Category: Commonplace - Keeping a Book of Centuries

In my Commonplace...

3/5/2019

"Solvitur ambulando."
It is solved by walking. - St. Augustine

In my Commonplace...

3/4/2019

"Life is sacramental: the outward signs reveal the inward grace. The outward sign of bread and wine at this altar are what they are — real bread from the earth and wine, the fruit of the vine — and yet they are revelatory of more, of Jesus’ real presence. That sacramental principle is a template for life. The whole of life is intended to be like that: sacramental. It is what it is, and yet it is symbolic of something more, a channel of revelation." Br. Curtis Almquist SSJE

In my Commonplace

2/12/2019

Love iii
by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

Source: George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1978)

In my Commonplace...

5/10/2018

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

Walt Whitman

In my Commonplace...

8/24/2017

"A bindweed of a word. Next." - Louise Penny

In my Commonplace...

7/13/2017

"If I have noticed anything remarkable, it is that the extraordinary lies within the ordinary. Go but a step beneath, beyond , the common experience and you find the uncommon. In the secular, you come upon the sacred. The finite is of a piece with infinity." - Abbie Graham

In my Commonplace...

12/5/2016

Christmas Night, Paul Gaugin, 1894

How Far Is It To Bethlehem?
by Frances A. Chesterton

How far is it to Bethlehem?
Not very far.
Shall we find the stable room
Lit by a star?

Can we see the little Child?
Is He within?
If we lift the wooden latch
May we go in?

May we stroke the creatures there
Ox, ass, or sheep?
May we peep like them and see
Jesus asleep?

If we touch His tiny hand
Will He awake?
Will He know we’ve come so far
Just for His sake?

Great kings have precious gifts
And we have naught
Little smiles and little tears
Are all we have brought.

For all weary children
Mary must weep Here,
on His bed of straw
Sleep, children, sleep.

God in His mother’s arms
Babes in the byre
Sleep, as they sleep who find
Their heart’s desire.

In my Commonplace...

10/29/2016

"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself…into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life and yet steady, tranquil composed with the aloofness of a work of art."

-Virginia Woolf

In my Commonplace...

9/24/2016

Wild Geese
~Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things

In my Commonplace...

8/24/2016

" Do not wait for the boy to grow up before you begin to treat him as an equal. A proper amount of confidence, and words of encouragement and advice...give him to understand that you trust him in many ways, helps to make a man of him long before he is a man in either stature or years....
If a boy finds he can make a few articles with his hands, it tends to make him rely on himself. And the planning that is necessary for the execution of the work is a discipline and an education of great value to him."

reprinted from Architect and Building News by the Wright Brothers and David McCullough

"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."
- Alfred Whitehead

A Charlotte Mason education leads to all kinds of ideas! Join me in keeping one or several of the notebooks she prescribed and discover the Science of Relations and the Art of Mindfulness.

"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
--Charlotte Mason

Virtual Life?

A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.

In Appreciation
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not to be linked, please let me know.

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