Fire in the Bones

Keeping Faith with Natural Law in Changing Times

“Like religion, education is nothing or it is everything—a consuming fire in the bones.”
— Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character, p. 145

There are moments when a teaching parent senses that something essential has slipped away—learning hasn’t failed; the inner fire has dimmed. The only antidote is a return to first principles—those enduring truths that govern learning. Charlotte Mason understood this and wrote often about natural law—those immutable realities rooted in how human beings are created to learn and be formed. She warned that we cannot do what we like and expect that things will turn out well. This talk looks again at those natural laws and how fidelity to them matters even more in changing times.

Recorded live at the 2026 Living Education Retreat.

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Sheila Carroll is the founder of Living Books Press and a longtime homeschool educator, author, and speaker. Through her writing and teaching, she encourages parents to cultivate lives shaped by truth, goodness, and beauty through living books, nature study, and the Charlotte Mason philosophy.

©2026 Sheila Carroll