S.M. Hutchens on education: Maieusis, the work of midwives, involves knowledge and opinion about the process and what its ends are. Those who practice it must understand what is normal and desirable, know error or anomaly, and take steps to correct it with as much force as is required to accomplish the right end. The teacher’s task, to be sure, is essentially that of a guide and encourager, but to do this he must know the path to be taken, and equally, what is not the path, and is to be discouraged. His knowledge of his subject is not to be imparted or simply transferred as much as put forward for the advantage of the learner–who is to make of it what he can, and may be examined by the master on that making, the examination, ideally, being for the master’s learning as well as the student’s.

Anthony Esolen on conservatism and so-called homosexual marriage: When a high court overthrows over two millennia of western tradition, all English common law, and the express will of the people, to engage in an unheard of experiment touching upon the most intimate matters of human society — marriage and the family — and when the people supinely put up with it, at best hoping to tweak the decision or overturn it in some vainly hoped-for election, then it is not the case that civic liberty will soon be lost. It already has been lost. Quit looking at the ephemeral! Your forefathers rebelled over a few high-handed taxes without parliamentary representation. They and their descendants for a hundred and fifty years would have tarred and feathered the silly members of that court, denouncing them as fools and tyrants, and putting them back in their place.

May is Get Caught Reading Month. Doesn’t he (yes, it’s a boy) look as if he’s excited about his reading choices?

Et Tu? on God and the tow truck driver: “Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God’s story is to ask in every moment not ‘What is God trying to tell me with this situation?’ but rather, ‘How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?’ It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.”

Alan Noble at Christ and Pop Culture has a brilliant discussion of Aslan as presented in the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe versus C.S. Lewis’s Aslan: “For Lewis, this experience was central to any Biblical understanding of God, and so when he created Aslan as a Christ-figure, it was fitting that he should have the other characters of his books respond with awe-ful fear to Aslan. He was the God of Narnia, and just like the God of this world, any real encounter with him is bound to be marked by reverent fear and wonder. In the film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the numinous quality of Aslan’s character all but disappears, and with it Lewis’ conception of God.”
I think Mr. Noble is absolutely right, but the contrast may have been unavoidable, given the limitations of the film medium. How can anyone portray a truly God-like lion using costumes, actors, and video technology? In this instance, words and the imagination are much better tools.

If you like words, you’ll enjoy this essay by Joseph Bottom from The Weekly Standard: “Thwart. Yes, thwart is a good word. Thwarted. Athwart. A kind of satisfaction lives in such words–a unity, a completion. Teach them to a child, and you’ll see what I mean: skirt, scalp, drab, buckle, sneaker, twist, jumble. Squeamish, for that matter. They taste good in the mouth, and they seem to resound with their own verbal truthfulness.”

A husband, father, deacon and grad student confesses: he loves chick flicks: “Sure they’re often shallow and clichéd, but these stories always center on people who go out of their way to make each other feel special and loved, and I for one can never be reminded of that too often.”

Carrie at Mommy Brain passes on some links and resources for your poetical enjoyment.

Mental Multivitamin: In a ragged pocket . . . “. . . you don’t need a plan or a permission slip to enjoy poetry with your family. Simply pull down a collection of poems and read. Play with the language. Take turns delighting in silly poems. Teach one another the importance of old favorites. Recite from memory the poems you’ve learned. Let favorite pieces become part of the pattern of your family’s secret language, like lines from favorite books and films.”

Some of Ruth’s favorite poetry books.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere..”
Blaise Pascal

S.M. Hutchens on losing one’s faith: “Experienced pastors, when faced with students who ‘lose their faith’ at college, do not begin to argue back with them on matters philosophical or theological. They inquire into ‘lifestyle’ issues in the attempt to ascertain whether there is a release to be gained from overthrowing the faith in which they were raised. There usually is.”

I could lose my sanity, not my faith, if I followed many links like this one: Virtual Bubble Wrap. I got the link from Mrs. Dani, so blame her.

In much more serious news, The Headmistress at The Common Room has been blogging the heck out of the travesty of justice that is taking place in my old hometown of San Angelo, Texas. Just go there and find the posts, and you’ll read what I think about what CPS is doing to 300+ children and their mothers. I’m mostly worried about the children. CPS says they are, too, but I don’t believe it.

Gracious Hospitality collects Teatime Recipes this week. I’m planning to host a book club tea at my house soon, so I will definitely be looking over these recipes. There’s a linky there to add a link to your favorite recipe, too.

This collection of links was all over the map from the mundane to the silly to the serious and discerning. Take it for what it’s worth, and don’t get stuck popping the virtual bubble wrap for too long.

Meredith at Like Merchant Ships hosts a great discussion of home libraries, how to acquire one, how to store the books, how many, etc.

Gifts for booklovers by Cheryl Rainfield. These gifts would be appropriate for anytime, even Christmas.

Uses for those orphan books that nobody wants.

I’m hoping to make this a weekly feature when I return from my blog break because I fully believe that we will ultimately end the scourge of abortion by changing hearts, not laws. Yes, I believe that the law needs to change, too. But many people will not obey a law that is not written on their hearts. So, “life links” is my small way of telling everyone who comes to this blog that God is the Creator and Sustainer of every single human life, that our lives and the lives of our children are gifts from His hand, and that we as children of the Heavenly Father cannot continue to devalue the lives of others by tolerating abortion in our country or in our world.

I found this old post from 2005 at the Common Room. It’s about a time when the Headmistress was feeling very poor and very frightened. I’ve copied an excerpt, but you should really read the entire story.

I cried myself to sleep many nights, wishing I wasn’t pregnant. Even typing those words tonight, two decades later, I feel sick at the thought. ‘Ending the pregnancy’ was never, ever, not for one second something I even considered- but wishing God would end it for me— well.

I was so blind. So blind. Because I could see no light at the end of our tunnel, I thought there was only darkness ahead. But I could not see the light because I had lived too long in darkness and my eyes were not accustomed to seeing things through faith. I was a Christian. I believed. I loved my Heavenly Father. But I did not yet have enough faith to comfort me in what I foolishly thought was a fiery trial.”

Et Tu: How I Became Pro-Life.

I got lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: to dehumanize the enemy. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendencies to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize the fellow human beings who are on the other side of the lines in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized the enemy of sex.

It was when I was reading up on the Catholic Church’s view of sex, marriage and contraception that everything changed.”

The Pursuit of Happiness at Et Tu: Diary of a Former Atheist: “I’ve come to believe that when we chase happiness, what we really want is peace.”

This is a video made from an actual phone call to our local (Houston) Christian radio station by a 12 year old boy named Logan.

Psalm 23 from the Mouth of a Child. Surely goodness and love will follow me . . .

Jennifer on turning the other cheek: “Thinking about all this made me realize that I had always mentally compartmentalized people into two different groups: the people who live through horrible tragedy who I hear about on the news, and the people who I interact with in my daily life. The people on the news had almost theoretical status: they were people who I will never actually meet but, if I hypothetically were to meet them, I’d be extra motivated to be as perfectly Christ-like as possible, no matter what, so that I didn’t add to the suffering they’d seen in their lives. However, the thinking went, I don’t actually know anyone like that.

But of course I do.”

In a different vein, what could be better than a combination of Bible verse memorization and a storytelling daddy? I think this, too, is contagious faith.