Sorry I Keep Turning This Blog Off and On...

Hello!

I hope everyone who reads this is well. :-)

No, I won't be writing more posts for this blog, and I wouldn't even be putting up this note except that I every time I think it's time to hide the blog and finally turn out the lights, I am contacted by people (directly or in roundabout ways) asking me to leave it up so that they can read all of the posts. I think, mostly, people want to read the learning posts, so I think what I'll do when I have time (and I have no idea when that will be-- it may even be months from now) is to put the learning posts on a separate blog so that they're all in one place, in sensible order, and can be easily read. I'm glad those posts have been helpful and encouraging to some of you, and until I can manage to set up the posts in a new place, I'll leave this blog open. I do realize that only a handful of people will actually see this, but it's the best I can do....

~Susan

I Believe...

This can't really be much of a surprise, but because I've never directly said what I believe, I want to make a clear statement of it now in my last post. I believe the following with all of my heart and also with all of my mind. I don't want a crutch to lean on. I don't want religion. I'm not looking for something to make me feel good. I seek Truth. And I wholeheartedly believe this to be true.

My relationship with God has brought a great deal of peace and light and deep joy to my life in spite of many challenges, trials, losses, and hardships. The Bible says that God daily bears our burdens, and this has been so very true for me. I am loved and forgiven, blessed and kept by His hand. My hope remains in Him. I pray that you will have that hope, too.

I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.I believe in the Holy Ghost: The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints: The Forgiveness of sins: The Resurrection of the body: And the Life everlasting. Amen.

~taken from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

:~:~:~:~:

Thank you for your kindness and great warmth to me. Thank you for your prayers and blessings and encouragement. Thank you for appreciating the things I've shared about my life and family and home.

Gratefully,
Susan

A Very Quick Answer to Leigh's Question and Our Tasty Dinner...

Yet another post, and it's not even the last one! :-) I guess this is my final furious flurry.

In the comment box, Leigh asked this (don't feel selfish about asking, Leigh!):

"Speaking of "three little things" :), I remember you commenting on one of your posts that there were three things you wanted your kids to do each day. Would you mind sharing what they were? Actually, I guess it would be the two other things :), since you already mentioned writing."

I've long wanted to address this kind of thing because it's been asked more than once, and I've felt remiss in not responding. It's not that I haven't tried, though; it's that I get bogged down every time I try to write about this because there's a whole philosophy behind this, so it's not as cut and dried as my answers seem. (A good part of the philosophy behind this is in my learning posts, especially the ones on a learning atmosphere. I never did finish those and that pained me a great deal.)

This is not yet the answer to Leigh's question, but, just to let you know, the last three topics in my learning atmosphere notes were going to be:

1. The great importance and value of chores and doing good, hard, physical work and having real responsibilities.

2. Do real things. John Senior talks about this in his wonderful book The Restoration of Christian Culture. Read it if you can get your hands on it. :-)

3. Um, um, um... Oh, my goodness, I can't remember the other one, and all of my papers are packed! :-) It must not be important...

Anyway, a very quick, unwieldy (because I'm not taking the time to think and edit-- cringe-- but I have thought much about this over the years, and I have lived it with my kids), off the top of my head response to Leigh is this:

The three things I expected my kids to do daily besides living a full and intersting life of learning in our free time--

1. Reading

Whatever they wanted as long as it was quality, well-written stuff. And there's much of it out there for children (especially older books), so no one was ever-- or ever felt-- deprived! They were supposed to read every day, but it's almost a joke to list this because reading was their favorite thing to do. They loved books. They read alone. We read together. For hours. Sometimes I had to tell them to stop reading and do something else. The most common topic of conversation in our home was books. It's still that way.

