CMP Review 2024-08-25

Charlotte Mason’s advice on time management is profound. At the heart is the idea expressed in Home Education: “there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time.” Only when every action has its time can we feel the peace of the pendulum described in Ourselves: “you are only required to give one tick at once, and there is always a second of time to tick in.”

Armed with this wisdom we can put down inclination and instead do our duty. As she explains at length, again in Ourselves:

Now, the eager soul who gives attention and zeal to his work often spoils its completeness by chasing after many things when he should be doing the next thing in order… It is well to make up our mind that there is always a next thing to be done, whether in work or play; and that the next thing, be it ever so trifling, is the right thing; not so much for its own sake, perhaps, as because, each time we insist upon ourselves doing the next thing, we gain power in the management of that unruly filly, Inclination.

The one who has mastered that unruly filly, Inclination, may have to travel from point A to point B. There is only one right time for the journey and that time is today. There is no other right time to complete the errand. So this one insists on doing only the next thing.

And then he passes a man by the side of the road in desperate need. Is this man my neighbor? Read or hear Charlotte Mason’s pastorally profound poem on the Good Samaritan, and see the other side of her beautiful advice on managing our time. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff