In my Commonplace...

10/2/2020

"In fact, attention is of value only insofar as it is paid in the proper discharge of an obligation. To pay attention is to come into the presence of a subject. In one of its root sense, it is to 'stretch toward' a subject, in a kind of aspiration. We speak of 'paying attention' because of a correct perception that attention is owed - that without our attention and attending, our subjects, including ourselves, are endangered." Wendell Berry

6 Comments

Anne E. White link

10/3/2020 08:53:42 am

I like this very much, and I'm sure that Charlotte Mason would have totally agreed.

Anne E. White

10/3/2020 08:56:35 am

Have you read this?

Finding the World's Fullness: On Poetry, Metaphor, and Mystery
By Robert Cording

It sounds like something you'd like. He uses that same quote from Berry.

Laurie Bestvater

10/3/2020 11:54:33 am

Anne, I will read "Finding the World's Fullness" forthwith! I don't believe I do know Cording but is sounds like what I find in Mason. That Berry essay is worthwhile in its entirety, imho.

Anne E. White

10/3/2020 12:04:09 pm

Which essay? My Googling isn't pinning it down.

Laurie Bestvater

10/3/2020 12:06:45 pm

"Writer and Region" (It's linked to his name at the bottom of the quote.)

Anne E. White

10/3/2020 12:19:36 pm

Thanks! I missed that.

"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.

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.

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In My Notebook...