2. Writing

Whatever they wanted. Anything. It was open-ended! Journals, essays, letters, copy-work, dictation. They created newsletters. They had their own little writing club. They made lists and plans and all sorts of things. I have boxes and boxes of journals the kids kept, and they did a prodigious amount of other writing. Andrew Pudewa says that reading (and memorizing) good poetry is one really great way to learn to write. I believe him. My kids did read and memorize poetry for fun and wrote and wrote. They wrote in their own way. I didn't correct it or grade it, but I did read it, and if I saw patterns of things they were doing wrong, I'd mention it to them. Honestly, most stuff self-corrects if they are reading well. Doing that and then writing, writing, writing, brought it all together nicely. All of them eventually really wanted to be good writers, so they took it upon themselves to work on it. We had loads of good handbooks and helps for writing on our shelves, and the kids used them often. I absolutely mean it when I say that all four of my kids are much better writers than me. I'm glad I didn't dumb them down by trying to teach them. :-)

3. Math

Making progress every day, at their own pace, which was most often fairly accelerated. We selected materials together. Different kids needed different programs. I wanted them to like and "click" with what they were using. From 4th grade on, the kids completely taught themselves math.

~:~:~:~:~

These were our basic, everyday things. On top of this, we explored our natural world and appreciated the world of the arts with great enthusiasm. We delved into many hobbies and interests. We did real things. We tried to avoid things that kept us from the real things, the good things, a true education. The kids were enthusiastic doers, creators, thinkers. It was lovely watching them fill their days with learning and creating. Unless something else was on the agenda, the business of our days was to get an education. And we all took it seriously. It didn't fit within any particular hours. It went on from wake-time to bed-time and on the weekends. It was what we did, and it is what we still do. Even my college kids pursue their own life and education along with their school assignments. They get it.

I think this worked for us because of the kind of atmosphere and expectations we had in our home. We kept a lot of distractions out of our home environment, like media and too many activities, and not everyone will want to do this. That's okay. This is just what we did. We lived in the country where the kids roamed and played and explored. We read together and worked together and talked an awful lot. Learning was fun for us. And I think our enthusiasms rubbed off on each other.

Other kids and families played a part in our lives, too, and people were in and out of our home often, but we had an awful lot of long, quiet days at home to work and go about the business of learning. If one wants to create a learning lifestyle atmosphere, it takes a lot of work to do it. And, as we go along, we realize what works and what doesn't, and then we make a choice as to how we want to proceed because we have to work within the reality of our situations. If we are home educating, then education is not to be shrugged off. If a natural course of learning isn't working, and if we have tried to adjust our environment to make it work, and it's still not working, or if we are unwilling to make the necessary adjustments, then we need to reevaluate what we're doing. Not everyone's family will thrive in the same way, but, hopefully, we can all love to learn and make it a natural, everyday endeavor, not limited to certain hours or certain days or a certain part of our lives.

(Another home education book I really like is Educating Children at Home by Alan Thomas.)

~:~:~:~

Okay, there. Now for dinner.

I didn't intend to post this (neither did I intend to answer any questions, but here I am), but it was so good that I had to write one last bit about food. Cooking is so relaxing and enjoyable for me. I'm trying to eat whatever meat is in the freezer and whatever food remains in cupboards this week. There's not much left, but this afternoon I did have a few Yukon potatoes, a couple onions, and four organic chicken thighs. There are always lemons and olive oil about the house, and there are currently lots of fresh herbs in the garden. Beautiful gobs of oregano and sage and tarragon, with other herbs coming on nicely. I chose to use oregano because it would work well in a Greek-flavored lemon-chicken-onion meal.

So, that's what I made-- a lemon-oregano potato, onion, and chicken dish that looked so pretty before putting into the oven that I was wishing badly I could photograph it. It looked just as pretty and tasty when it came out. And it tasted just wonderful. A dinner with my very favorite kinds of flavor. It makes me thankful for so much good food.

I turned the oven on to 375 degrees.

I sliced one yellow onion.

I cut three or four smallish-medium Yukon potatoes into big, bite-sized chunks.

I wish I had thought to add a whole bunch of whole cloves of garlic to this.

I chopped a whole bunch of fresh oregano.

I squeezed the juice from one small lemon.

I fried the chicken thighs, with skin on, in butter to brown well and begin the cooking process. I sprinkled the tops with salt.

When the thighs were nicely browned, I set them in a parchment lined baking dish.

