CMP Review 2023-07-02

My son and I are reading Book II of Ourselves together, and we are struck by how deep and dense it is compared to Book I. We recently read a few pages packed with intricate and abstract ideas, and I wondered what he would focus on in his narration. Which of the many rich thoughts would resonate with him the most?

To my surprise, he focused on a particular paragraph, which he retold with clarity and insight. In the original text, Charlotte Mason writes:

It is conceivable that the final answer may be that death is less momentous in the thought of God, who knows the hereafter, than to us, who are still in the dark. Christ wept, not for Lazarus: his sorrow was for the griefs that fall upon all men, as upon the two sisters. Perhaps He would have said, ‘If they only knew!’

The paragraph reflects some of Mason’s most profound thoughts about life and death. In today’s poem she takes up the theme in verse. “What then is ‘death’?” a timid soul asks our Lord. His answer expresses Mason’s understanding of His teaching, an understanding that is life to the soul. Read or hear it here.

@artmiddlekauff