An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden (1955)

 An Episode of Sparrows is another perceptive and sensitive novel by Rumer Godden. Godden’s writing is spare and unsentimental with a gritty realism, but also much beauty.

In the preface to this book she wrote:

'Finally the time came when I had to tell myself miserably, “You have squandered, muddled, and wasted everything, everything from opportunity to money. Wasted.”

There I was wrong. After the war years of hard work, poverty, and loneliness in Kashmir I needed that space of gaiety, companionship, even luxury, and I have come to believe that nothing is ever wasted; out of mistakes, or through mistakes, something quite worthwhile can come, in my case the seed of another novel.’

Living in the busy whirl of post-war London in a tiny little jewel of a house, she spent as much time as she could in the nearby park where she got to know the antics of the ‘London sparrows’- children from the poorer streets nearby. She picked her way through the bombed-out sections of London where weedy flowers pushed their way up through broken masonry and blossomed in the rubble.

Godden wrote that all her stories have themes underlying them, not actually stated, but there all the same. An Episode of Sparrows grew out of her stay in London but it wasn't until ten years later, in 1955, when she started to write it.

There are multiple characters in this story but the central figure, Lovejoy Mason, is a girl of about 11 years of age whose life held little love and no joy.

Lovejoy’s mother worked on the stage and had casually left her with Mrs Crombie and her husband, Vincent, a superb chef wasting away in an impoverished part of town with virtually no clientele, while she went off all over the place for work. From time to time the neglectful mother would return to her daughter who was devoted to her. Then there came a time when she didn’t come at all.

‘Mrs Crombie was kind, Vincent was very kind, but for Mrs Crombie there was really only Vincent and for Vincent there was only the restaurant. Lovejoy was a little extra tacked on.

She had never heard of a vortex but she knew there was a big hole, a pit, into which a child could be swept down, a darkness that sucked her down so that she ceased to be Lovejoy, or anyone at all, and was a speck in thousands of socks, ‘Millions,’ said Lovejoy, and then there was something called ‘no-one.’

The story revolves around a secret garden. Lovejoy who, with the help of some other London sparrows, steals some good soil from the rich neighbourhood gardens to start their own. Godden’s clever use of shifting perspectives brings in all the other supporting characters and gives us insight into their motivations, reactions and thoughts. 

Olivia and Angela are two unmarried sisters who live in the more prosperous area near Lovejoy. Olivia, the eldest, is dominated by her beautiful, high energy and opinionated younger sister. When Olivia finds a small footprint in the garden bed that points to the soil thieves, she says nothing and her heart is stirred to find out more about the Sparrows.

“It was not the absence of a man that Olivia regretted so much, though she could have wished that both she and Angela had married…that blank in her life was not the worst, but I wish children were not so unknown to me…Olivia divined something in children, not in her nieces and nephews…who were precocious and spoilt, but in the children who were let alone, real children…they seemed to her truer than grown-ups, unalloyed; watching them, she knew they were vital; if you were with them you would be alive, thought Olivia.”

As Lovejoy planted her garden in the bombed ruins of a churchyard, her soul grew along with her seedlings…

‘At night now, when she went to bed, she did not lie awake feeling the emptiness; she thought about the garden, the seeds, their promised colours. She had never before thought of colours…except in clothes, thought Lovejoy; now she saw colours everywhere, the strong yellow of daffodils…the deep colours of anemones; she was learning all their names; she saw how white flowers shone and showed their shape against the London drab and grey. She was filled with her own business. She had never had her own business before; directly after breakfast, on her way to school, she went to the garden and was thinking about it all day long.’

She spent most of her time waiting…for her mother to wake up in the mornings; waiting for her while she tried on clothes or went shopping; waiting outside pubs.

‘Why did people take it for granted that children had all that time to waste? I want to garden, not wait, she thought rebelliously.’

Rumer Godden’s writing is similar in some aspects to Elizabeth Goudge’s. They both were both masters of characterisation and understood human conflict. Godden’s style is terse, Goudge tends to be rambling and more philosophically inclined but both were adept at thematic undertones. I think Rumer Godden had a greater insight into children - The Greengage Summer is another example of her way of seeing from a child’s perspective.

Although both of the books just mentioned are focused on children, there are some themes that make them more suited to older readers. Greengage has some obvious mature content, An Episode of Sparrows only has one aspect that would make me hesitate to give it to a younger person - Lovejoy’s mother would entertain her male friends in her room while her daughter sat forlornly on the steps outside. It was a passing observation so it would probably go over a child’s head. However, I’d hold off until about age 14 because there is an underlying richness that may not be appreciated or understood by a younger child. From an adult point of view it is a story that has staying power and lingers in your mind and heart afterwards.

Both authors have been unjustly neglected but Elizabeth Goudge has made a comeback in more recent years and from what I’ve read this has been largely initiated by book bloggers. (Yay!) Rumer Godden’s works need a similar revival.

Biography | Rumer Godden

Back to the Classics: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1924)

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher is a unique book; intelligent, thoughtful, and beautifully written. The author is probably better known for her children’s book, Understood Betsy (1916), a story that demonstrates her knowledge and understanding of children, so it’s not surprising that The Home-Maker also explores this aspect, delving even more deeply into the needs of children and the importance of the home atmosphere.

