The CMP Review — Week of November 10

November 10, 2025

“To be Queen over her little kingdom, serene in every family emergency, capable to direct all things with calmness, cheerfulness, and decision, is an ambition sufficient to tax the powers of the most skillful amongst us, and a vocation equal to the highest God has appointed on this earth.
…
If mothers are valuable and worth preserving in this hurrying world, the strain we require of them must be balanced by a due proportion of rest. New strength through repose. This is part of the duty of making life liveable, and it re-acts on the whole family.” (“Family Life”, PR4)

@tessakeath

November 11, 2025

“Poetry,” according to Charlotte Mason, “is, perhaps, the most searching and intimate of our teachers.”

Does it feel like that in your homeschool?

Do you find your children saying that poetry “supplies us with tools for the modelling of our lives”?

W. A. Myers Robinson would not have said so, when he was a boy of 12 years old.

But something changed to such an extent that he became a poet. Find out his secret in our latest transcription from the more recent PNEU archive — the Journal of 1971. Read or hear it here.

@artmiddlekauff

November 12, 2025

There’s a sweet little Jane Austen quote making the social media rounds:

Autumn — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

Its brevity belies the true brilliance of Miss Austen’s words. Taken from Ch. 10 of Persuasion, a wistful Anne Elliot finds herself in the position of having to bear witness as her long lost love, Captain Wentworth (whose marriage proposal she was encouraged to turn down some years ago), makes merry small talk with the young, pretty, and flirtatious Louisa on a rather long group walk. Gentle, reserved Anne. Austen tells us of Anne’s kindness, constancy, and self-awareness while also stating frankly that “the bloom of youth has left her.”

And this is why her words are so beautifully poignant. Level-headed Anne knows she is no spring rose. She is no longer a girl, she is a woman and the season reflects not only her outward appearance, but her innermost thoughts as she works to occupy her mind. The context of the quote gives it a much richer meaning. Here is the sentence in its entirety:

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

@rbaburina

November 13, 2025

January will mark my eight-year anniversary of keeping a commonplace book. I have written down a wide variety of quotations from the many books I have read, and in some way my commonplace is a journal of my reading. But in a more specific way, it is a journal of my reading of Shakespeare.

As my family has read together two or three plays per year, I have been struck again and again by some line that speaks to some struggle or challenge in my life at the time. It doesn’t matter what play or what season of life. There always seems to be something.

On Saturday I wrote down this line from Measure for Measure:

Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.

Many times I have hesitated to undertake a project when I didn’t have a near certainty of success. I had a fear of failure, a fear of wasted time, a fear of resources drained with nothing to show.

But I see that these doubts are traitors. Armed with a new insight and a new quotation, I take a new step forward with my commonplace at my side.

@artmiddlekauff

November 14, 2025

We got two amazing aurora borealis shows on Tuesday and Wednesday night here in Manitoba, Canada! I have never seen reds like this before. The bonus is that they started early (right after supper) and Tuesday evening especially was warm, so it was quite pleasant to wander the neighbourhood watching them dance!

Did you see northern lights this week? Which night? And tell us the general area of the world you are in. I know many of my American friends were able to see them, those who don’t usually get the opportunity!

@antonella.f.greco

November 15, 2025

It is the time of the frosty early morning walks.

There are so many interesting things to see when you stop and look carefully!

@antonella.f.greco

Stephanie B. Crowder writes:

It is God who defines and orchestrates justice, or fairness, according to Luke. Whether the injustice comes from human-to-human misdeeds or whether it emanates from personal wrong, God justifies or makes right so that good may be done. Furthermore, in each instance Luke shows how important it is that people initiate the call for justice. When we call, God answers. When we cry out, God responds. When we beg and implore God to come and see about us, God comes to make it all right.

Sometimes it can be hard to initiate that call. Charlotte Mason imagined it would be so for the disciples. Read or hear her poem “The Disciples Ponder” here.

@artmiddlekauff