The CMP Review — Week of March 25

March 25, 2024

“Lest any mother should think on reading this paper, that it is safe to give children long hours of work, let us add a rule of the Parents’ Review School which should be the rule of every home school:

‘Five of the thirteen waking hours should be at the disposal of the children; three, at least, of these, from two o’clock till five, for example, should be spent out-of-doors in all but very bad weather. Brisk work and ample leisure and freedom should be the rule of the Home School. The work not done in its own time must be left undone. Children should not be embarrassed with arrears, and they should have a due sense of the importance of time, and that there is no other time for the work not done in its own time.’” (Charlotte Mason, “The Home School,” PR3, p. 284)

@tessakeath

March 26, 2024

Imagine what it would be like to have a quiet growing place for parents in a digitally saturated world. A place where parents and educators could be mentored and instructed in Charlotte Mason’s ideas without looking at a screen. A place where the beauty of the printed page could speak to the heart.

Cara Williams longed for such a place, but she couldn’t find one. So rather than wish or regret, she did something about it. She recruited like-minded writers and thinkers and formed a journal known to many Charlotte Mason educators today: Common Place Quarterly.

In the course of planning, assembling, and printing this quarterly journal, Cara and her team learned a lot not only about Miss Mason’s philosophy but also about the community that embraces it. A community that is amazingly diverse, and wonderfully rich, but also filled with people who don’t always feel like they belong.

I decided to ask for a behind-the-scenes look at this uncommon quarterly and I got it. Cara Williams and her colleagues Mariah Kochis and Sarah Jonnalagadda agreed to have an in-depth conversation with me about the journal, the ideas it celebrates, and the community it serves. We talked about many things, including how we can work towards being a community where everyone feels like they belong. And we even talked about how this periodical of the printed page stands in a tradition started more than a century ago by Miss Mason herself.

I hope you take the time to listen to this wide-ranging interview and find yourself inspired and informed. You can find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

March 27, 2024

Hearing about Charlotte Mason graduates always fascinated me when my kids were young. My youngest son is now in college, majoring in Machine Tool Operation. This is his midterm project, a captured nut & bolt.

He made the bolt from a piece of stainless steel and the nut is made from brass, using mainly the lathe along with some mill work. It boggles my mind to know these are handmade.

When I asked if he thought his homeschool education prepared him well for college, he replied that he was happy that Charlotte Mason had more than equipped him for college-level learning.

@rbaburina

March 28, 2024

“Mandatum novum do vobis.” These are the words of Christ in the Vulgate version of John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you.” From the opening word — mandatum — we get our English word mandate, and from it we also get our name for this day — Maundy Thursday. It is the day we remember Christ’s command to “love one another.”

That same evening Christ gave another new commandment: “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Among the ponderous bound volumes of the Parents’ Review at the Armitt Library, there remains a slim hardcover book. It is handbound, with no inscription on the cover or spine. No publisher is listed; the inside cover simply includes the stamp of Elsie Kitching. This is Miss Kitching’s personal set of Charlotte Mason’s Scale How Meditations.

These meditations were small leaflets composed by Charlotte Mason and sent to subscribers in 1898. They provide the clearest glimpse we have into the theological and devotional heart of Miss Mason. Surely that is why Miss Kitching bound them in her own little book.

“The meaning to us of the blessed Sacrament, the sign and, so far as it is truly the sign, the vehicle of that substance which is the life, depends upon our apprehension of Life and Meat,” wrote Mason in her 21st meditation. “Our Lord has spoken the last word. He is the Life and He is the Bread.”

We love one another every day, not just Maundy Thursday. We remember Him every Sunday, not just today. But for Charlotte Mason, the remembrance of Him is even more pervasive. “All the life that we have, of whatever sort, is the life of Christ, and in proportion as we realise that which is least, we shall perceive, however dimly, that which is greatest, and every eating of bread and drinking of wine will become to us, in a lesser degree, sacramental.”

May this day inspire you to receive every meal, and every living idea, as a gift of the life of Christ.

@artmiddlekauff

March 29, 2024

When He bowed down His Head in the death-hour
Solemnized Love His triumph! The Sacrifice then was completed.
Lo! then was rent on a sudden the veil of the temple, dividing
Earth and heaven apart, and the dead from their sepulchres rising.
Whispered with pallid lips and low in the ears of each other
Th’ answer but dreamed of before to Creation’s enigma—Atonement!
Depths of Love are Atonement’s depths, for Love is Atonement!

~ Longfellow

(from the Good Friday entry in Edith Gell’s The Cloud of Witness)

@antonella.f.greco

March 30, 2024

“The women who had come with Yeshua from the Galil followed; they saw the tomb and how his body was placed in it. Then they went back home to prepare spices and ointments. On Shabbat the women rested, in obedience to the commandment;” (Luke 23:55–56, CJB)

@rbaburina

📷: volant

“But, now, Hope rose transcendent as a god,
Compelling and fulfilling. But what art
Could show that radiant form or who portray;
Or shape in words the Resurrection joy?”

For Charlotte Mason, the raising of Lazarus was a foreshadowing of the greater miracle that was yet to come, the miracle we celebrate today. For on Resurrection day, “Hope was revealed … Shadow of Death withdrawn.”

Today we begin our journey through Mason’s sixth volume of poems, entitled “The Training of the Disciples.” Read or listen to the first poem of the volume, which fittingly points to the Resurrection of Christ. (You can find it here.) And may you have a blessed time with family and friends celebrating and remembering our Lord on this most special day.

@artmiddlekauff