It has been described as a feminist novel as the mother gets the chance to follow a career rather than be confined at home doing work that frustrates her no end, but the author told her publisher that the book ‘should be taken as a whoop not for “women’s rights” but for “children’s rights.”’

Dorothy Canfield Fisher examines the roles of mothers and fathers in a small American town setting with a great deal of sympathy. Eva, the mother in the story, is a vigorous and highly capable woman, a perfectionist, who feels thwarted by the never ending duties of her household. She loves her children but is so caught up in the minutiae of everyday life that she has no time to enjoy or understand them. Lester, her husband, is a poet and a thinker whose workplace is a misery to him. He has no time for the thought life he needs and hates the materialistic focus of his work. They are both frustrated by his inability to advance and bring home a decent wage.

The real strength of this book comes from the author’s perception of the inner worlds of the couple’s three children, Helen, Henry, and Stephen. I think a book from a purely feminist point of view would have made Eva’s predicament the primary focus but everything that happens in the story is filtered through the children and their needs. Even the father and mother grapple with what is best not just for themselves but for their children.

Lester felt that his employer was exploiting the home-maker by hammering the idea that it was all about good furniture, fine table linen, expensive rugs and well-made clothes. This conspiracy to force women into the  slavery of possessions sickened him:

'...how about keeping alive some intellectual or spiritual passion in the home? How about the children? Did anybody suggest to women that they give to understanding their children a tenth part of the time and real intelligence and real purposefulness they put into getting the right clothes for them?'

When Lester has an accident that almost kills him and is left crippled and confined to a wheelchair, Eva goes out to work while he stays home and they both find great satisfaction and purpose in their new roles.
After a period of time Lester begins to have signs that signal his recovery. He keeps this to himself and considers the future, feeling that Tradition was against him. The Tradition that said:

'...men are in the world to get possessions, to create material things, to sell them, to buy them, to transport them, above all to stimulate to fever-heat the desire for them. It decreed that men are of worth in so far as they achieve that sort of material success, and worthless if they do not.’

He wonders how they could work around this problem:

'Would it be possible for both of them to work, he and Eva? Other parents did sometimes. The idea was that with the extra money you made you hired somebody to take care of the children. If before us accident anyone had dreamed of Eva’s natural gift for business, he would have thought the plan an excellent one. But it was only since his accident that he had had the faintest conception of what ‘caring for the children’ might mean. Now, that he had lived with the children, now that he had seen how it took all of his attention to make even a beginning of understanding them, how it took all of his intelligence and love to try to give them what they needed spiritually and mentally...no!

You could perhaps, if you were very lucky - though it was unlikely in the extreme - it was conceivable that by paying a high cash price you might be able to hire a little intelligence, enough intelligence to give them good material care. But you could never hire intelligence sharpened by love. In other words you could not hire a parent. And children without parents were orphans.

'...You can’t ‘hire’ somebody to be a parent for your children!’ he thought again, passionately. They are born into the world asking you for bread. If you give them a stone, it we’re better for you that that stone were hanged about your neck and cast into the sea.'

The more he was immersed in the care of his children and the running of the home, the more aware he became of society’s lack of respect for that unpaid work.

'Why, the frantic feminists were right, after all. Under its greasy camouflage of chivalry, society is really based on a contempt for women’s work in the home. The only women who were paid, either in human respect or in money, were women who gave up their traditional job of creating harmony out of human relationships, and did something really useful, bought or sold or created material objects.'

The Home-Maker is a timeless gem of a book. The issues the author tackled in 1924 are still relevant. We hear so often that we can ‘have it all’ in the context of career and children but this story questions that notion. Rush and hurry, timetables and rigid schedules, can be obstacles to communication and understanding, as is so poignantly shown when Lester discovers the reason for his youngest son’s savage behaviour.

How’s this for a description of the angry little boy?

‘He...sat...dry-eyed, scowling, a magnificent sulphurous conflagration of Prometheus flames blazing in his little heart.’

Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote from her own experience in this area. Her husband, John Fisher, volunteered in the Ambulance Service in Paris during the First World and afterwards was physically immobilised for some time, losing status and opportunities for advancement. At the same time Dorothy’s writing gained a large audience and invitations to speak around the country. John supported her role as the celebrity and breadwinner while finding ways to express his own interests and skills.
Dorothy believed that whatever the convictions or fashions of society, if a man and woman are able to construct with their children a life in common which keeps them reasonably happy, healthy, good and strong, with a permanent affection for each other, then they have made a successful marriage, no matter what pattern it might take.

Persephone Books is one of my favourite publishers. I have a tendency to judge a book by its cover and the Persephone covers are definitely attractive!

The Home-Maker is my choice of a book in the Classic From the Americas or Carribean category for the 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge @ Books&Chocolate.

Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child by Anthony Esolen (2015)

‘How do you raise a child who can sit with a good book and read? Who is moved by beauty? Who doesn’t have to buy the latest this or that vanity? Who is not bound to the instant urge, wherever it may be found?’

