Dominion Family

Praise You in This Storm
words by Mark Hall/music by Mark Hall and Bernie Herms

I was sure by now, that You would have reached down
and wiped our tears away,
stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen
and it’s still raining
as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
“I’m with you”
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away.

Chorus:
And I’ll praise you in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am
and every tear I’ve cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
and raised me up again
my strength is almost gone how can I carry on
if I can’t find You
and as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
“I’m with you”
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away

Chorus

I lift my eyes unto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes unto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth

Chorus

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Do you need a bit of encouragement today in your life as a homeschooling mother? I know you do. Here is an article that will lift you up. I like it because it isn’t just one mom telling another mom, “Hey, we’re doing alright.” I try to do that here but this is a man, a professor and a father giving us all a pat on the back. Enjoy!

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Here is a picture of some of us yesterday morning after our glorious Palm Sunday service. We had a wonderful time waving palm branches and singing We Will Glorify. Mom took the picture as we were getting in our van in downtown Franklin. Here is our bulletin for those who missed the service.

Let’s see from left to right on the back row: Nathaniel, me, James, my dad, Christopher, Benjamin. The next row has Andrew and Emily and the cutie in the front is Alex.

My mom took the picture with her camera which actually works for all y’all clamoring for a picture of me. I just realized the sun makes us all look like we have big noses. Maybe we do and I never noticed

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The sonnet is my favorite form of poetry. I am especially fond of the Shakespearean form of abab cdcd efef gg. Who can not help liking something with 14 lines of iambic pentameter? Since April is National Poetry Month I thought I would join the girls in trying to post a poem a day but I am notoriously better at coming up with ideas than executing them and I am already 3 days behind.

I thought to jazz it up I would post sonnets. Have you ever written a sonnet? I am afraid I am rather like Shakespeare when it comes to sonnets; I don’t have any trouble cribbing from others, stealing rhythms and rhymes. You know, I don’t blame Shakespeare one bit nor does it make me think less of him. Aren’t all great writers essentially wonderful mimics? There is no new thing under the sun. Why give artists credit for pretending there is? And even though I mentioned myself in the same breath as Shakespeare I have no pretensions about my own writing. The scope of Shakespeare’s genius truly baffles.

Maybe by the end of the month I will post one of my own sonnets and maybe I will even post chapter 4 of Death of a Blogger but don’t cross your fingers, hold your breath or nag. I am afraid I won’t be able to finish that tome until I get back from the God is Not Mad at You Conference and I haven’t even decided when that is.

But here is a sonnet written Arthur Hugh Clough

VII

Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Our happy hopes, so happy and so good,
Are not mere idle motions of the blood;
And when they seem most baseless, most are not.
A seed there must have been [up]on the spot
Where the flowers grow, without it ne’er they could.
The confidence of growth least understood
Of some deep intuition was begot.
What if despair and hope alike be true?
The heart, ’tis manifest, is free to do
Whichever Nature and itself suggest;
And always ’tis a fact that we are here;
And with being here, doth palsy-giving fear,
Whoe’er can ask, or hope accord the best?

I like the line “What if despair and hope alike be true?” Certainly we would not know hope if we didn’t know despair. Why not choose hope?

This is not a Shakespearian sonnet. The rhyme pattern is abba abba ccdeed which is rather unusual. I think it would still be classified as the Italian form but I could be wrong.

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Lady Laura nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award and she also nominated most of the people I would have nominated.

I can’t exactly link to the Thinking Blogger site since it has a bit of spam but I will tell you my favorite Thinking places online not counting the blogs Laura mentioned.

Quiddity Andrew doesn’t write often on his blog but when he does I am listening. Quiddity is not a mile wide and an inch deep like some blogs I know.

Rabe’s Ramblings. John is funny but not without a purpose and he has the best baseball blog that I know of besides Prior Fire which happens to be my own cub reporter’s blog.

Scriptorium Daily . John Mark Reynolds is a thinker, an educator and an interesting writer. Plus he said something nice about homeschooling moms and we are such a downtrodden group we can hardly thank him enough.

Mark Steyn Online. I just love this guy. I love what he says and that he has the nerve to say it and I love to hear his accent.

Dry Creek Chronicles. Rick definitely makes me think, often about things I don’t want to think about concerning modernity. But I don’t just think, I also make adjustments after reading Rick’s blog.

As I was thinking about all of these blogs it occurred to me that none of the men update their blogs as frequently as we girls do. I guess that is why they make me think. But sometimes I don’t read blogs to think. I just like to drop in and visit with friends.

As a matter of fact it may be that too much thinking is one of the dangers of blog reading. I have certainly been accused of that crime before.

I bet most bloggers readers have the “thinking-too-much” disease.

Do you?

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It would be a mistake to think that all sonnets are romantic love songs. Perhaps the best known sonnets are and certainly most of Shakespeare’s sonnets give us that romantic feeling. For some reason the word sonnet just has that love poem ring to it quite apart from the facts.

So here is a sonnet that Milton wrote after a committee meeting. You gotta love Milton. He doesn’t seem to have fallen into the error of separating the sacred from the secular. The one thing you won’t find in Milton is humor. Sometimes I just ache for that poor man.

To the Lord General Cromwell, on the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Hast reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester’s laureate wreath: yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than War: new foes arise,
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw.