When I finished frying the chicken thighs, I set them in a parchment lined baking dish. I placed the potatoes and onion into a bowl and tossed them with some sea salt, the lemon juice, most of the oregano, and some olive oil (a few tablespoons?). Then I placed this around the chicken pieces. (The size dish depends on how much you're making. You'll want the potatoes and onions to fit in, if not one layer, in close to it. You don't want a deep mound of vegetables or they won't get that nice roasty look and taste.) I sprinkled the rest of the oregano over the chicken and the potato mixture. I drizzled any juice that remained in the bowl over the chicken and then the potatoes and set it into the oven to bake. For how long, I'm not sure, but it was over an hour for sure. I just kept checking. When it looked done enough, I let it cook even longer. I wanted it to be really done! I let it go until the chicken skin was lovely crispy brown and the meat was fall-off-the-bone done and melt-in-your-mouth tender and the potatoes were nicely browned, too.

When it came out of the oven, Michelle and I oohed and ahhed, and when we ate it, we oohed and ahhed even more energetically. We loved this. I hope you will, too.

That's all for now, but I'll still try to respond to recent comments before I go to bed tonight. Last little post coming in the morning.

I'll leave comments open for about a week, and then I'll close them. I'll leave the blog open so people who want to catch up on older posts can. Eventually, but not right away, I'll "hide" the blog so that it can't be accessed. If you want to make copies of anything for your own use before that, you are welcome to. Please, though, do not republish anything I've written. While the blog is still open to the public, you are welcome to link to it. Thank you!

Three Little Things...

1. Why do kids find such delight in creating forts that are like little dens? As I sat at the table drinking my coffee this morning, Jayden and Roman made a fort underneath, by my feet. The opposite side of the table was enclosed by a chair, and the open side had unused moving boxes leaning up against it, so it did create an obvious fort, and if you're a little child you will notice these things. My own kids made forts under tables and behind furniture all the time. They'd drag out just the right things to turn these forts into little homes, and then they'd play happily there for hours.

It's the same kind of delight they got from books like Brambly Hedge or Beatrix Potter or The Rescuers or so many other books featuring anthropomorphized animals. I don't know that there's a connection between the forts and the stories except that the words "den" and "cosiness" tend to come to mind for both, and the imagination is delightfully engaged in both cases, too. My children still love Brambly Hedge-- the illustrations in particular, I think. My 23 year old son still enjoys occasionally perusing his volume of the entire collection of Brambly Hedge stories, and he's not embarrassed to say so!

2. In the midst of the moving and serious talk of changes and decluttering and simplicity, I've not dropped off shopping for thrift or vintage items altogether. It's just that now, the things I buy need to be needed. And I needed dish towels. I used to like Martha Stewart's K-Mart dish towels (the only thing I ever entered K-Mart for), but when I stopped by recently, they didn't have any. So, I looked at the antique store, and somehow, these really kitschy old linen souvenir and calendar dish towels caught my eye. They were all in great/perfect condition, well made, sort of fun and tacky, and cheap, so why not?!

So, I now have in my possession one really cute bright orange (and other early 70's colors) rooster calendar dish towel from 1971. I have a 1979 light blue and green and brown towel with an adorable picture of owls on it (the little boys particularly like this one). There are two linen souvenir towels from Australia-- one with koala bears and one with eucalyptus plans. There's a cool one from the Grand Canyon. And there is one that's clearly from the 1950's-- it's bright pink and lime green-yellowish and black, with a typical 50's design style, set in Paris. There are unifying-color-theme issues with this little set of towels, but that's okay. I like them.

3. And I am reading. The books I'm reading are mostly of the spiritually-oriented variety right now, but I'll pick up others again when I am settled. Currently, there are several in my stack, but two that I'm just starting to read are Esther de Waal's To Pause at the Threshold and Joan Chittister's The Gift of Years: Growing Old Gracefully. I know I'll really like the Threshold book (it's perfectly suited to my situation), and I'm loving what I'm reading in The Gift of Years. I haven't read it thoroughly yet, but I've browsed through it, and I'm pretty sure that when I'm finished I'll be highly recommending this. I might as well do that now, since I won't be blogging when I finish. There is a lot of wisdom and joy in this book. If you are middle aged or older, or you're just interested in thinking about what really matters, there is a lot of insight and inspiration to be gained from this book. It's light, but thoughtful and deep.