Life Under Compulsion is a follow on from Anthony Esolen’s previous title, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which I read a few years ago.
When one of my sons saw these two books in the bookcase he said: “Mum, you read some weird books! What are you trying to do to us?”
My youngest's reaction was, "No wonder some people think homeschooling's a bad idea...trying to destroy our imagination?!"
If you don’t already know, Dr. Esolen played the devil’s advocate with Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which is a little reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, minus the humour.
Life Under Compulsion continues the combatative tone of his previous book but focuses on the ideas of freedom versus compulsion.
Freedom is a buzzword of our times but it is a word that has been mis-used.
Dr Esolen argues that our children are anything but free - they are slaves to compulsions that come either from outside of themselves (e.g. government mandates that control what children are taught in schools) or within (the itches that must be scratched, the passions that master them).
He examines modern culture, explains how our idea of freedom is warped and dangerous, and draws on the great thinkers of the past to help us understand what freedom truly means:

‘To be “free” is not to do as you please but rather to realise the fulfilment of your natural created being, without impediments.’

Thomas Aquinas

Esolen is scathing about the education system and their ‘courses in compulsion.’ When he was Professor of English at a Catholic University he wrote an article for Crisis Magazine on the university’s ‘diversity’ stance:

…a vision that pretends to be “multicultural,” but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along...

His incisive comments and criticism of the politically correct practices of  radical university professors resulted in student protests and faculty members calling for his dismissal in 2016. No wonder he sounds grumpy when he writes.

In Life Under Compulsion, the author examines the school system and its courses in compulsion where children must be segregated by age and must move to the next classroom at the ringing of the bell. Education is based on a utilitarian foundation and is reduced to a tool; students have to adapt themselves to the 'factory' or Teaching Machine, which is not for teaching children but for ‘socialising them.’ It doesn’t impart virtue because virtues set a people free but the system wants a ‘managed’ people.

Freedom is the movement of the heart to embrace what is good, or beautiful, or noble. 

A man who cannot admire is a slave.

Dr Esolen refers to a wide variety of literature in both books I’ve read which I really appreciate: works by Sigrid Undset, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Pieper, Bradbury, Kipling, Dickens, Hugo, Orwell, and Chesterton, for example, but he doesn’t always provide references so if you don’t recognize the characters he’s referring to you’ll have to do some Google Searching.

Systems of Compulsion breed the unnatural, just as the unnatural requires systems of compulsion to confirm it. Consider communism, a system so insane that it could survive only by compulsion - through show trials and executions and the Gulag.

We must not think that these acts of compulsion were merely imposed upon a defenceless people, from without. They also rose from within.

Here he references Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (which I’m in the very slow process of re-reading) where the author cites the Soviet criminal code that dealt with any failure to make a denunciation of certain actions. The powers that be demanded enthusiasm for their revolution and not just a passive acceptance.

Life Under Compulsion is an important book for parents, anyone who is involved in education, those concerned about the outrage trend in society or the attempt to subject curriculum to the demands of a current political aim.
Considering the reaction to Dr. Esolen’s 2016 article, the book is even more relevant now than when it was when it was first published.

‘How do you get people en masse to submit to madness? By compulsion.’

This is a book I've chosen for the Christian Greats 2019 Challenge: No. 5)  A Philosophical Book by a Christian Author

Back to the Classics: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)

My monthly book club scheduled The Wreath, the first book in Sigrid Undset’s trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, for the month of May.
I didn’t have the book and had no idea if it could be read as a stand-alone, so I decided to order the Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition which includes all three titles in the trilogy. I’m thankful I did because The Wreath doesn’t have a satisfying end! Each book deals with a different time in Kristin’s life and The Wreath ends with Kristin’s marriage and the revelation of a secret her mother had kept hidden from Kristin’s father. If you decide to read Kristin L, make sure to get either the book above or the individual books - 'The Wreath,' ‘The Wife,’ and ‘The Cross.’

Kristin Lavransdatter is Sigrid Undset’s most famous work and is set in medieval Norway. It is a saga, the pilgrimage of a woman from childhood to the end of her life, transporting the reader back in time and place to 14th Century Scandinavia. Despite its setting, and the peculiarities of the time period, this story could fit right into our own times. There is nothing new under the sun and time doesn't alter the fact that we all struggle with wrong decisions, weakness of character, and our own wilfulness.

Kristin Lavransdatter was originally written in Norwegian between 1921 and 1923. It was translated into English soon after but the result was considered to be severely flawed with omissions, archaic language, and misunderstandings. The Penguin Classics' Edition is the first unabridged English translation of the trilogy and I found it easy to read - all 1,144 pages of it. The only difficulty I experienced was keeping up with the different Scandinavian names and some vagueness as to what the author meant or implied in a couple of instances but it certainly wasn’t something that marred the story.

Regardless of whether you were wealthy or poor, life was harsh in that northern clime. Lice, plague, feuds, superstition, the bitter cold, were either constant companions or looming threats. I sat by the fire as I read a good part of this book thinking about Kristin getting up from under her pile of skins in the dark to get the fire going for the household. That alone would have been enough to kill me!
The overarching theme of Kristin Lavransdatter is that of actions and consequences - sowing and reaping. Following your heart isn't a recipe for a happy life, despite what we are told.

Kristin was betrothed to a young, steady man named Simon but she asked to go to a cloister for a short time before they married. It was while she was away from home that she met the charismatic and impulsive Erlend and secretly began a relationship with him.

