The CMP Review — Week of January 20

The CMP Review — Week of January 20

January 20, 2025

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.” (MLK)

January 21, 2025

Many readers of Charlotte Mason’s volumes are intrigued by the first nine chapters of volume 5, Some Studies in the Formation of Character. These chapters are all stories which resemble case studies told with a narrative flair. They all talk about habit and how infirmities of mind and heart can be cured.

Over the years in the Idyll Challenge I have heard many interesting discussions about these chapters. Some people love the stories as providing detailed examples of how Mason’s principles can be applied in practice. Others dislike them, preferring a more systematic presentation of Mason’s ideas. And many question whether the stories are really plausible. Can a mental habit be cured the way Mason describes?

When I hear these questions I think back to a testimony written shortly after one of the first of Mason’s imaginary case studies was published. Mason herself described the testimony as a “bonâ fide statement.” I like it because it is a case study that is true. It is a wonderful companion to Mason’s fifth volume and you can read or listen to it here.

@artmiddlekauff

January 22, 2025

🥶 It’s cold out and, having lived in Tennessee for four years now, I’m not the robust Midwesterner I used to be. I mean, our overnight single-digit lows are still warmer than what many of you are experiencing during the day.

Are any of y’all even getting outside?!

We have a dog, which means I have to go out—like it or not. To keep my mind off how cold I am, I’ve begun looking for Winter berries. I’ve found a few Rose hips, along with many Privet berries, Chokeberry, and Holly berries. Edith Holden tells us in The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady that the birds go for the tastiest berries and seeds in winter and—unless hard-pressed by hunger—the ones I’ve found are rarely touched by them.

Stay warm!

@rbaburina

January 23, 2025

Charlotte Mason insisted that science be taught with living books: “I have so far urged that knowledge is necessary to men, and that, in the initial stages, it must be conveyed through a literary medium, whether it be knowledge of physics or of Letters, because there would seem to be some inherent quality in mind which prepares it to respond to this form of appeal and no other.”

She immediately followed her statement with a qualification, however: “I say in the initial stages, because possibly, when the mind becomes conversant with knowledge of a given type, it unconsciously translates the driest formulæ into living speech; perhaps it is for some such reason that mathematics seem to fall outside this rule of literary presentation; mathematics, like music, is a speech in itself, a speech irrefragibly logical, of exquisite clarity, meeting the requirements of mind.”

My firstborn developed his appreciation for science only when he began to see the mathematical themes running through the many branches of physics and engineering. This happened when the apparently dry formulae had become for him living speech. This logical speech met the requirements of his mind and soul.

He saw me introducing his brother to an early formula in physics and was so delighted that he took this photo. He was excited that his brother was on his way to discovering the same living speech that had moved him. To me it’s still a kind of living book; it’s just written in a different language.

@artmiddlekauff

January 24, 2025

You know it is cold when you see sundogs!

We usually see them maybe less than 10 times a winter. Often, we will see just the left and right curves, like at 9 and 3 o’clock around the sun, or even 8 to 10 and 2 to 4. But a few times a year we will see one that also shows the top, like this one. And very rarely, we will see a very full one where you more clearly see the entire ring going from left to top to right. Sometimes, it just looks like bright light. Other times, you can distinctly see the colours of the rainbow in it, like in this one.

Sundogs are caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere and so it has to be sunny, very cold, and dry for them to be visible. I had never seen one before moving to Manitoba. And I just love them!

What a beautiful phenomenon. A view that never gets old.

Do you ever see sundogs where you live?

@antonella.f.greco

January 25, 2025

“All we find out may be old knowledge, and is most likely already recorded in books; but, for us, it is new, our own discovery, our personal knowledge, a little bit of the world’s real work which we have attempted and done.” (Vol. 4 Book II pp. 101-102)

@tessakeath

January 26, 2025

Last week we shared Charlotte Mason’s poem about Luke 12:1–4 and noted that she had previously written about that passage in her 1898 meditation entitled “Simplicity.” In the Gospel of Luke, the subsequent passage speaks of the unforgivable sin (verse 10). Charlotte Mason also examined this in her piece on “Simplicity”:

If we consider that our Lord’s discourse is not a series of disconnected utterances, but a closely reasoned-out and amply illustrated argument, based upon the thesis, “When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light,” we are better able to follow the thought in this most anxious passage.

Today we share Charlotte Mason’s poem about Luke 12:5–12 in which she examines “this most anxious passage” once again. You can read or hear it here.

@artmiddlekauff

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