Personally, I think the best way to write a sonnet is to read several sonnets with the same metre several times over. Then come up with a first line with the embodiment of your thought. Write out your pattern ahead of time on the paper and then just let it flow.

My mind tends towards the metre of Milton’s Sonnet on His Blindness which really makes up for his committee meeting poems. But truthfully isn’t the above poem quite good in spite of its mundane subject.

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Now THAT is a sonnet!

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*When on the phone with technicians from India do not use polite forms of conversation. Do not say thank-you nor you’re welcome. It will greatly increase the length of your phone call. Every time you acknowledge their courtesy they will repeat it several times. There are so many thank-you’s flying around I sometimes feel as if I am going to scream into the phone, “Enough!”

*It is efficient to listen to audiobooks at baseball games or practices but it is not expedient. If you are plugged in one will talk to you and you won’t get to know your neighbors. This is a perfect example of the negative effects of efficiency.

*Efficiency can be good. The other day Tim hung up the phone by saying, “I am walking into the hospital and turning off my phone.” No problem, except 5 hours later I hadn’t heard from him and he had failed to say what hospital he was walking in to. Not to mention he was not in Alabama but Missouri. Enter Google Earth. I hit the show hospital button and up came little red crosses. I clicked on a cross and all the contact info appeared. Tim was at the first hospital I called. Now that is what I call efficient!

*Sonnets are not popular blog topics.

*Here is an interesting story from World Mag Blog. Doctrinal issues taken to court. Is it ok to threaten legal action and church discipine in one breath? Well, that is a life lesson I haven’t figured out yet but I bet we will be hearing about this sort of thing frequently now reminding us that there is no new thing under the sun.

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Here is a wonderful hymn by Samuel Johnson. Yes, Boswell’s Johnson. It is not a sonnet and I found it in a murder mystery by Edmund Crispin. So now maybe I will get a little respect. This particular murder mystery, The Case of the Gilded Fly, even takes place in Oxford and the detective is a don and it is sprinkled throughout with fun literary allusions to Shakespeare and Dante and medieval Christianity.

I am feeling pretty pleased. I have given you a book, a poem and an Easter week hymn all in one post.

City of God, how broad and far
outspread thy walls sublime!
The true thy chartered freemen are
of every age and clime.

One holy Church, one army strong;
one steadfast, high intent;
one working band, one harvest song,
one King omnipotent.

How purely hath thy speech come down
from man’s primeval youth!
How grandly hath thine empire grown
of freedom, love and truth!

How gleam thy watch fires through the night
with never fainting ray!
How rise thy towers, serene and bright,
to meet the dawning day!

In vain the surge’s angry shock,
in vain the drifting sands;
unharmed upon the eternal Rock
the eternal City stands.

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The connections never cease.

I had been working with Alex on phonics for several months. He had read a whole stack of Bob Books and could pronounce several columns of phonograms but he just wasn’t progressing well. Progressing Well that was the term used on my 1970’s report cards. No such thing as A’s and B’s in the 70’s. Progressing, Progressing Well, Not Progressing.

Anyway, we got sick and then all kinds of hard things happened and I didn’t have time to teach Alex his short phonics lesson everyday. 2 months went by and then I started to see the light of day and felt guilty. I grabbed Alex last week, sorted through his phonics box and pulled out a few Sing, Spell, Read & Write readers. Alex whizzed through the A book and is almost done with the E book. He appears to have learned how to read in the 2 months I was not teaching him.

Whenever my children are struggling with a subject my first line of defense is usually to throw money at the problem. I will buy the biggest, best piece of equipment for that subject, make them work night and day, skip baseball practice and LEARN. I do this in spite of the fact that I have noticed over and over and over again over the years that rest and change are the real facilitators of learning.

I wonder if our forefathers learned more because they didn’t have so much schooling. Education, yes. Schooling, no. I need to learn how to pace our school with seasons of rigor and rest. Usually that happens naturally as things happen but I would like to try planning a season of rest for the children and see what happens. Can you believe I have been homeschooling for 23 years? Talk about SLOW!!

Have you ever noticed this in your house?

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My reading goal in From Dawn to Decadence is 100 pages a month. I am pretty sure I will get bogged down in June. Hopefully I will be able to finish the 800+ pages by the end of the summer.
Sometimes it is slow going. The print is small and the pages large. If I don’t pick it up for a week, I utterly forget what he is talking about. I seriously worry about my retention. I read 100 pages last month without underlining anything then suddenly last night I underlined 3 passages.

From pg 315 speaking of someone named Vico that even well-read scholars fail to notice:
(Parenthesis by me. I promise you will like the quote. )

His most shocking one (prediction) was that the second barbarism that engulfs civilization after it has reached its summit is worse than the first. The original barbarians possess rude virtues; the later have none left. (WOW!). He listed the marks of the second and how it came about. Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty (WOW!), duty to the family, and virile courage. Emancipated form ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.

Speaking of Anne Bradstreet on page 318:

Anne Bradstreet imitated at length the Franco-English best-selling poet Du Bartas. She started the tradition of imitating English models that lasted until the end of the 19c.

So here we have another example of imitation being better than originality.

Finally, at the bottom of pg 318 a quip I couldn’t resist:

Society had not yet discovered the need to equip everyone with an academic degree as the ticket of admission to a well-paid job.

I will admit that a degree is the ticket to a well-paid job but I will never admit it is the measure of an education nor will Jacques.

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