She began looking for evidence that other people, like herself, were not without sin. She paid more attention to gossip, and she took note of all the little things hints around her which indicated that not even the sisters in the convent were completely holy and unworldly.

She deceived her father, persuaded him to break off her betrothal to Simon and he reluctantly agreed to her marrying Erlend. The deception she played upon her father was to haunt her ever afterwards and much of her anguish over her own children was to stem from this act.

The monotonous drone of the waterfalls resonated through her overwrought body and soul. It kept reminding her of something, of a time that was an eternity ago; even back then she realised that she would not have the strength to bear the fate she had chosen for herself. She had laid bare her protected, gentle girl’s life to a ravaging, fleshly love; she had lived in anguish, anguish, anguish ever since - an unfree woman from the first moment she became a mother. She had given herself up to the world in her youth, and the more she squirmed and struggled against the bonds of the world, the more fiercely she felt herself imprisoned and fettered by them. She struggled to protect her sons with wings that were bound by the constraints of earthly care...

But always with that secret, breathless anguish: If things go badly for them, I won’t be able to bear it. And deep in her heart she wailed at the memory of her father and mother. They had borne anguish and sorrow over their children, day after day, until their deaths; they had been able to carry this burden, and it was not because they loved their children any less but because they loved with a better kind of love.

There is much about motherhood in this book. Kristin struggles with hopes and fears in the midst of  her tumultuous relationship with her husband and his influence on their seven sons. Her upbringing was so different to Erlend's and she didn't value the stability and love she grew up with until she became a mother herself. She reflected much on the path she had chosen for herself by following her own desires and rejecting her parent's choices.

Was this how she would see her struggle end? Had she conceived in her womb a flock of restless fledgling hawks that simply lay in her nest, waiting impatiently for the hour when their wings were strong enough to carry them beyond the most distant blue peaks?
...They would take with them bloody threads from the roots of her heart when they flew off, and wouldn’t even know it.

Simon remains on the scene throughout and although he eventually marries twice, he always retains a place for Kristin in his heart. He proves himself a loyal friend and is a contrast in character to Erlend.
Another character who plays a major part in Kristin’s life is Ulf Haldorsson, Erlend’s kinsman. For a while he seemed to be a surly, unreliable sort of character but he turns out to be a true friend of both Kristin and Erlend and has a fatherly relationship with their boys. He loved Kristin but didn't allow his feelings to manifest. They only come to the surface when he confides in a priest many years later.

Undset magnificently portrays the historical events and Norway’s religious climate of those times. The reader feels the bitter cold, smells the smoke of the cooking fires, cringes at the lice ridden beds, and grasps the uncertainty of the political and family feuds.
Although the Christian faith came to Norway in the 9th Century, the old pagan practices arose from time to time. Superstition was still ingrained in people’s minds and became mixed up with religious beliefs. These beliefs tended to surface during such events such as childbirth e.g. it was thought that if a pregnant woman looked upon a burning building her child would be born with a blood-red birthmark.
There is a melancholy feel to the writing which stems partly from the medieval setting and also from the Kristin's emotional turmoil.

She had seen the water from the well back home. It looked so clean and pure when it was in the wooden cups. But her father owned a glass goblet, and when he filled it with water and the sun shone through, the water was muddy and full of impurities.

Her eyes had been open to the fact that after the burdens and toil of a young mother comes a new kind of fear and concern for the aging mother.

Judging by some of the reactions from others who have either read this trilogy, or started and never finished, there is possibly a time of life when reading this epic would be difficult. Maybe it should be read after you’ve weathered a good number of years of marriage, or when your children have grown up; when the reality of life has softened your idealism. I think I may have found it depressing had I read it twenty years ago, but at this stage of my life, I was able to be absorbed in the story without it burdening my thoughts.
On the other hand, Kristin’s choice to follow her heart is a cautionary tale. She knew so little of Erlend to begin with and their relationship which began in haste leaves her repenting in her leisure. Perhaps it is a good book to read prior to entering marriage.....

I glanced over some literary reviews of the book and I thought they were a bit over the top and made the book sound almost R-rated. It was no more like that than something that came from Thomas Hardy’s pen. Madame Bovary was more discomfiting for me than Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin at least had a brain and a conscience.

Some background context:

Sigrid Undset converted to Catholicism in 1924 after writing Kristin Lavransdatter and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, at the age of forty-six, "Principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages."
She was involved with the Underground during WWII and when the Nazis invaded Norway she fled to the USA travelling by train through Russian and Japan to get there. Undset must have put an enormous amount of research into her writing. Here are some of the people, places & events she mentioned in her trilogy:

The Church in Norway

Some Norwegian history - many of these people were mentioned in Kristin Lavransdatter

Ingeborg of Norway

Magnus IV of Sweden & Norway

Erling Vidkunsson - Norwegian nobleman and regent of Norway

Norway's Black Plague also here




Kristin Lavransdatter is my choice for the Back to the Classics Challenge, 2018  : A Classic in Translation

A Mother & Daughter Road Trip

A last minute decision to go the Mum Heart Conference in Northern New South Wales turned in to  a mother & daughter road trip. It was a last minute decision because there seemed to be too many obstacles when I initially thought of going but then everything worked out quite quickly, even down to booking a place at the Conference when the bookings had closed.
So here we are heading north out of Sydney around 7 a.m. Happy to be heading up to a slightly warmer spot!

