Truth ||

Why Little Kids Need Big Biblical Words @ The Gospel Coalition

I have been guilty of trying to find the smallest words to explain something to children, but kids aren't afraid of big, new words. Better to introduce them to words like "repentance" and "atonement" when they're young and their imaginations are big. Also, the three-year rotation of this Bible curriculum is right up my classical education alley.

This article was a good reminder that we can set the bar high enough to stretch over, rather than low enough to trip on.

On the Hard Parts of Writing and Mothering @ Stacey Thacker

"My life is a crazy mix of mundane and beautiful. Laundry? Mundane. Girls who tell you they love you? Beautiful. I don’t do the mundane well and at times I mishandle the beautiful, too. Frustrating. Mothering is hard.  Also, frustrating."

Just true.

Goodness ||

Do Less and Live More @ Becoming Minimalist

"It’s hard to be the person you want to be if your days leave no room for contemplating who that person even is."

Beauty ||

How Drawing Trains You to See the World More Clearly and to Live with a Deeper Sense of Presence @ Brain Pickings

"It’s a beautiful meditation triply timely today, in an age when we — having succumbed to the “aesthetic consumerism” of photography — are likelier to view the world through our camera phones and likelier still to point those at ourselves rather than at nature’s infinite and infinitely overlooked enchantments. To draw today is to reclaim the dignity and private joy of seeing amid a culture obsessed with looking in public."

I think there are great points here but as a non-sketcher and past un-observer, I feel like photography has given me a better eye on the world. Still, I know I would benefit from the disciplined art of drawing and grow in the joy of seeing rather than just looking.

*****

"As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian."

~ Madeleine L'Engle