 Study for “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” | Louvre Museum | Paris Tomorrow the calendar turns to February. I wrap my deep pink scarf around the gray days…thinking of St. Valentine and being shriven (ok…mostly pancakes) and how the Church Year has taught us to return and to re-harrow. Circling through my notes I find I copied Wendell Berry’s observation that “Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.” It still rings true. Or it rings true again. I’ve spent January thinking a lot about depth because of an article I chanced upon about having a "depth year.” Instead of lives that are "an inch deep and a mile wide,” (“ready-made,” Charlotte Mason calls them) author, David Cain writes about his longing to go deeper into the gifts already provided. Afterwards, he decides he wants every year to be a depth year. And why not? His practice sparked a movement because it is a very human thing to want to seek meaning and to find time to answer the hunger of the perennial questions. And counter-cultural. It reminded me of our “small, quiet, steadfast, and local” efforts at prov.en.der and our annual 100 Days of Keeping…this will be our seventh year of inviting a deeper quiet, a deeper sense of mystery, a deeper gratitude for the gifts around us. We begin February 22, Ash Wednesday. It’s not too soon to listen to what your heart wants more of.
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"This book, this process was full of surprises for me. Daily practice reveals things and it’s an excellent place for ideas to turn up. Ideas like a reliable place to show up. I've already started another..." Ann Wood Keepers are everywhere! "Ideas like a reliable place to show up!"
 "Our fault, and our very great misfortune, is, that we fail to take at regular intervals that survey of our life which must indeed cause us transports of gratitude." Charlotte Mason
That's another 100 Days of Keeping. Don't miss the chance to reflect on our journey and give yourself a hand even if there were some surprises or disappointments. "One at a time is good fishing" as they say, even one notebook entry one more moment of noticing is one more life impacted. Pentecost, the season of growing, also known as Ordinary Time, ("which is anything but ordinary") awaits. Do you feel Mason's extraordinary method has become more familiar? Has it grown your understanding of "the full life for which we are made?" Do you have any "clearer conception of Christianity?" Are you on the trail of MORE MYSTERY? I am grateful for each one of you.  Sunday begins the Season of Pentecost and our 100 Days are winding down " but the duty of praise is not for occasional or rare seasons, it waits waits at our doors every day."
- Charlotte Mason  Day 85 and the rhubarb is tapping its feet. But it's never too late to improve our "discriminating appreciation." What are you Keeping?
 "At first it seems the discipline needed to achieve mastery of time seems constraining, but that is only a stage, and it is so worthwhile!" Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber.
Without Keeping, how am I to tell my children and my children's children how we've been "guided and guarded?"  "We are acquainted with too few of the odours which the spring-time offers." Charlotte Mason
New research shows we humans can detect up to one trillion scents. How about a 100 Days of new scents next year?  "The Seasons should be followed.––But it is hard to keep pace with the wonders that unfold themselves in the 'bountiful season bland.'" - Charlotte Mason
It's time to expect our friends the hummingbirds. Whom or what are you expecting because of your keeping?  "'Clouds and rain, snow and hail, winds and vapours, fulfilling His Word'––are all everyday mysteries that the mother will be called upon to explain faithfully, however simply." Charlotte Mason Is your Keeping bumping up against "everyday mysteries?"  "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"
Day Fifty.... Half way! I have been thinking about what keeps us keeping. What do you think? |
"Thus, I propose that the middle of February remind CM admirers
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