By mid-morning the weather was clearing up nicely and the traffic was great! We've done many 

trips between Sydney and Brisbane and the traffic is usually fairly constant, if not heavy. This was a dream run.

We listened to a couple of chapters of Isaiah on the Bible App & then on to an old favourite,
Mr. Standfast. 

The Big Banana at Coff's Harbour

We took a detour off the main road to got to visit Erin, a fellow blogger. Erin & I first 'met' via a Charlotte Mason Families Sharing Newsletter which dates back to about 2001. We had about 20 to 30 families from all over Australia who each produced their own Newsletter and sent it by post to everyone else on the list. This went of for a few years before the internet took over. It was so good to meet her and some of her children & Moozle enjoyed making some new friends. Two hours later, we thought we better get back on the road!

Back on the main road heading north

We arrived at our destination after a few more stops at 8.07 pm - Miss 13 yr old kept a log of the trip detailing stops, refuels, mileage, etc.
Grandma drove down from Brisbane the next morning and picked Moozle up to take her for the weekend - they visited the art gallery, went on the 'Wheel (eye) of Brisbane' & did some painting back at home, and other bits & pieces, while I stayed with some of my husband's family who live near the Conference area.

This photo of Wheel of Brisbane is courtesy of TripAdvisor

The Mum Heart Conference was excellent and I was thankful I made the effort to go. Mums from as far away as Darwin, Western Australia & Tasmania came along for two days of kindred company & encouragement. I caught up with some old friends and made some new ones. The theme of the conference was 'Be Still & Know God's Heart.' I really enjoyed Annette McCredie's practical & inspiring sessions on 'God's Heart for Your Children' & 'God's Heart for Your Marriage,' - the latter being a much needed focus for homeschooling mothers, I think.
Brooke Pipes gave an excellent talk about the importance of 'Keeping a Soft Heart.' Unforgiveness, disappointment and fear can cause our hearts to become calloused therefore it is necessary that we  guard our hearts. If you have an opportunity I'd recommend getting a copy of these.

Kingscliff Beach

There had been a pod of whales here earlier in the day but we didn't see any, unfortunately:

On the way home we listened to Adrian Praetzellis narrate The Thirty-Nine Steps.

'Peak hour traffic' on the way home. What a pleasant change from Sydney!

We stopped in at Byron Bay which is a short detour off the main highway. I travelled through this area before I was married when it was just a little hippy coastal town. Since then it has become a trendy destination and I was put off by all the restricted meter parking everywhere. The coastline is still beautiful though.

The road up to Cape Byron Lighthouse

 Looking south

Bookshop Alert!! I saw a sign for this bookshop on the way up but it was too late in the day to visit so we made sure we did on the way home. Moozle found four books to add to her Walter Farley collection.

I took my husband's car on this trip as it's cheaper on fuel. I've only ever driven it in the city or during the day and as it became dark I had trouble seeing. I was complaining about how bad the car's lights were & saying 'I don't know how Dad can drive this car with such poor headlights,' etc etc. This went on for a good hour and a half, at least, with me hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the darkness...then I think I must have reached up to push my hair back from my face & found I was still wearing my sunglasses from earlier in the day! Mmm... made a huge difference when I took them off. The funny thing was that Moozle didn't even notice I had them on either.

The trip wouldn't have been complete without me doing something stupid. I have a long history of  doing this sort of thing. Anyhow, we arrived home safely in the end after our 1,600km/1000mile  round trip.

One of my favourite travel songs:

Reading, Thinking & Domesticity #1

My plan is to have a regular post that will include a variety of domestically related ideas and practical matters plus things that I've read that don't make it into a more formal 'book review,' such as articles, current affairs and anything else that I think is interesting.

'Domesticity' - Latin,  domesticus, from domus, a house (home)
The word 'domesticate' means to accustom to live near the habitation of man; to tame. 'Domestication' is the act of taming or reclaiming wild animals. Sometimes it feels like that in family life. We're taming and reclaiming lives, including our own.

Liturgy has been a word that has resonated with many of us over the past few years. The dictionary definition is:

  A form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship,

 is conducted.

I emphasised the word public above as it is an important point, especially in light of the article below. Are we seeking authentic community & commitment, or self-expression and aesthetic experience? 

‘The desire for liturgical forms of worship that are structured, ancient and formal, steeped in Scripture and Church Fathers, is commendable if the desire is for that liturgy to shape community life together, rather than being a new form of aesthetic and preference for a consumer-driven culture.But if all this is is a reflection of the "hipster magpie" making serendipitous finds in the vintage store alongside the 78 records then it's highly suspect. Taking a piece from this era, an object from that era, and blending it all together to form one's own "authentic experience", completely divorced from the values and frame of the cultures and eras from which these things are taken, simply means that yet again style has indeed trumped substance.In other words, as Jamie Smith points out, the point of all liturgy is to embed  itself as practice in our communal lives.  But if the practice of our individual lives is to be a private consumer then, ironically, a return to liturgy can mask such a practice with the appearance of worship.’


