The CMP Review — Week of June 23

June 23, 2025

“We are all capable of appreciating beauty as it appeals to sound or sight, and whether we love the best, or are satisfied with the second best, will depend very much on what forms or types of beauty were held up to our awakening intelligence. Beauty and Simplicity have ever walked hand in hand, and a little child may enter the kingdom of Art as readily as the kingdom of Heaven. The greatest things are not those most difficult to grasp. Little ears may be attuned to catch the harmony of which the poets sing, underlying all manifestations of Art, for—

‘One music maketh its occult abode
In all things scatter’d from great beauty’s hand;
And evermore the deepest words of God
Are yet the easiest to understand.’—Wm. Watson.”

(Mrs. Howard Glover, PR59, “Our Relations With Music and Art”)

@tessakeath

June 24, 2025

Juliet Williams was an accomplished artist with a passion for teaching. She found kindred spirits in the Charlotte Mason community and contributed several articles to The Parents’ Review. When the PNEU needed someone to speak on art at the 1926 conference on democracy and taste, Miss Williams was the logical choice. Her piece turned out to be complementary to her other articles, and thus it rounds out not only the conference but also the key points of her teaching. Read or hear her insightful and instructive piece here.

@artmiddlekauff

June 25, 2025

In the subject of Art Appreciation, older students are asked to paint a studied masterpiece in monochrome in Charlotte Mason schools. Not only does it teach the importance of color value, it also lets the student experience decisions that the original artist had to make.

It’s also not an easy exercise—helping us appreciate just how much skill an artist has.

@rbaburina

June 26, 2025

On Tuesday I held my daughter’s newborn baby. It was a powerful moment and a tender moment, to embrace a person, a complete person, at the dawn of limitless opportunity. And then I saw my daughter’s face.

I first saw that face when she herself was a newborn, moments from the womb, resting in my arms in utter serenity. I saw that face when she played and imagined, danced and sang, as little girls so often do. I saw that face when she felt sorrow and hurt, disappointment and pain, the life we experience in our teens.

I saw that face when we stood alone outside the sanctuary, the last to walk in. A brief moment to pray with her before family and friends witnessed her vows and she became joined to a man.

That face grew over the years, but it was always the same face, it was always the face of a child looking at me, her dad.

Now with a baby in my arms, looking over at my daughter, I realized that her face had finally changed. She had become a parent like me. No longer a receiver of life only, but now a giver of life. A brave, long, and difficult labor was for her the beginning of a lifetime of giving, of giving all she has to another. The same way I gave everything to her.

@artmiddlekauff

June 27, 2025

All four of the robin eggs hatched!

We watched them, day by day, growing and changing and getting their feathers. We watched their mama tirelessly going back and forth to feed them all. We saw them getting bigger and trying to share the space in their now too small home.

Here are two of them (plus a peaking out beak) the night before all four flew the nest!

It was 15 days from when they hatched to when they were gone.

And what a joy it was for us to experience it!

@antonella.f.greco

June 28, 2025

This little guy interrupted our school lesson on the deck.

But how could we resist? He is so cute and so fast!

@antonella.f.greco

The dinner of Luke 14 continues with a second parable from Christ. “The parable of the supper, which follows, is a parable all right,” explains N. T. Wright, “but Jesus really seems to have intended his hearers to take literally his radical suggestion about who to invite to dinner parties.

“Social conditions have changed, of course, and in many parts of the world, where people no longer live in small villages in which everyone knows everyone else’s business, where meals are eaten with the doors open and people wander to and fro at will (see 7:36–50), it may seem harder to put it into practice. Many Christians would have to try quite hard to find poor and disabled people to invite to a party—though I know some who do just that. Nobody can use the difference in circumstances as an excuse for ignoring the sharp edge of Jesus’ demand.”

Apparently Charlotte Mason did not want to ignore the sharp edge in her poem about this parable. Read or hear “The host reproved” by Charlotte Mason here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: Parable of the Great Banquet by Brunswick Monogrammist