Glorifying the Lord By Imitating Him

This is one of my paintings from long ago (seems like another life). I hang it in the kitchen, inspiring me to cook food everyone can enjoy! Though sometimes it is necessary to put away the poetry and the painting--they are luxuries, after all, not something that will bring in the bacon--but when we have the chance, we should pick up the brush and canvas, and the pen and paper. So this is what I'm doing this summer. It's been many years, because I was a little busy with three sweet boys to help educate. The other day I went to see an old friend and noticed a painting that I had done many years ago hanging in the living room. I snapped a shot of it...

What is closer to imitating God than attempting to be a creator? (Even though what we do is such a paltry imitation!)  When do people feel most alive and fulfilled except when they are creating something and imitating Him. Think of your carpenter husband creating a fine piece of furniture that he designed himself, a seamstress creating a costume, an artist painting a special picture, or a poet weaving words together to express a moment. Anyone who has ever created something feels that ecstatic sense of love whenever they've created something to share with others.

In Ephesians 2 we read, "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do....(and in Chapter 5) Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."  Ok, maybe it's a stretch to interpret this as meaning: go thee and paint pictures of God's creation, but to me it is a way of loving God and your neighbor!

If you have time for reading blogs like this, then you have time to write a book, or learn to paint! Here's a loose paraphrase from an article by C.S. Lewis, "Learning in War Time:"

If we don’t spend our free time reading great books (or blogs!), we’ll just use the time reading bad ones--or reading ridiculous tweets and silly things on Facebook. If we don’t use our time to pursue aesthetic pleasures, we’ll end up in sensual pleasures, such as drinking too many Hazelnut Macchiatos. We are cultural beings. If we abdicate our responsibility to engage in artistic endeavors for the glory of God, we will end up living in a barren, ugly culture.

And this is exactly what has happened. 

To know what we want in education...

"To know what we want in education we need to know what we want in general. We must derive our theory of education from our philosophy of life." T. S. Eliot  in an essay entitled, "Modern Education and the Classics."

 

            In the classical education movement the struggle we have is with the mindset that promotes physical comfort, science, power through things (i.e. money) --these are the dominant values of our time. Many Christians don’t know how to reject this without just dropping out of culture altogether. For over a century we Americans have been permeated by a spirit of “pragmatism.” How do we convince ourselves that literature, art and poetry have real value? We can “sell” a literary education by pointing out the ways in which a deep language study helps a student in those highly valued professions of doctor, lawyer, preacher, or any professional career.  And most will acknowledge that its sort of nice to have a few Christian scholars who will teach humanities or philosophy in the universities.  But overall, we are swimming upstream in the culture of 21^st century America. 

            But the Bible tells us that God created us in His image and tells us to imitate him.  Shouldn't this involve “being creative” in whatever way we can as humans. As Romans 12 says:

“Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. That ye may prove what is that good acceptable and perfect will of God.”

We can learn more and more about how to do this to His glory by studying the art and literary masterpieces of the past.  We can become wiser by understanding history thoroughly. And as CS Lewis put it, we can see the world and human experience through other people's eyes....hundreds and  hundreds of different eyes. We experience another human being's view of the world in many different eras of times and places.

The true ‘art of communication’ or rhetoric, in its classical sense, is developed by understanding the human condition and by understanding language. The word is more important than the quantifiable subjects, more essential to growing up in Christ, because it connects us to others. We believe these are important endeavors in order to become a truly loving Christian in this world.  The value of true Christian relationships with other homeschoolers is essential to making progress in restoring education. We need to take the time to laugh, and cry, with others about life, because as Ephesians 5:1-2 says: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

  

What in the World Is the Trivium?



Asphodel

My heart rouses
        thinking to bring you news

                         of something
that concerns you
        and concerns many men. Look at
                         what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
        despised poems.
                         It is difficult

to get the news from poems
         yet men die miserably every day
                          for lack

of what is found there.

             ~ from Asphodel- That Greeny Flower  

                 by William Carlos Williams

 

'"Teach the Trivium." This has been a catchphrase of the classical education movement. Most people can tell it means three of something. But most people I encounter in our homeschooling circles are still very confused about what exactly ‘classical education’ or trivium mean. The Latin word trivium literally means “three roads" and was used to mean where three roads meet. The original use of the term for education was as an indication of the unity of the three aspects of the art of communication: the verbal arts.   