A couple of new authors I read in 2017 were:

Dorothy B. Hughes who wrote The Expendable Man in 1963. Published by Persephone Books, this is a suspenseful story that starts with a solitary man, a young doctor, driving through the desert towns of the American Southwest, as he returns to his hometown for a wedding. From the beginning there is an undercurrent of unease that builds up as the story progresses. It is a time of racial unrest, where an innocent decision taken by the wrong person in an atmosphere of prejudice, may have disastrous consequences.
A great story with a romantic thread that despite its lack of character development kept me spellbound till the end.

There was a picture in a gold frame hung on the mottled gray of the wallpaper. It was of a country cottage, smothered with roses, banked in green, shaded by leafy trees with a brook at their feet. In spite of what this man was, in spite of what he had done, the pathos of that picture smote Hugh. That it was there, a home, an old home far from this desert wasteland. That misshapen old relic was once a country child, was once a boy with dreams, once a student with aspirations, once a Doctor of Medicine. The poignant cry rose silently in him: What can happen to a man? Why? 


I’ve read books in the spy/espionage genre by John Buchan and Helen MacInnes and thoroughly enjoyed them but this was my first foray into the darker world of subterfuge where things don’t end well. I was prepared for a dismal ending with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré (also published in 1963) but I was interested in reading something a bit different, and le Carré's book is set during the Cold War, an era that has always intrigued me. However, this was such a good story that I tended to reflect not on the ending, which was inevitably tragic, but upon the clever plot, the twists and all the little hints I missed while I was reading.

John le Carré’s was a British security agent who left his life of espionage to write full-time after the success of his third novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The book thrust the author into the spotlight when it was published in 1963. Written over the course of six weeks, le Carré had flown from Bonn to Berlin as soon as the work on the Berlin Wall began and looked on in disgust and terror. His observations of the ‘perfect symbol of the monstrosity of ideology gone mad,’ coupled with his deeply unhappy professional and private life, resulted in this chilly, disturbing tale of Alec Leamas, the spy who wanted to end his life of espionage, to ‘come in from the cold.’
Burnt out and cynical, Leamas agrees to one last assignment before he leaves his life of spying. Unwittingly he is used by British Security to secure the position of a British double agent (a man Leamus hates and believes to be the enemy) and to his dismay, ends up in East Germany. There he finds that the young woman, the one who had begun to awaken his humanity, has been caught up in the machinations of both sides because of her association with him.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is a bleak look into the ruthless game of espionage with its accompanying lies, fears and treachery but it also has a few swift moments of beauty:

He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if he ever got home to England: it was the caring about little things - the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess...

Inspiring Reads from 2017 


One of the best books I read last year was Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. In fact it's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read and I wholeheartedly recommend it!!

Exceptional books for those aged about 12 or 13 years and older were The Forgotten Daughter and The Small Woman.

Domestics

I've been cooking regular family meals for close on thirty years and in the last twenty years, I've had to cook in bulk for my growing family. Cooking en masse doesn't lend itself  to gourmet creations - at least not in my case. I have a few dishes that are standard, mostly because they are popular and don't require too much work to produce. Every now & again - actually, very rarely, I come across a new recipe that makes it into my hit list. This was one I found late last year, although I've changed the herbs around a bit to accomodate the eaters here: Herby Green Roast Chicken
The author of the website is a diabetic so the meals are low carb but she has a whole range of options which work well for families plus a free ebook. I'm trying out a few of the dishes in the ebook and this is one that I liked but everyone else was turned off by the green colour: broccoli sandwich bread.

Something I've done this year is to use cauliflower in place of white sauce when making lasagne. I just use a packet of frozen cauliflower, steam it, and them put it in the blender with a few dollops of ricotta cheese & a little seasoning. It thickens up very well and makes a good, healthy substitute.

I've always been good at beefing up mince, pardon the pun - I grate a huge amount of zucchini and mix it up in the mince as I cook it. Sometimes I add a grated carrot or two as well, but the zucchini alone is great. I add some burrito seasoning with some hot water and let it all simmer for a while. If I need to extend it even more I'll add a tin of kidney beans and some tomato puree or passata sauce. Great with salad, burritos & grated cheese.

We're in the middle of summer here and we're reasonably close to a number of beaches and my sons often head off to one of them on the weekend or after work if it's been really hot. A couple of the beaches are known for their strong rips. I read this article today about rip tides that occurred on a Sydney beach eighty years ago. This was a more unusual event, but rips kill many more people every year in Australia than shark attacks but they don't get anywhere near the same attention & warnings.

Many people think it’s just tourists and poor swimmers who get caught in rips currents. In fact, it’s young men aged 15-39 years who are most likely to die in rips. Rips are the number one hazard on Australian beaches.

Patchwork

I really like the look of triangles in patchwork and recently found an easier method of sewing them.
So now I'm experimenting with all my blue fabric scraps...

These are only two ways but there are oodles of options, as we keep finding out...

Praise to the Lord, who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth!
Hast thou not seen how thy desires e’er have been
Granted in what He ordaineth? 

December Doings, Domestics, Catch Up, Wrap-Up & Random

* Christmas in a box? He thinks he's a Christmas decoration.

* It's heating up here where we are. It's a very different scene in the Northern Hemisphere and I enjoyed seeing Heather's lovely photography & thoughts on her Canadian scenery at this time of year.