And now I'll carry on with my work. My last, short, post will be tomorrow. Nothing wordy or thoughtful on my part, but one little thing I want to say before I leave. Also, I'll try to get back to respond to recent comments later.

Transitions...

"In the Gospels, we watch a Christ who, in dismissing certainties, shows us what freedom might mean. We watch the way in which he enters into people's live and dissolves an existing situation, whatever it might be. The likelihood was that the condition had promised security, safety, but now Christ challenges the people to leave their nets, or to leave a nice, safe booth and to follow him. He says to Peter, James, and John, 'Come,' and to Matthew, 'Stand up, move, walk, come with me.' Our God is a God who moves and he invites us to move with him. He wants to pry us away from anything that might hold us too securely: our careers, our family systems, our money making. We must be ready to disconnect. There comes a time when the things that were undoubtedly good and right in the past must be left behind, for there is always the danger that they might hinder us from moving forward and connecting with the one necessary thing, Christ himself."

~Esther de Waal in To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border

In the process of moving house, most things have now been packed and are ready to be transferred to our storage unit. The little bit of furniture that will be hauled to our new home has mostly been moved to one corner of the living room now. And, without thinking, I've moved myself there, too

Next to one of the living room windows, I set up a beat up little table I'll set up in my apartment. A lamp rests on it, and it didn't take long for a small stack of books to form beside the lamp. Even though the table is there only temporarily, awaiting its move, it has become my morning quiet time place and the place I sit when I want to eat something, to read with pen and paper at hand, to make lists, or to write in my journal. And it's a very pleasant spot.

I realized this morning, as the coffee finished brewing in the French press and I began to walk toward the living room to sit down with my journal and coffee, that I have made something of an initial transition already without even thinking about it. I have left behind my old familiar spots for reading and relaxing-- the dining table and the chair in the corner adjacent to the woodstove-- and I've left them behind with good memories but no regrets. I'm at the threshold of a new time, a new stage of my life.

As I thought about this, I realized something. Keeping this blog has been a gift to me in a way that I didn't expect. It's a journal of my very ordinary daily life over the course of an entire year, through the seasons and holidays, of our celebrations and joys, through times of grief and times of delight. It's a keepsake glimpse of one year of our family life and some of the philosophy that has guided that life, lived here in our High Desert Home.

It's not a journal of everything we did, of everything we thought, of everything we enjoyed or endured, but it's a real, honest, grateful glimpse of the lovely life the Lord blessed us with here. I can look at my blog and recall good things. Through photos and my words, I can remember and enjoy and be thankful all over again for God's many blessings.

I will look back with a smile and a full heart, but not with yearning. I've loved living here. It's where my kids mostly grew up and where we enjoyed day after lovely day together. This place and the time we spent here has become part of the fabric of our lives, and so, in some nice ways, it's always with us. We have been made and shaped and changed here, but the time has clearly come for us to move forward. The kids already have, and Mike's job took him away long ago. Our thoughts of retiring here are gone, and we have no regrets about that.

I look forward to what comes next, and I feel extremely blessed. God continually surprises me with His provision in every way. I want to make the business of my life to be one of seeing the blessings of God and of counting them every single day.

I'm moving, transitionally (more changes will come in time), to a small apartment. No, it's teeny-tiny. And like I said earlier, that's okay with me. I don't mind living a smaller life; in fact, I welcome it. If there's one thing I've come to know, it's that things really are just things. When I narrowed my possessions down to what I would take with me and what I would not, it came down to three things. Useful. Beautiful. Meaningful. And when this is narrowed down to what is most useful, beautiful, and meaningful, it enlightened me a bit to my values.

~I really do intensely dislike clutter in my space and would rather get rid of special things than live in a frustratingly crowded place.

