Keeping a Book of Centuries
  • welcome
    • About the Book of Centuries
  • in my notebook...
  • One Hundred Days
  • One Hundred Words
  • conversation
    • presentations
  • shop

In My Notebook...

In my Nature Notebook...

3/11/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture

The calendar says 10 days more of winter but today it might be time to read the sky instead and reach for a kite.
​

Picture
Welcome, March Artwork: George William Russell
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

2/12/2025

0 Comments

 
​Where I Come From
by Elizabeth Brewster

People are made of places. They carry with them
hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea gazers. Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,
nature tidily plotted with a guidebook;
or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices; smell of subways
crowded at rush hours.
​

Where I come from, people
carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,
with yards where hens and chickens circle about,
clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow. Spring and winter
are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.
A door in the mind blows open, and there blows
a frosty wind from fields of snow.
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

12/9/2024

0 Comments

 
Advent Two
 You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking--
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one 
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here.

As it happens, the wall between ius 
is very thin. Why couldn't a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,


it would barely make a sound.  

 I,6   by Rainer Maria Rilke  translation by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

10/14/2024

2 Comments

 
Please Describe How You Became a Writer
by Naomi Shihab Nye


Possibly I began writing as a refuge from our insulting first grade textbook. Come, Jane, come. Look, Dick, look. Were there ever duller people in the world? You had to tell them to look at things? Why weren’t they looking to begin with?
2 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

10/2/2024

0 Comments

 
What's in My Journal
by William Stafford

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

​

"What's In My Journal" by William Stafford, from Crossing Unmarked Snow © Harper Collins, 1981.
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

4/29/2024

0 Comments

 
Shake the Dust  
Anis Mojgani

This is for the fat girls
This is for the little brothers
This is for the schoolyard wimps and the childhood bullies that tormented them
For the former prom queen and for the milk crate ball players
For the nighttime cereal eaters
And for the retired elderly Walmart store front door greeters
Shake the dust


This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them
For the bus drivers who drive a million broken hymns
For the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children
For the nighttime schoolers
And for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly
Shake the dust


This is for the two year olds
Who cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God
Shake the dust
For the boys with the beautiful sisters

Shake the dust
For the girls with the brothers who are going crazy
For those gym class wallflowers and the twelve year olds afraid of taking public showers
For the kid who is always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker
For the girl who loves somebody else
Shake the dust


This is for the hard men who want love but know that it won't come
For the ones who are forgotten
The ones the amendments do not stand up for
For the ones who are told speak only when you are spoken to
And then are never spoken to

Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself
Do not let one moment go by that doesn't remind you
That your heart, it beats 900 times every single day
And that there are enough gallons of blood to make everyone of you oceans
Do not settle for letting these waves that settle
And for the dust to collect in your veins
This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling
For the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone
For the sweat that drips off of Mick Jaggers' singing lips
And for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips
For the heavens and for the hells through which Tina has lived
This is for the tired and for the dreamers
For those families that want to be like the Cleavers with perfectly made dinners
And songs like Wally and the Beaver
This is for the bigots, for the sexists, and for the killers
And for the big house pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers
And for the springtime that somehow seems to show up right after every single winter

This is for everyone of you
Make sure that by the time the fisherman returns you are gone
Because just like the days I burn at both ends
And every time I write, every time I open my eyes
I'm cutting out parts of myself simply to hand them over to you

So shake the dust
And take me with you when you do for none of this has ever been for me
All that pushes and pulls
And pushes and pulls
And pushes and pulls
It pushes for you
So, grab this world by its clothespins
And shake it out again and again
And jump on top and take it for a spin
And when you hop off shake it again
For this is yours, this is yours
Make my words worth it
Make this not just some poem that I write
Not just some poem like just another night that sits heavy above us all
Walk into it, breathe it in, let it crash through the halls of your arms
Like the millions of years of millions poets
Coursing like blood, pumping and pushing
Making you live, shaking the dust
So when the world knocks at your front door
Clutch the knob tightly and open on up
And run forward and far into its widespread, greeting arms
With your hands outstretched before you
Fingertips trembling, though they may be
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

3/4/2024

0 Comments

 
How to Recognize Grace
Marilyn  Chandler McEntyre

It takes you by surprise
It comes in odd packages
It sometimes looks like loss
Or mistakes
It acts like rain
Or like a seed
It’s both reliable and unpredictable
It’s not what you were aiming at
Or what you thought you deserved
It supplies what you need
Not necessarily what you want
It grows you up
And lets you be a child
It reminds you you’re not in control
And that not being in control is a form of freedom.
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

12/10/2023

0 Comments

 
“Hurry,” by Marie Howe,

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   
and the gas station and the green market and   
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?   
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,   
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—   
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.   
​

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking   
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,   
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.


​for Advent Two
0 Comments

In my Poetry Notebook...

11/17/2022

0 Comments

 
November
William Cullen Bryant - 1794-1878​
Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
0 Comments

In my Music Notebook...

12/15/2021

0 Comments

 
In the bleak midwinter
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
0 Comments
<<Previous

    "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.

    Picture

    Laurie

    "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
    Images are linked to their original posts where possible.  They were chosen because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource as we explore the philosophy of Charlotte Mason together.  In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.

    Categories

    All
    Book Of Centuries
    Book Of Firsts
    Church Year
    Commonplace
    Copywork
    Enquire Within
    Fortitude Journal
    Gratitude Journal
    Keeping
    Music Notebook
    Nature Notebook
    Notebooks
    Picture File
    Poetry
    Prayer Journal
    Recipes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • welcome
    • About the Book of Centuries
  • in my notebook...
  • One Hundred Days
  • One Hundred Words
  • conversation
    • presentations
  • shop