* For the past couple of months we've been listening to 'Walking on Air,' the music written by Howard Blake in 1982 to accompany the animated movie of The Snowman by Raymond Briggs, a wordless storybook. It's an exquisite piece of music that the orchestra Moozle is involved with had  been working on for their end of year concert. The animated movie is on YouTube & Karen Andreola writes about the book here.




* Breaking news this week: Zana (our third child and second daughter) & her young man announced their engagement. The wedding will be in September next year. I hate shopping for clothes & I already have two dresses I bought for her older sister & brother's weddings so I asked if I could wear a dress I already had. Can you tell I'm a Scot?

* Benj has finished his first year of a Liberal Arts degree and had his exam results this week. He did well in everything but his highest score was for Philosophy, where he earned a High Distinction. He says it's logical and similar to mathematics, and that's his bent.
He's taking next year off to work full-time because he's tired of being poor & would like to buy a car. A position opened up for him working with a fantastic not-for-profit organisation that provides programs to adults living with disabilities: Visual Arts, Performing Arts, and Creative Life Skills. His other job is as a swimming instructor and he commented the other day that the two areas are beginning to overlap. When the manager of the pool where he works heard that he was working with adults with disabilites/special needs, she put one of the swimming students, a young boy with Down's Syndrome, into Benj's class.

* Hoggy has finished his Diploma of  Electrical Engineering Technology and is working fulltime in the Fire & Security industry. It's interesting & diverse work, the only negative being the work commute. However, he has jobs all over Sydney and sometimes interstate, so he doesn't alway have to drive the hour and a half to the main office each day. He bought himself a motor bike, a 500cc and is working towards getting his licence. Sydney isn't the greatest place to ride a bike, but he's been sensible & avoids heavy traffic & I pray lots.

* Nougat is in his final year of his plumbing apprenticeship and he and Hoggy have been working on Herbie, the beast below. We're having a family camping trip early next year and they've been setting up solar panels, water tanks, fridge & other bits and pieces. Just hope the old boy can hold himself together - we're relying on all the stuff they're bringing along:

* The Mum Heart Conference audios from June 2017 have been released. The theme for the conference was John 15 - 'Abiding in the Vine.' I spoke on 'fruit that will last,' - being faithful, putting down roots & trusting God in the journey. I so enjoyed the Conference & the other speakers & the unplanned dove-tailing that occurred between us in the content of our individual talks. It was a great weekend!

* A couple of months ago I started leading a small Bible study for young women who are fairly new Christians. Most of them are Chinese whose first language is Mandarin and they have only been in Australia a couple of years so although they speak and understand English to get by, I have a friend most weeks to interpret & explain idioms, figures of speech etc. I've been so touched by these women. Mostly atheists by background, they are so keen to learn how to live in a way that honours the Lord and to teach their children this also. We started with the book of Philippians and are now going through James.
They have some unique difficulties. Their children are picking up the language so much faster and are reluctant to speak Mandarin at home and the parents are frustrated because they don't have the same grasp of English that their children have. The parents also struggle to know what their children are being taught at school and the recent conlict in Australia over so-called Safe Schools has added to their concerns. I gave them some easy children's Bibles in English (The Beginner's Bible was one) for them to read to their children but there doesn't seem to be much else available. There's a business/ministry opportunity here for someone who would print some easy books with Mandarin on one page and English on the opposite page.

* My husband's Grandma is 97 years of age and up until recently she was an avid knitter. I've been going through all the clothes she knitted for our children when they were babies and washing them for my new Granddaughter. They were knitted with pure wool and I was so disappointed to find some had rust-like marks on them so I got out my 1948 Home Science manuals I found at an op shop ages ago to see what I could do:

I first used Napisan (not mentioned in the above book but I've used it for delicates in the past) in fairly hot water, soaking them with the timer on & making sure the water didn't get cold. After rinsing, I used a solution of Hydrogen peroxide & did basically the same thing. I don't have any before & after photos but the marks are all but gone.

This is one of the articles, part of a set knitted about 25 years ago which includes a dress and a matching coat. I had the knitted garment in a pillow case with some mothballs in an outer bag and then I put them in another bag but I think some moisture got in and that, I think, was the cause of the rust stains. I gave the other articles to my daughter before I thought of taking a photo:

* Reading: I'm on to my last book in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2017 & I'll be posting about that and other challenges and books read later, but this week I picked up a book I forgot I had, The True Woman by Susan Hunt and it's been a refreshing read. I've read another book by the author, Spiritual Mothering, and can highly recommend both. Life Under Compulsion by Antony Esolen and Norms & Nobility are my slow reads - there's so much to chew on and digest and I'll be continuing with them well into 2018.

* Current Events - I usually post these on my FB page but here's one I thought would be good to share again:

Is it Really the Christian Way? Yes, Actually, it is.

What is striking about the current debate is how the nature of who the most vulnerable in our society are. Up until recently the most vulnerable were constantly viewed as the poor, those who were trodden down by the rough economic forces of our rapacious culture.

That’s no longer the case.

 * Look what I found on one of our local streets when I was out for a walk - a Street Library.
Have you seen one in your neighbourhood?