~Not much matters as far as material possessions go. It really doesn't. But that doesn't mean I won't try to make my surroundings pleasant and cheerful. God surrounded us with beauty. That matters. Some of my stuff has seen its better days, for sure, but that's okay, and it wouldn't be beautiful to anyone else, but because it's charged with meaning and memories, there's a sweetness to it for me. When I talk about beauty, I'm not talking about magazine-home beauty. What's going with me is either well loved or useful.

~My books were the most difficult to narrow down. (I'm taking half cookbooks.) I realized that the books I wanted were the ones that spoke of the kind of inner life I love. The ones that are lovely to read. The ones that inspire me to simplicity. The ones about giving and sharing and showing hospitality (yes, even in a teeny-tiny world). The ones that challenge me not to be about myself, but to be about others. Without trying to, I narrowed the books down to what is extremely well-written-- things that are accepted as classics or are "classic" to my own life.

~Oh, you don't need to have the whole list, and, anyway, I don't have time to write it!~

I think the biggest challenge I'll get to meet is the kitchen stove. :-) It's like a dollhouse stove. I don't think a 9x13 inch pan can fit into the oven. The burners are all laughingly small. Will I be able to use two of them to heat my Dutch oven? :-) I love to cook, and I'd really like to have a great big, six-burner, restaurant style, gas stove, but I think I've got the smallest four burner electric stove that was ever made! People have cooked on a single electric burner on their counters before, though. Really, this is nothing to complain about. It's something to have fun adjusting to. And I mean that.

One of the blessings of middle age is that you've been through a lot of changes, a lot of ups and downs, maybe some crises, probably some loss. And what you learn, if you welcome the lesson, is that it all ends up not mattering. What matters-- really matters (and I'm not being spiritually trite here)-- is loving God and loving others.

Smooth transitions, changes, and adjustments all start with choice. With openness. With no demands. With letting go. There's a huge amount of freedom in this and a sense of adventure. Why not see each threshold or transition as an adventure? As exciting? Or at least as good. Can I stand on that threshold and feel the welcoming breeze, smell the fresh air, see the warm and compelling light? What's out there? I just need to step through to find out.

Like what is behind, what is ahead will not be perfectly ideal or always-sweet and giddy. Life is not like that. But if we believe that God is leading us along, what is there to fear? Why keep looking back? He says He has us hemmed us in behind and before. He says He lights our path. He says He will never leave us or forsake us. He says His plans for us are good.

I believe Him.

Stillness...

"Stillness in one individual can affect society beyond measure."

~Bede Griffiths (1906-1993)
(as read in Paula Huston's The Holy Way)

photo: amolife.com

Speaking of Having No Air Conditioner...

"The Siesta" by Paul Gaugin

"Only mad dogs and the British go out in the noonday sun."
~an Indian saying

This bit of commentary was motivated by my eating of really spicy food in the middle of this very warm day in the hottest room in the house, all of which adds up to a bit of light perspiration even when one is sitting still. And then I realized that the spicy food and the perspiration actually ended up cooling me off, and I began to think of other cultures who live in hot climates, and how they live (and often eat spicy foods), and why we all sweat, and why we didn't used to work in mid-day, and all sorts of things, including how our western "advances" just might not be...

Until modern times, people in very hot climates around the world lived without electric air conditioning units or systems (many or most still do). For the most part, there was no choice in the matter, but our modern, particularly western, and maybe more particularly, American, way of hot weather living is now mostly geared to and centered around air conditioning.

When it's hot, we wake in air-conditioned bedrooms. Most often, when we leave the house, we step directly into an air conditioned car. When we leave the car, we walk straight into air conditioned buildings, and when we return home, we do this in reverse. And if any of the air conditioners in this routine happen to go out, we are miserable. Why? Maybe because we are battling nature, and when our tactics (in this case our A/C's) fail, we lose.

Ever notice that 75 degrees in very early spring can feel almost too warm, but when temperatures start dropping back down toward 70 degrees in the fall, we're just about chilly enough to pull out the sweaters? I read once that it takes the body two weeks to totally adjust if it goes directly from cool to hot temperatures. For those two weeks, the hot temperatures will feel hotter than they will when we finally physiologically adapt. But if we follow nature, there's a thing called spring that usually eases us into hotter temperatures, and physiological changes happen more gradually, more comfortably, and more naturally.

