Giving thanks

I thought today was tomorrow.
I opened Morning and Evening
by Spurgeon this morning and read
June 15th. I soaked in these words
concerning this verse:

“And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.”

Genesis 21:6

I would have all those that hear of my great deliverance from hell, and my most blessed visitation from on high, laugh for joy with me. I would surprise my family with my abundant peace; I would delight my friends with my ever-increasing happiness; I would edify the Church with my grateful confessions; and even impress the world with the cheerfulness of my daily conversation. Bunyan tells us that Mercy laughed in her sleep, and no wonder when she dreamed of Jesus; my joy shall not stop short of hers while my Beloved is the theme of my daily thoughts. The Lord Jesus is a deep sea of joy: my soul shall dive therein, shall be swallowed up in the delights of his society. Sarah looked on her Isaac, and laughed with excess of rapture, and all her friends laughed with her; and thou, my soul, look on thy Jesus, and bid heaven and earth unite in thy joy unspeakable.

I am thankful school days are over and summer
is here. We had a graduation party for Gordan
on Saturday night , just as I got back from
the Childlight Conference that day at lunch!
I am so thankful for friends and family who
came from afar to celebrate with us.
AND for an excellent conference that touches
my soul in it's nourishment. More on that soon.


Gratitude Monday from Holy Experience.

does this machine make you dumber

"Whereas the Internet scatters our attention, the book focuses it. Unlike the screen, the page promotes contemplativeness."

Read in The Wall Street Journal:

Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

Studying up on Wendell Berry

I've read alot of Berry and he's one
writer who is all over the library and
a bookstore. Essays, poems, environmental
issues, fiction, even a children's book.
I love Whitefoot which is about a mouse.
I've been listening to this farmer poet
online , hearing his Kentucky drawl and
learning about his work. I love this:
He carries a notebook and a pencil when
musical words hit him. The mind then
has to make those lyrical phrases potent
to become a poem.

Like Snow

• Suppose we did our work

• like the snow, quietly, quietly,

• leaving nothing out.
  

Looking forward to

Monday Gratitude:

I'm thankful for you who read
this. I love the way a blog can
be corrected once it is posted.
I love a pen most and beautiful
paper. I have started corresponding
with Tonia at Study in Brown.
That is on paper crossing the nation
as she lives in Oregon. Read her
blog if you haven't. Right now she
is cooking vegetarian!

I head off to the Childlight Conference
on Weds. afternoon. I meet up with
several women who I only see once a
year. They have become dear sort of
friends. Friendship has so many levels.
These are the ones who are working
towards Education. Education is a Life.
I look forward to see Melanie from
Red Mountain Community School in
Birmingham. There is a lovely new
website.
She is a Wendell Berry fan and one of
those person's that I heard speak and
I had read so , so many of the same books.
I tend to gravitate towards like mindedness!
I'll see her this week! We love to examine
time and living unhurried.

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

Wendell Berry The Sabbath Poems

I am thankful!

Tidying up

Great post by Leslie at The Bower
on a book called Wise Child by
Monica Furlong. I just found it
for 1.00 online. I need some reading
like this to bring some impetus to
tidying up! Then I need to find some
beautiful tiny things of beauty like
her doorknob!

Tidying to the soundtrack from Wicked!

If you read Wendell Berry, check the
next entry below. Any ideas?

Have you used a Wendell Berry book or poem in your teaching?

If you have, let me know what
you used. I am coleading a workshop
next Friday at the Childlight USA
Conference on Wendell Berry's writings.
Or have you a favorite book of his that
you would highly recommend?
Any thoughts?
He is a voice to listen to and hear what
matters.

This is from a wonderful article on Berry
called "Field Observations":

As we begin to descend, I am thinking about boyhood and Berry's poetry, and I ask Berry if he agrees that school children should be reintroduced to the lost institution of memorizing and reciting poems.

"Yes," he replies, "you've got to furnish their minds."

The idea of poetry as furniture expands within my imagination and for weeks, I think about a poem committed to memory as an old chest of drawers in the corner of a child's room. At first the thing is simply a place to put clothes. With time, the grown man, or grown woman learns to see more of it: toolmarks left by the hand of a long-dead craftsman, a cornice molding around its top in a shape found on ancient Greek temples. And by gazing at its sturdiness for so many years, he or she knows something about how to make things that last.

Streams

of the Desert........

We often pray to be delivered from calamities; we even trust that we shall be; but we do not pray to be made what we should be, in the very presence of the calamities; to live amid them, as long as they last, in the consciousness that we are, held and sheltered by the Lord, and can therefore remain in the midst of them, so long as they continue, without any hurt.