Education and Life

Something I both love and am frustrated by at times is when 'Education' get sidelined by 'Life.' The past few weeks have been rather crazy and frustrating, because my well-laid plans didn't work out the way I wanted. 'Life' intervened. Enter Charlotte Mason's motto:

Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline and a Life

'The only means a teacher may use to educate children are the child's natural environment, the training of good habits and exposure to living ideas and concepts. This is what CM's motto "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life" means'

It started off with a few of us sick with a flu-type illness, and of course, when you have a houseful, everyone gets sick one after the other so you feel like you're running an infirmary. I hardly ever get sick but I did this time. I'd already arranged to look after my Mum for 10 days while my sister was interstate and she wasn't too well either when I picked her up. Between the two of us we were a bit miserable for a couple of days.
We didn't get any book work done in those ten days but my daughter spent time with her Nanna, who she doesn't get to see very often. She gave up her bed for those ten nights and slept on the lounge chair downstairs; she helped me get my Mum to take her medications, which was a herculean effort at times; she took her for a short stroll around the house most days and talked about the plants we have in the garden, made her cups of tea and sat and read House & Garden magazines with her.
I thought at the time that we were creating an atmosphere for Mum by encouraging her to get outside, which she never does any more, and to take an interest in the garden, which used to be so pleasurable for her. Getting her to read again was something I was really happy about as she used to be an avid reader but has neglected that in recent years.


The worst part of not being well was that I had to keep away from my eldest daughter who is expecting her first baby in about four weeks. I was also trying to plan a baby shower at the same time and ended up having to do most of the preparation at the last minute.

We had the baby shower last weekend and the night before we had been to see a performance of Giselle. I wrote about some books we've used that are great to read before you head off to a live performance, here. Despite the last minute rush, everything turned out well, including having perfect, slightly overcast weather for the afternoon on our upstairs balcony.

A recipe for the Carob Balls pictured above:

3/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup sultanas/raisins

1/4 cup carob powder (cocoa or cacao may be used instead)

1'2 cup dessicated coconut

1/2 cup skim milk powder

Put peanut butter, honey, water and sultanas into a saucepan & bring to the boil for about 3 or 4 minutes, stirring all the time.

Remove from stove, add carob and coconut and when cooled, skim milk powder.

At this stage I usually put the mixture in the freezer for about 1/2 an hour and then take it out; roll into balls of desired size & roll in coconut.

Store in fridge or freeze ahead of time.

Moozle made her specialty lemonade scones - only three ingredients!

Below is an old recipe a friend gave me when I was first married - it is always a hit so maybe you may like to try it out (let me know if you do!). I've often omitted the chopped almonds and this time I used some almond meal instead. A great recipe to freeze ahead of time:

Some of my helpers setting things up...

Other happenings in the past two weeks included a visit from our niece who lives in Northern NSW. She was chosen as a student representative to travel to the battlefields in Belgium and we caught up with her for breakfast on her return trip as she came through Sydney.

Our eldest son and his wife returned to Australia after six weeks in Finland, the Scottish Highlands, Croatia, Spain and Portugal. The highlights for them were the Highlands & Spain, especially Barcelona.

Portugal... 

My mother-in-law came down from Queensland for the weekend of the baby shower and spent some time doing Origami with Moozle and listening to her practicing the cello.

I watched this film again with my Mum. I didn't enjoy the book as much as I did the movie, but I have to admit, I did rush through reading it while I was visiting family interstate one year. I haven't got around to re-reading it yet but I just love the scenery in this film and the sparse narrative:

Reading:


Me - I just finished 'My Love Must Wait' by Ernestine Hill. An excellent Aussie classic on the life of Matthew Flinders.
I recently started Life Under Compulsion by Anthony Esolen. I've read his previous book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and thought it was very good:

My Husband - he's been reading David Baldacci's Camel Club series. You can read about them here.
He likes Vince Flynn's books but has read them all and Baldacci's books are a similar type. I haven't read any of them but they are all spy/espionage/thriller books.

My Mum used to read a lot but has got out of the habit in recent years so I gave her an Agatha Christie book to read while she was staying with us. She'd read it years ago and enjoyed re-reading it.

Moozle is on another Biggles splurge.

Benj is reading and enjoying 'Worship' by Graham Kendrick, which was written in 1984 and that we bought around the time it came out. Out of print.

Education is a Discipline

I started Latin Alive 1, published by Classical Academic Press with Moozle this week. I'll be posting a review about it in early to mid November and will be hosting a couple of giveaways here and on some other blogs.

Moozle is now swimming six hours a week - squad/competition training. The lessons are either early morning (very early) or late afternoon. She was swimming one afternoon per week during this past year and wanted to do more, but I was reluctant to add any more afternoon lessons as it is right on dinnertime & I have three hungry young lads and their Dad arriving home. So I reluctantly added two early mornings. I thought I'd die and I didn't think my young lady would be wakeable at that early hour but we've surprised ourselves. We'll see how long we last...

Getting back to well-laid plans getting saboutaged - I think when you decide to educate your own children you do need to count the cost, which my husband and I did nearly 25 years ago. There will be seasons that will be difficult because of sickness, pregnancy, and unexpected interruptions & there is also the aspect of constant change as your children grow, but in spite of these things, it's important to have a peaceful heart and to trust God that what we sow will bear fruit in time to come.

To the faithful He shows Himself faithful. Psalm 18:25



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