Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Beauty, Prayer, and Silence: Report from Calabria


by A Priest

This book is written as a series of letters from an American priest (who chooses to remain anonymous, as Carthusian writers do during their lives) to his friends and family while living in a Carthusian monastery in southern Italy for four months. Carthusians live in a community, but each resides in his own house. Even most meals are served through the wall to be eaten in solitude. Many liturgical prayers are prayed at the same time, but each monk remains in his cell, praying alone. As difficult as it is for most of us to understand the vocation to a religious order, ones such as the Carthusians seem even more extreme. There is a film, Into Great Silence, that shares more of the Carthusian life, but I've only seen parts of it.

The letters describe the lives of the Carthusians from an outsider's point of view, but also from the point of view of someone who is living with the monks, praying as they pray, and trying to immerse himself in their solitude. He is able to connect their prayers to our lives in a meaningful way.

He believes there are three "products" of a Carthusian monastery: praise, intercessory prayer, and union with God. Speaking of the second, intercessory prayer, he wrote:
Certainly there are physical evils that must be combated, but at root the world is wounded spiritually, and prayer is the medicine that can heal spiritual wounds. Reflection on this has shaped my prayer somewhat here. For example, some friends of mine have a son who is serving with the Marines in Afghanistan, and I am praying daily for his safety. But I am also praying for something else: his heart and soul, which must experience tremendous emotions given what he and his comrades are going through. Many soldiers return from combat with terrible physical damage, but even those who are spared this must be wounded in other way, and no surgeon can deal with that--God's healing grace can. That is one reason why communities dedicated to prayer are so vital to the life of the Church. Otherwise, as Pope Francis keeps saying, we end up just being another nongovernmental organization striving to deal with people's material welfare.
As he prays and interacts with the monks, the author ponders the life of solitude, the benefits of it for individuals, for the monastery, for the Church, and for the world. He quotes a Carthusian monk:
The purpose of this life is to silence the outer voices so that you can hear the inner ones; then you can begin to uproot those that draw you away from loving God and others, and encourage the good thoughts to grow. 
He talks about learning silence as it if were a language.
The gift of silence here is precisely an invitation not to think and not to do--and that is not easy, at least not for me. It is a language I must struggle to learn.
It is really a matter of learning God's language, of attending to his still, small voice.
My favorite letter was the last one. He writes:
"Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" -- The Cross stands firm as the world turns. This is the motto of the Carthusian order, a reminder that while some may consider these men to be "halfway to heaven", they see themselves as plunged into the heart of the earth, with all its joys and sorrows. In their solitary prayer, in their struggles with loneliness, in their mellow chant that pierces the stillness of the night, they proclaim a message, eloquent in its silence, that the Cross of Jesus is the axis upon which all creation turns.
After the priest's letters, there are appendices of some of St. Bruno's words (the founder of the order), the text of a letter written by Pope St. John Paul II to the order, and a homily of Pope Benedict XVI on one of his visits to Calabria. There is also an extensive list of further reading and resources that seems thoughtfully collected.

This is a book of beauty, thoughtfulness, and the heart of prayer. Because our family has a devotion to St. Bruno, I intend to read it aloud to our children. I hope it will give them a greater insight into the Carthusian order and the diversity of the practices of our Catholic faith. I checked this book out from our library, but I would like to have one of our own.

I checked this book out from our library to read it and have not received anything to write this post. Links above are affiliate links to Amazon.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Jolly Excitement: Emil and the Detectives

by Erich Kastner

This book is one of the options given by Mater Amabilis™ ™for Level 1A as Classic Children's Literature, one book to be read each term just for fun. We're on our third child's second year in Level 1A and still hadn't read it. Luckily, that just gave us another chance, because it was lots of fun!

Emil travels to Berlin on the train by himself. Waking from a nightmare, he discovers his money has been stolen and leaps off the train to trail the thief. He gathers a group of new friends who organize a small army of children, to the delight of my listeners. At the end of the book, I was reading three or four of the chapters at a time as the excitement built up. (They are pretty short chapters.)

Our library has a copy of this book, but I managed to get a lovely hardcover version on PaperBackSwap.com.



Friday, January 26, 2018

A Book We Won't Read: Hide the Children

by Brother Roberto, C.S.C.
In the Footsteps of the Saints series, Level 2

I intended to assign this book for our history lessons, as we are in volume 3 of Connecting with History. This particular book is recommended for the grammar level, which is roughly fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. I thought my third grader, who is nine, would be able to read it and planned to assign it for independent reading and narrating. The reading level, Level 2, is probably a second or third grade reading level. Second Son, who is seven and in first grade, could probably read it as well, stumbling only over the proper nouns of a book set in France.

We've read a number of book from the In the Footsteps of the Saints series and I have generally been pleased with them. I decided to read the book before she started it. I'm glad I did, because I've decided we will not be reading this book.

