The CMP Review — Week of March 3
March 3, 2025
“Every observer of children and their ways must have been struck by the incessant and irrepressible greed of movement, which every healthy child exhibits. Except when sleeping, and possibly when eating, their natural impulse is to be constantly on the move. … Outdoor games and sports provide excellent opportunities for physical development (not to mention their great beneficial influence on the formation of character).” (PR9, Timberg, “On Physical Education”)
@tessakeath
March 4, 2025
Today is known to many Christians as Shrove Tuesday, the last day of the church year before Lent. As the penitential season begins tomorrow with the Ash Wednesday service, I know I will be thinking about what an observance of Lent might look like today.
While Charlotte Mason wrote a wonderful Advent devotional, I have not been able to find a corresponding piece by her about Lent. However, in the April 1922 Parents’ Review, she did choose to publish a sermon by Claude Jenkins, a somewhat unusual professor and clergyman in the Church of England.
Jenkins’s sermon asks hard questions about Lent and its relevance for the Christian. I suspect his piece appealed to Miss Mason because in the end, he gives a prescription for Lent that seems highly compatible with her view of a living education (and a living faith).
If you are just now thinking of “giving something up,” or perhaps thinking about Lent for the very first time, I encourage you to read or listen to this vintage sermon by Claude Jenkins. It’s quite applicable for today, and gives us a sense of how Mason herself thought about this important time of year. You can find it here.
@artmiddlekauff
March 5, 2025
The book haul my homeschool grads/college students brought home from the library used book sale this past weekend.
It was so much fun to go with them as adults. It was just like old times, though, when we got home as we played show-and-tell with each of our finds.
@rbaburina
March 6, 2025
Charlotte Mason opens the 13th chapter of Parents and Children with a bold claim: “Things ‘Sacred’ and Things ‘Secular’ an Irreligious Classification.” She adds that “many thoughtful, earnest persons feel sorely the need of a conception of the divine relation which shall embrace the whole of human life.” I would say that many persons still crave this today.
To help us find a notion of faith that breaks down the unwelcome separation between sacred and secular, Mason recommends Eleven Sermons on Faith by Canon Beeching. She then spends 7 pages highlighting major ideas in this rare and beautiful book. Due to limitations of space, only a paragraph is given to the third sermon, “The Righteousness of Faith.”
What Mason does not tell us is that this sermon gives specific guidance on how to approach the season of Lent. How can we better prepare our hearts for the celebration of Easter that is only six weeks away? Beeching can show you how.
Mason closed her chapter by saying, “I have not space to take up in detail all the teaching of this inspiring little volume; but I commend it to parents. Who, as they have need to nourish the spiritual life in themselves?” And what better time than this second day of Lent to read about “The Righteousness of Faith.” Find Beeching’s timeless sermon here.
@artmiddlekauff
March 7, 2025
This wild cucumber grows in our tree line on our property. It’s such a lovely vine! And the fruit looks so interesting in all seasons. But the dry, papery, spiky, winter-y version is fascinating to look at. This native vine is also beautiful when it flowers in summer.
I know it’s invasive, but I really don’t mind! It is so pretty in our yard.
Do you ever see wild cucumber?
@antonella.f.greco
March 8, 2025
Snow
(Archibald Lampman, 1899, Ottawa, Canada. This was the final poem he wrote before he died.)
White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.
The road before me smooths and fills
Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.
The meadows are far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.
Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer’s sleigh, urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;
The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard for a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.
The evening deepens, and the grey
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream.
Plod dumbly on, and dream.
@antonella.f.greco
March 9, 2025
“Sadly,” warns Pastor Shane Idleman, “many confuse God’s patience with His approval.” Charlotte Mason saw a similar tendency: Christ’s servants sometimes “mistake needful delays for His forgetfulness.” But warnings like this are easier to remember when “clothed in a tale,” so Christ gives us a parable.
Mason’s poem “The thief in the night” takes this the one-sentence parable and expands it to a story. The poem draws us in so we can linger on the important and urgent warning of the tale. Read or hear the poem, along with notes from J. R. Dummelow, here.
@artmiddlekauff