Many people now define the term trivium as a method (I am reminded of Ellul’s book on the modern rule of techne)--a technique of teaching that uses developmental stages, which I won't detail here. I'm sure you've probably heard the concept a few times. But throughout the centuries, since the Middle Ages, there were two 'stages' of education, the trivium and the quadrivium. The three subjects of the trivium were "grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric." When these were mastered a student went on to study the quadrivium--the four subjects: geometry, astronomy, music and arithmetic.  Together these made up what were known as the "seven liberal arts." Obviously (with the changing times) we need to change or add to some of the subjects, but when it comes to the first three, there seems to me to be something essential to education about these three in one...

1- Grammar: pursuing the parts of language so that a thought may develop. The first is working with individual words, phrases, and sentences. Doing such things as naming the different parts of speech, learn the meanings of words, and writing a sentence.

2- Dialectic/Logic: pursuing the syllogism, study of sentences and their relationship to each other, so that a new thought may be asserted. It is learning to put together units of thought (syllogism official logical terminology for the sake of the audience).....Taking a few sentences (premises) and coming up with a thesis and a conclusion.

3- Rhetoric: the pursuit of communication: turning these ideas around with others, in order to develop those new thoughts into a culture. This is the culmination of the use of language. And this is where the group comes in, and others to connect with is so crucial! Once a student has gotten a mastery of the first two, he or she can begin to effectively communicate and create ideas with others. We ultimately want to communicate with people in the flesh, but the student does not often have an appropriate friend or mentor to exchange ideas with, so this is why books are so important. The “others” may often be “other minds” via literature, this has been the most effective medium of communication of ideas in our culture for a long time. (more on this later)
 

Now, compare this process above with the rudimentary forms of these subjects that are left in our contemporary curriculum. We have divorced the study of vocabulary from any study of grammar or sentence analysis. We have taken a few principles of composition to make a quick and easy writing lesson. We are content with having quickly gotten the kids to cover this, so that we can be sure to spend many hours attempting to cram lots of data about many subjects in the child's head. Is this supposed to be more interesting for them? Is it supposed to show them off to the world? See what I know? Has a trivial pursuit been substituted for the pursuit of the trivium?

A Parent's Pursuit of Learning is a Powerful Model

So I've been thinking some more, about my question of the other day:

What did we do right as homeschoolers?

                                           And I think that I'm beginning to understand what it was...

Perhaps it's because our family came to the simple realization that "true education," of the ancient and enduring kind, is not something for the school years, K-12, but is for life. And I know that most people give lip service to this concept, but what I mean is that we actually dared to implement it. We decided to totally reject all years of the current prevailing curriculum, rather than simply drop a few years of it and try to fit our children back into the society's educational track. This had great power to enliven the quality of those things we did pursue, because we pursued their study because it was something that we valued. And the unwritten part of this whole approach was to give time and freedom to think, plan and create.

We also believed that, if there was a subject that was valuable for a young person's life of the mind, then it was just as essential or valuable for the parent's. While my husband did not have the luxury of pursuing the study of Logic or Vergil during those years, I did. (And, though he had a desire for the first, he didn't share my desire to pursue the latter! He desired to study more technical subjects which applied to his career, and since he had a very small amount of time, this is what he did.)

In "The Training of the Orator" Quintilian writes:

I should prefer the parents to have as much education as possible. And I'm not referring to fathers only. For it was Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, who according to tradition contributed much to their eloquence... Parents who have not themselves had an opportunity for education should not on that account pay less attention to teaching their children; let them for this very reason work all the harder at it.

And so, the modeling of an approach to life and learning was a huge lesson for our sons. But the freeing of concern for what society believed the boys should study gave us time to discuss whatever books we read. To come up with an approach to learning subjects we valued. This allowed the boys to focus like a laser beam on creative projects and discover things that they knew were valuable. Their motivation to learn and read soared as soon as they were away from the compulsion of a curriculum.

Many of these lessons I learned by accident--Providence! ...