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!
“I can think of no better guide for homeschooling parents than Charlotte Ostermann.”
Joseph Pearce, author of Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know
We can strengthen our children for the burdens to come by giving them BRICKS to play with! See Motherheart Press for the Free booklets from this talk. Ask for the audio.
Mom is the atmosphere where children learn to cope with emotions, struggle with words and participate in the creation of beauty. She needs special care, special friends, and one particularly special mirror. Hear a clip. Ask for the complete talk!
Arts education and experience are crucial components of human formation, because Truth, Beauty and Goodness must be realized in forms in order to be communicated.
For the 2006 Kansas City Catholic Home School Conference: How can we educate our children well despite our own inadequacies; ( MP3 by JMJ Communications is available here.)
How mothers mediate the world to their children through five stages of learning. Created for the Blessed Sacrament Latin Mass Community Homeschool Conference of 2011.
How mothers contribute to the aesthetic education of their children. Designed for the 2011 Blessed Sacrament Homeschooling Conference.
Living books are vital, interest-catching, windows into worlds. You can hear the author’s passion and his voice. Hear about a number of books that ‘live’ for me. For the 2010 Kansas City Catholic Home School Conference: contact me to request a recording.
Based on my booklet, Life in Motion: Why I Love Driver Education Time With My Teens, this version will be tailored to the teens themselves. Bored with long hours of parent-supervised drive time? Wait till you hear the huge payoff you can earn during those very hours! Better than a savings account, your drive time will pay huge dividends if you know how to invest them instead of spending them!
The critical importance of poetic formation in the life of a soul – based upon my week-long workshop for children in the ‘grammar’ of poetry.
For a MOPS group interested in the idea of home education: an overview of the reasons and methods of homeschooling, with the surprise message that, in several specific ways, moms have already ‘opened’ their own schools.
Given as an address to parents of college-bound home schoolers, and published as an article in Mater et Magistra, Catholic Home Education magazine: How to ‘fit’ the wealth of educational experience and ‘non-conforming’ activities into the expectations of college admissions officials – it’s not as hard as it sounds!
Based upon my first volume of a sacred geometry ‘conversation’ for parents with children – an introduction to the ‘re-enchantment’ of education and the many reasons to incorporate sacred geometry into the curriculum.
A synopsis of Sertillanges’ book by this title, with recommendations for parents seeking their own educational enrichment, or for parents presenting this topic to teens. The intellectual life is very closely integrated with the spiritual life, and with the life of work and home.
Advice to parent educators from Flannery O’Connor’s book by this title: this book should be required reading for all Catholics interested in the role of literature and art in the life of the human person! For the 2011 Kansas Catholic Homeschooling Conference
Poetic Reading is not just reading poetry! Poetic Reading cultivates the wholeness of the reader, because it engages her whole being. It is, first of all, ordered to leisure, to freedom, to the context rather than the content of reading. Poetry, intellect, delight, sensory experience – I help readers develop an integrated approach to all different kinds of reading material.
A discussion of Stratford Caldecott’s book, “Beauty for Truth’s Sake”, and its applications within the home school. Caldecott hopes to promote interest in the re-enchantment of education, and I am decidedly on the same page! I recommend his book with great enthusiasm, and hope to promote it while offering my suggestions and experiences for implementing these ideas.
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 […]
Some audiences want to cut right to the chase: “Give us practical applications of all your ideas about Sabbath-keeping.” OK – here you go: In this talk I do just that – give concrete, practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings interior equanimity and leaves you more whole, more human, more […]
I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, […]
For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat, where the theme was “The King Desires Your Beauty,” I prepared this truly interesting talk. Will you believe me when I say that this is another of my favorites?!?! I know, I’ve said that about a lot of these talks, but revisiting them to give a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
Differences between the original myth of Cupid and Psyche, and C.S. Lewis’ retelling of the myth in Till We Have Faces have the effect of revealing new dimensionality in the Christian understanding of both myth and of the human person. The pre-Christian myth, like the pre-Christian person, is veiled in a darkness that constitutes a […]
In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
“The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.
Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.
Berlinghieri’s St. Francis appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.
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 […]
Benedictine College hosted a Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization in 2014. The theme was Transcendentals as Preambles to Faith, and I got to propose my take on that as a paper. Anyone who knows me could probably have bet good money I’d do something ‘three dimensional’ with that, and they’d have won those bets. […]
I once got a chance to do an all-day retreat with one of the sister Apostles of the Interior Life. Naturally, I wanted to discuss the role of leisure in the formation of persons! As usual, I prayed about the upcoming event, and God brought together several threads of my contemplation to weave this talk. […]
Did you know YOU are a poem? Check out Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek ‘poema’ is usually translated ‘workmanship’. I like ‘poema’ better, as it implies beauty and artistry, but ‘workmanship’ is nice. I’ve discussed the importance of poetry, poetic education, poetic imagination and poetic reading in many different venues (many of the talk topics […]
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