realized you should be asking!
A is for Atmosphere
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere.
She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but her capacity to be affected, to be moved. Home is Mom’s joy infused into persons, like grace.
She is an acoustic atmosphere. Think of all the sounds she makes besides yelling, “Off with their heads!” now and then! Home is Mom’s voice lifting persons toward God.
She is an aesthetic atmosphere. All the order and beauty, color, line, pattern, radiance, and integrity of the environment she is, and the environment she creates, is the child’s first taste of love-in-formed. Home is Mom wrapped around persons like love.
With thanks for the poem, The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I designed this talk for the 2014 Kansas Catholic Homeschooling Conference, and will gladly present it again for you!
Here’s a collection of my talks that feature poetry, poems, or poetic formation.
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