When we move continually from air conditioned environment to air conditioned environment, though, how is our body supposed to adapt? Is it possible that we're not allowing nature to take its course, and so we never allow our bodies to make the adjustment that would ease the effects of heat? Are we maybe more miserable than we need to be in the heat because we've tried to outsmart it? Might this be poetic justice? (I'm kidding.)

The same need to allow time for the body to adjust is true when we encounter large changes in altitude, as high altitude mountain climbers know well. To disregard nature's timetable in making physiological adjustments, in their case, would mean death. It's wise, and healthy, to work with nature.

But we were talking about heat, weren't we?

Nowadays, people don't often think about planting trees to shade a window in summer and, conversely, to allow light in the winter. Why should they? We have air conditioners! Not many people consider the things that used to be done, guided by common sense, to keep their homes from getting unbearably hot in summer (and I think "unbearably" used to mean something different than it does nowadays). Without even thinking about it, we tend to count on our air conditioners, and I think this can sometimes be to our detriment.

I'm not saying I'm 100% opposed to air conditioning. There won't be an air conditioner in my apartment when I move, but here at our house, I have a little window air conditioner that I sometimes turn on when the temperature reaches the upper 90's or when company is here. In recent years, I've tried not to use it, but most people aren't accompanied to sweating it out, and I don't intend to train them, so I turn it on for company without making a to-do about it.

It feels nice to walk into an air conditioned place straight off a hot sidewalk, and there are good-- even life-saving-- reasons for certain people to keep their air conditioners running, so I'm certainly on no crusade against them!

Being A/C-dependent may be one way we moderns are losing touch with our natural rhythms. In some cultures, a siesta was set for mid-day when it was too hot to work. Cultures all over the world have established rest times during the hottest part of the day.

There's some interesting info on this here:

Siesta

People have traditionally rested according to the dictates of nature. Whether or not they would have chosen this if they had been able to foil nature is another thing (because we tend to like to override nature whenever we find a way), but the fact remains that they did indeed rest (and still do in many places), and it became an established part of those cultures.

My great-grandpa was a wheat farmer in high desert Oregon in the early 1900's, and, without fail, he rested-- laid himself down right on the floor of the living room-- every day after lunch. He spent the hottest part of the day indoors and worked the rest of the daylight hours. Even intuitively, this seems good, doesn't it?

Because we are busy, taking time to rest or relax is something many people now consider a nuisance, a hindrance, or even a luxury. As we get wealthier and technology advances, we find ways to vault past the gentle, body-wise guidance and limits of nature-- like heat (we use air conditioners) and darkness (we have bright electric lights) and even natural human energy (we load up on sugar and caffeine to keep our systems up and running when our natural energy tanks are empty). This is to our peril, I think.

Natural rhythms are good ones. There is darkness, and there is light. There is a time for waking, and there is a time for sleeping. There is a time for growing hungry, and there is a time for eating. There is a time to be busy, and there is a time to stop and relax. There is work to do, and then there is rest. There is heat, and there are natural ways to stay cool.

Taking some of these natural steps are good for the environment and will reduce our power bills, but because, as a culture, we've worked so hard to find ways to outsmart nature, we haven't needed to take things like heat into consideration as we build our homes, our daily lives, and our routines. Most of us would need to educate ourselves just a bit and make some simple adjustments to the way we think if we wanted to live more naturally in hot weather once again. If.

On that note, here are a few good tips for staying cool without an air conditioner for those who are interested and don't mind perspiring a bit from time to time. Perspiring is extremely good for our health, and yet we avoid it like crazy! I wonder why. Maybe so our hair and clothing won't get messed up. :-)

How to Cool Yourself Without Air Conditioning

(I have not watched the video in this link, so I do not know what that guy there is doing with all of that liquid or what that liquid is. I hope he's behaving!)

I have have to say that I've read here and there in writings about eco or sustainable building, that people are again considering the old ways of keeping cool. So, it's definitely being done.