The CMP Review — Week of October 30

October 30, 2023

Cleaning up a book with cherished scribbles from its previous owner’s childhood adventures is always a delightful journey.

I use a soft white eraser to start. This book had pencil on the cover, but it wouldn’t come off completely with just the pencil eraser. For stubborn pencil marks, crayon, as well as pen, which is what was on the inside page here, I use a Tombow Mono Sand Eraser. It is designed to remove colored pencil and ink. It works amazingly well and is a must-have tool in my book care toolbox. With its magic touch, it leaves the pages fresh, ensuring each book gets a second chance to enchant its next reader without the distraction of marginalia.

What’s your favorite method for preserving and cleaning old books? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below!

@tessakeath

October 31, 2023

Just after the title of the first edition of Ourselves, Charlotte Mason devoted an entire page to a line of Scripture:

Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure, … to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof. (Zechariah 2:1–2)

The prophet was discussing the measurement of Jerusalem, but Miss Mason had a different measurement in mind.

In 1933 Elsie Kitching had been leading the work for ten years after the departure of her friend and mentor Miss Mason. She was facing pressures. “A father wrote the other day,” she explained. “‘My mother belonged to the P.N.E.U., but I want something which recognises the modern standpoint. The P.N.E.U. must take modern scientific, metaphysical and psychological thought into its ken.’”

Hadn’t Mason herself written that her philosophy “is in line with modern thought and fits every occasion”? Wasn’t it time for Elsie Kitching to move with the times and update the method, as some thought Mason herself would have done?

No. “The principles which Miss Mason has given us are fundamental truths which are not dependent upon ever-changing theories in modern thought,” declared Kitching in her landmark 1933 address. With measuring line in hand, she tested the latest theories and found them wanting.

Ninety years later voices are still calling for changes and updates to the Charlotte Mason method. It’s time to revisit Kitching’s “Measuring Line” and test the theories that press upon us. And in the process we will come face-to-face with the measurement Mason had in mind on the opening page of Ourselves: the measurement of the immeasurable.

Read or hear Elsie Kitching’s challenging essay, now available online for free for the very first time. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

November 1, 2023

A friend gifted me this book 7 years ago. She said it would change me and it did.

In it, Elizabeth Gilbert encourages the reader to approach creativity with curiosity, playfulness, and joy + how to respond when fear tries to takeover. She also discusses the spiritual nature of ideas.

You might not agree with everything Ms. Gilbert says, but you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll definitely put pen to paper, paintbrush to canvas, lace up your ice skates, or embrace whatever form of creativity you’re drawn to.

@rbaburina

November 2, 2023

“‘The mother is qualified,’ says Pestalozzi, ‘and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; … and what is demanded of her is—a thinking love.’” So writes Charlotte Mason on page 2 of Home Education. But who is Pestalozzi? Detailed studies are hard to come by, but one I received as a gift.

@artmiddlkeauff

November 3, 2023

And, just like that, it is winter!

• some leaves (on and off the tree. Isn’t that interesting?),
• a brave dandelion stalk,
• our favourite “spiky plant” crowned in snowy glory,
• and beautiful, feathery things,

in all of their snow-topped splendour!

@antonella.f.greco

November 4, 2023

“Do you know the kind of still, warm, comfort-giving day that comes in autumn, when, if you are silent, and will listen, you can hear a solitary beech leaf flutter slowly down from branch to branch, till it reaches Mother Earth and rests there? … Knowledge of such things comes by the listening ear. If we would have the joy that comes with such knowledge, we must cultivate the habit of listening, and if we would give children this joy, we must help them to form the habit early.” (The Parents’ Review, Vol. 57, p. 65, Gladding, “The Listening and The Hearing Ear”)

@tessakeath

What happened between two feasts? The Bible is silent on those two months or so between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Dedication. The Bible is silent, but Charlotte Mason’s imagination is not. If Christ were alone with His disciplines during that time, what would He undertake to do? What would He teach? For Mason, there is little doubt, as she sought “a whole conception of Christ’s life among men.” Read or hear Mason’s poem “The months of teaching” here.

@artmiddlekauff