The CMP Review — Week of September 29

September 29, 2025

At the end of my recent pregnancy and into postpartum, I read Michael’s Gentle Wife by Karen Andreola. It was exactly what my heart needed. A gentle, wholesome story of faith, marriage, and the beauty of everyday life. Perfect for that tender season when your energy is low but your soul craves encouragement.

Highly recommend as a comforting, nourishing read for new moms or anyone who needs a peaceful story.

@tessakeath

September 30, 2025

For many years I have been influenced by the life and teaching of Evelyn Underhill. She lived from 1875 to 1945 and during that time she touched so many lives that she is now commemorated on June 15 in the liturgical calendar of the Church of England. The prayer book says that her “most valuable contribution to spiritual literature must surely be her conviction that the mystical life is not only open to a saintly few, but to anyone who cares to nurture it and weave it into everyday experience.”

Especially significant for me is that she pointed to the spiritual life as the key to unity among Christians. According to Robyn Wrigley-Carr, “Prayer was viewed by Evelyn as the essential ingredient of ecumenical unity… Evelyn believed that a widespread group of praying souls was essential for church unity: the Church would win the world for Christ only through ‘living spirits steeped in prayer’.” I think about this whenever the Charlotte Mason community brings together believers from so many diverse backgrounds and traditions.

Even so, for some reason Evelyn Underhill seemed to me to live in a different time and place from Charlotte Mason. She was a light in my own spiritual journey, but a separate and distinct one.

That all changed just a few months ago when to my utter astonishment I learned that Evelyn Underhill had been the keynote speaker at the 20th annual PNEU Conference in 1916. The original text of her lecture was preserved in the Parents’ Review. Thanks to the work of our transcription team, we’re able to bring it to you today.

Charlotte Mason believed that the intellectual life is not only open to a privileged few, but to anyone who cares to nurture it. She believed the same of the spiritual life. In that critical notion, Mason and Underhill overlap. The result is “The Education of the Spirit,” a wonderful and inspiring piece that I hope will touch you as much as it touched me. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

October 1, 2025

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn.”

~Jane Austen, Persuasion

@rbaburina

October 2, 2025

Browsing through a bound volume of the 1920 Parents’ Review, I was surprised and delighted to come across a loose leaf of paper. It was a letter from Henrietta Franklin to the members of the PNEU urging them to spread the word about the organization.

Although the PNEU no longer exists, the five suggestions given by Mrs. Franklin are surprisingly relevant. They include arranging meetings where people can hear about the principles and getting local teachers interested in the method. My favorite, however, is number 4:

Arranging Reading Circles and Discussion Meetings when the books of the Founder of the P.N.E.U., Miss C. M. Mason, and the pamphlets published by the P.N.E.U. can be read and discussed.

This last suggestion can be applied as written even though a century has passed. Charlotte Mason’s books and many of the pamphlets are available on the Charlotte Mason Poetry website for free. We also have a reading schedule to get through the volumes in 2 years. All that is needed is what Mrs. Franklin asked for: people to organize meetings and invite newcomers to attend. Will you heed the call?

@artmiddlekauff

October 3, 2025

We’ve been having so much morning dew these last few weeks. More than I’ve seen before.

We had a very wet September and the ground and the fields were just saturated.

Some days, the morning dew is so plentiful that it looks as if it rained overnight, but it hasn’t!

But isn’t this dew-drenched dandelion amazing!?!

@antonella.f.greco

October 4, 2025

“Beauty in Nature.—But Beauty is everywhere—in white clouds against the blue, in the gray bole of the beech, the play of a kitten, the lovely flight and beautiful colouring of birds, in the hills and the valleys and the streams, in the wind-flower and the blossom of the broom. What we call Nature is all Beauty and delight, and the person who watches Nature closely and knows her well, like the poet Wordsworth, for example, has his Beauty Sense always active, always bringing him joy.

“We cannot get away from Beauty, and we delight in it most perhaps in the faces and forms of many little children and of some grown-up people.” (Vol. 4 Bk. 1 pp. 41-42)

@tessakeath

In early 2017 I had the privilege of announcing a great discovery: we had found the draft of Charlotte Mason’s seventh poetry volume. I was so excited and I wanted to share a sample with the world. I chose the poem “Increase our Faith.” I introduced it with these words:

Some things are just too good to escape the notice of divine providence. Mason wrote these beautiful verses but never brought them to the publisher. God had other plans, and now Mason’s words of beauty and power speak to us as if they were penned only yesterday. This particular poem is notable for its depth of theological insight and its dramatic implications for spiritual formation. Please read it carefully, with your heart and your mind, because this one packs a punch.

Later I selected this poem for use in workshops on Mason’s poetry. And a friend of mine who came to Christ explained to me, “I cannot think of a more divinely beautiful and elegant way to capture my story and my message than these stanzas.”

Please take time to listen to, read, and reflect on this timeless piece. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: Parable of the Mustard Seed by Jan Luyken