Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

I'd read part of this book aloud last year, despite the moans and groans that the appearance of the book seemed to produce. I'd put it aside for awhile and a few weeks ago I started reading it aloud again from where we'd left off previously. This time the audience was more receptive; perhaps the subject matter was more practical.

Kindness, Generosity and Gratitude are the three chapters we've been reading through and we've had some good discussions about what they look like in our everyday lives.

Kindness

But there is a curious principle in human nature, best described perhaps as vis inertiae, which makes even the benevolent, pitiful, and sympathetic person slow to do the little everyday things about which Kindness concerns himself. The office of Kindness is simply to make everyday life pleasant and comfortable to others...

The 'vis inertiae' idea was interesting, especially as one of the boys was reading about inertia in his science work. It basically means the 'force of inactivity.' I'd never really thought of inactivity as a force, but it does push against us and make us slow 'to do,' and requires some sort of physical response to overcome it.

Acts of Kindness are things we do to make life pleasant for others and they require action as opposed to Sympathy which is a feeling of the heart.

Generosity

The nature of Generosity is to bring forth, to give, always at the cost of personal suffering or deprivation, little or great. There is no generosity in giving what we shall never miss and do not want.

We were talking about this one Friday about a week ago and that same night we had the pleasure of going to a Sons of Korah concert. This group of musicians has been setting the Psalms to music for the past twenty years and the lead singer shared his thoughts about true generosity having a cost associated with it. My eight year old leaned across to me, very excited, and whispered, 'Mummy, that's what we read this morning!'

The generous man escapes a thousand small perplexities, worries, and annoys; he walks serene in a large room. There are so many great things to care about that he has no mind and no time for the small frettings of life.

Man is not for himself, and to get out of ourselves and into the wide current of human life, of all sorts and conditions, is our wisdom and should be our care.

Gratitude

To make use of other people, to serve ourselves of them, is the sin of ingratitude. The grateful man has a good memory and a quick eye to see where those who have served need service in their turn.

A grateful heart makes a full return, because it rejoices not only in the gift but in the giver.

Gratitude spreads his feast of joy and thanksgiving for gifts that come to him without any special thought of him on the part of the giver, who indeed may himself have gone from the world hundreds of years ago. Thus he says his grace for a delightful or helpful book, for a great picture, for a glorious day, for the face of a little child, for happy work, for pleasant places.

Wednesday With Words

Books by Indian Christian authors often give a unique perspective on Western culture because they view it cross-culturally and they perceive what we are blinded to.

The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi is one such book.

 The following quotes are from the chapter on Technology where he describes a visit to the city of Jinja in Uganda where he saw women and children hauling water on their heads not far from a hydroelectric dam and a pumping station.

That experience raised the questions: Why don't American women haul water on their heads? Why did Western people begin using their minds to do what most cultures used their muscles to do?

Technology is "magic of the mind." When you use the mind - that is, technology - water brings itself to you - water produces electricity and electricity pumps water right into your home......

Neither Africa or India lacks ingenious minds......

It's fashionable to reject technology. Mahatma Ghandi opposed it, and the city of Jinja has erected a huge statue to honor him. The problem is that cultures that reject technology end up forcing human beings to get their water, grind their grain, and even to clean their "dry latrines."

Ghandi's idea that technology was evil and that a simple, natural life was morally superior came from British idealists like John Ruskin. Sensitive people like him had become critical of England's Industrial Revolution because of the exploitation, oppression, and other evils associated with its  "dark Satanic mills."

Evil is in our hearts, not in technology.

False Dawn by Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

The more I read books by this author the more I admire her writing. I started off with The House of Mirth, followed by Ethan Frome (which I wrote about here) and I just finished False Dawn. I'm now well and truly hooked.

False Dawn is the first of four novellas (short novels) called 'Old New York' which are set in the middle of the 1800s.

If you've read Dickens' Hard Times, images of Mr Bounderby!! could well be conjured up as you read Edith Wharton's descriptions of the imposing Mr. Halston Raycie, the father of the protagonist of this story. Her representation of this domineering man is one of the most picturesque and clever descriptions of a character I've ever read.

Mr. Raycie was a monumental man. His extent in height, width and thickness was so nearly the same that whichever way he was turned one had an almost equally broad view of him; and every inch of that mighty circumference was so exquisitely cared for that to a farmer’s eye he might have suggested a great agricultural estate of which not an acre is untilled. Even his baldness, which was in proportion to the rest, looked as if it received a special daily polish; and on a hot day his whole person was like some wonderful example of the costliest irrigation. There was so much of him, and he had so many planes, that it was fascinating to watch each runnel of moisture follow its own particular watershed. Even on his large fresh-looking hands the drops divided, trickling in different ways from the ridges of the fingers; and as for his forehead and temples, and the raised cushion of cheek beneath each of his lower lids, every one of these slopes had its own particular stream, its hollow pools and sudden cataracts; and the sight was never unpleasant, because his whole vast bubbling surface was of such a clean and hearty pink, and the exuding moisture so perceptibly flavoured with expensive eau de Cologne and the best French soap.

Lewis Raycie was the only son of the pompous Mr. Halston Raycie and as an acquaintance of the Raycie family once observed,

'... you wouldn’t have supposed young Lewis was exactly the kind of craft Halston would have turned out if he’d had the designing of his son and heir.'

The son was a different kettle of fish to his father, having an artistic, sensitive nature and when his father announced his desire that Lewis acquire 'a few masterpieces' of art during his Grand Tour through Europe in order to establish a family gallery the son was overwhelmed with joy.

Lewis departed on his Grand Tour and in his travels he had a chance encounter with a young Englishman, John Ruskin, who introduced him to the art of Piero della Francesca, unknown in America at that time, and Lewis eagerly spent the allowance his father gave him on his art works.

He excitedly returned to America but his father was mortified with his son's purchases and subsequently cut him out of his will.

 Madonna del Parto, detail by Piero della Francesca (after 1457)

 It was first of all the names that stuck in Mr. Raycie’s throat: after spending a life-time committing to memory the correct pronunciation of words like Lo Spagnoletto and Giulio Romano, it was bad enough, his wrathful eyes seemed to say, to have to begin a new set of verbal gymnastics before you could be sure of saying to a friend with careless accuracy: “And THIS is my Giotto da Bondone.”

Lewis married his childhood sweetheart and they set up a gallery in which to display their precious artwork but the collection was scorned and they lived in privation for the remainder of their lives. It was not until many years later that Lewis's collection was re-discovered and received the recognition it deserved.

 Queen of Sheba, detail 1466 by Piero della Francesca

 For information on Edith Wharton and her books see: http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/wharton/whar3.htm