About halfway through the book, Bernard is a young man enjoying a privileged life with his friends, unsure what his vocation might be. It describes a night he spent in a castle when they were too far to reach home during which a woman entered his chamber three times during the night to "steal my treasure of chastity." Our kids have a general idea that only people who are married sleep together during the night, so I wasn't too concerned at that point. But the story continues.
Other temptations against purity soon followed for the handsome young man. Each time he was able to flee from them to escape or inflict pain on himself when everything else failed.
Once he plunged into an icy pool of water to cool the flames of lust burning within him. And it was there that he decided he would either have to marry and devote himself to family life in the world or enter a monastery to consecrate his body and soul to God. 
The phrase "flames of lust burning within him" disturbed me so much I actually showed it to Kansas Dad, asking, "Can I have [Second Daughter] read this?" He thought not. While I could explain "lust," I'd rather not, and I don't think she needs that word in her vocabulary. This language is too mature for the reading level of the book.

Even including those paragraphs I might have assigned the book to one of my older students, but there's a focus in the book on Bernard's recruitment of men for the monastic life. He encourages his uncle, brothers, cousins, and neighbors, to abandon their worldly lives and join the Cistercians, even those who are married! Now, of course, a monastery today would not a man with a wife and dependent children, but I think the idea that the monastic life is so preferred to a vocation to marriage that Bernard's brother, Guy, should leave his wife and two young daughters alone in the world is not one I want to encourage in my children. Guy's wife, Elizabeth, initially is not supportive of his decision to enter the monastery despite Bernard's arguments. So then (according to the book), Bernard prays and Elizabeth becomes deathly sick until she agrees to let her husband abandon her.

Because of the references to Bernard's physical temptations, I would definitely not share this book with a beginner level student, though a late elementary student would be better. Of course, at that level, this book would usually be an exceptionally easy read. With the additional attitude toward marriage and family life, though, I'm inclined to just skip this book for all my students. There is another book from the same series in the unit, The Boy from Cheapside: The Story of St. Thomas of Canterbury. I think we'll use that one if I need a grammar level saint book the next time we go through this volume.

The RC History links in this post are affiliate links. I purchased this book new and this review is my honest opinion.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Reading 2016 and 2017: Two Years in Review

I never did a post on my 2016 reading, but I did start one and had most of it done, so I decided to just combine it with my 2017 favorite books. Looking over my posts on books for 2017, I see an awful lot of pre-reading I did for First Son before he started Level 4, and a great many of those ended up being books I decided not to assign. So not perhaps the best year of books and therefore a good year to be combined with another.

The book covers below are affiliate links to Amazon. Underneath, I've linked to my book reviews or monthly book report where I mention the book (which also usually has Amazon links). So, you've been warned. However, my selections here are my honest opinions. You can trust me, because I have a blog.

Favorite Books

2017: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

2016: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 

Best Fiction


2017: The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier


2017: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, because it's wonderful, too, and on my blog I can choose two favorite fiction books


2016: The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Best Non-Fiction




Best New-to-Me-Authors

2017: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol


2016: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton

Best Classic Books I'd Never Read Before

2017: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2016: Ivanhoe: A Romance by Sir Walter Scott

Best Books I Pre-Read for School

2017: Years of Dust by Albert Marrin
This was a harder category to fill because so many of the pre-reads for Level 4 ended up topping out their respective categories in memoir, humor, non-fiction, etc.

2016: String, Straight-Edge, and Shadow by Julia E. Diggins

Books that Made Me Laugh


2017: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

2016: Pegeen by Hilda van Stockum

Best Homeschooling or Education Books

Apparently, I didn't read any books I could honestly put in the homeschooling or education category. I guess I know an area I need to address in 2018!


2016: Let's Play Math by Denise Gaskins

Most Challenging


2016: Humility of Heart by F. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo

Best Books I Read Aloud


2017: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (specifically on Audible)
This is a cheat since we bought the Audible version, but it was the best read aloud we had all year, and it has the bonus of being enjoyable for every member of the family, including Kansas Dad.

2016: The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell

Best Memoirs



2016: A Traveller in Rome by H. V. Morton

Best Biographies

2017: The Long-Legged House by Wendell Berry
This isn't really a biography, but it does contain some essays that incorporate Berry's personal experiences, so this is where it's going.


2016: Lincoln in His Own Words by Abraham Lincoln, edited by Milton Meltzer

Best Sports-Related Book

I totally invented this category in 2015 to mention a book I really loved. Now I have nothing to say about it.


Most Surprising Book (in a Good Way)

2017: The Shepherd Who Didn't Run by Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda

Nothing fit this category in 2016. Apparently, all the books I found surprising were unpleasantly surprising.

Best Books on Faith

2017: Prayer and the Will of God by Dom Hubert van Zeller

2016: The Little Flowers of Saint Francis by Brother Ugolino

My Other Favorite Books
(alphabetical order by title)

Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery - I started to read the Anne novels again in 2017 and am loving them.

Beowulf, in various forms - my post in 2017.