Feast of St. Therese, the Little Flower

To be honest, dear readers, I've still been feeling a lot of anxiety over the state of the Catholic Church, and with the Amazon Synod only five days away, I'm fighting a foreboding dread. But today is the Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, and if anyone can shower us with roses, it is she. In the previous post I emphasized that to fight the good fight, we must be saints. One of the best ways to become a saint is to emulate those canonized by the Church. 

We can feel so small and powerless against forces beyond our control. Opinions galore on Pope Francis flood the Internet. I feel like I should do something Henny Penny style, running through the streets warning everyone that the sky is falling. I wish it were a mere acorn dropped on our heads. How can we possibly shoulder this burden? 

St. Therese has the solution. She said, "Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right, & doing it all for love."  

I have attempted to simplify my life over and over again, but at times I realize that I'm trying to pile too much on. I tell myself that I must do great things. But St. Therese did not strive to do great things. Instead, she offered up all the small things of everyday life to God, using her sacrifices for his purpose. In the process, Therese became one of the most beloved of saints, as well as one of four female Doctors of the Church. Her spiritual writings are chock full of simple wisdom. 

October 7 is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and this entire month is dedicated in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. This morning I woke early from a nightmare, so I took hold of my Rosary from the bed stand and prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries. Following Therese's "little way," my plan is to simply pray the Rosary daily this month and offer up my small sacrifices for Pope Francis, the Amazon Synod, and the Church, praying only that God's will be done. 

A part of me wants to keep up on the news, but following it all on YouTube is too overwhelming. I've got to lay this burden down. 

I've been reading a Psalm a day at least a few times a week, but I'm going to make this a daily commitment. Rawley Myers' book, Embraced by Mary, contains devotions for the entire month of October. 

So there is my plan. The Rosary, the Psalms, Myers' meditations, and going about my day with intention, following St. Therese's little way. No YouTube, for either news or self-improvement. I have my tasks, and worry is not one of them. 

Make the most of this October, my friends, and may you be richly blessed and showered with heavenly roses. 

La Petite French Way

The French live on a grand scale, but they do it in small morsels. I am scaling my email inbox back, unsubscribing to most blogs and shopping invitations. I also need to turn off Facebook notifications! Rarely does it seem that an actual person I know is sending me a message. Who wants to waste time sorting and deleting, wading through a pile of virtual mail? In this area too we must be discriminating. By that token, I'm going to endeavor to keep my posts relatively short! I want to give myself and you a little bit of inspiration at a time.

If you are Catholic, you are most likely familiar with St. Therese of Lisieux, aka the Little Flower, famous for her "little way" of serving God. Let's follow this beloved saint in all things joie de vivre! So to catch you up, I decided to keep the Free People jersey tunic dress I got from Ebay after all. I was being a tad judgmental about my body at a certain bloated time of month, and I had not even taken a shower when I tried it on originally. Last night I wore it to Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, and I felt tres chic! It is grey, and I wore darker grey Anthropologie leggings under it. My jewelry was vintage dropped pearl earrings and my pearl Rosary bracelet. I wore red clogs and carried a red handbag. Neutrals with a touch of color--so French!

Today I went to Goodwill and found a very nice pair of Nicole dress heels. From the internet search I did on this brand, they would be at least $70 new. I paid $3. Uh huh. She shoots, she scores! So there you go--give it away and it will come back to you. I can't wait to see what's next!!

Catholic Homeschooling for May

Since May is traditionally a month to especially honor the Blessed Mother, it makes sense to incorporate Marian themes into our homeschooling. During our lesson time this afternoon, Beezy asked me if there was church today. She was disappointed when I told her no, saying, "But I wanted to have the bread and wine again." What fragrant balm this is for a mother's heart! I will take her to daily Mass on Wednesday morning.

At the time Beezy asked this question, she was doing her copy work from the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) prayer, said at the end of the Rosary. For narration, I am reading to her from St. Therese and the Roses (Ignatius Press), which includes Mary's visitation to St. Therese of Lisieux. This is a biographical novel and fits into the religion/history/literature categories. For reading, we are using Book Two of the American Cardinal readers, and the first story talks about Mary's birth and childhood. I read to Beezy from the Bible on the Transfiguration of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, and we prayed that Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. The only non-Catholic part of lesson time today was a "Time & Money" worksheet!

For summer I do want to continue to work on Beezy's reading, pray the Rosary daily, and go to Mass as much as possible. As a Catholic mother, I am increasingly realizing the importance of structured lessons that provide Faith formation while also supplying my child with the tools she will need to pursue her interests and goals in life, to learn to think for herself, and to express herself competently both orally and in writing. Direct teaching is necessary to Catholic homeschooling, even if there is a certain focus on facilitating child-led learning. With the Charlotte Mason/classical approach, there is plenty of time in the day for play, chores, socializing, projects, nature studies, handicrafts, conversations, dog walks, meals, etc., and even daydreaming. What is required is the balance brought about by discipline, which I suspect is going to be an upcoming series topic here at Organic Mothering, so stay tuned!

A Homeschooling Fleur de Lis

"In the Middle Ages the symbols of lily and fleur-de-lis (lis is French for "lily") overlapped considerably in Christian religious art. Michel Pastoureau, the historian, says that until about 1300 they were found in depictions of Jesus, but gradually they took on Marian symbolism and were associated with the Song of Solomon's "lily among thorns" (lilium inter spinas), understood as a reference to Mary. Other scripture and religious literature in which the lily symbolizes purity and chastity also helped establish the flower as an iconographic attribute of the Virgin. It was also believed that the fleur de lis represented the Holy Trinity" (Wikipedia).

 
<sup>I was inspired by the fleur de lis to come up with my own "little way" of homeschooling, under the patronage of St. Therese and the Blessed Mother, but not necessarily under the label of unschooling. Though I have not yet received my Keeping It Catholic book, I think I have read enough on unschooling to see that it is problematic for the Catholic homeschooling family, possibly even in the less radical forms. The Faith is supposed to permeate the entire educational experience, and because unschooling does not put forth a clear educational philosophy and method (at least not to my satisfaction), I think I am safer calling what we do ''relaxed CM Catholic homeschooling".  But we'll see... And even if Charlotte Mason was heretical in her worldview, as Marianna Bartold proposes, living books, narration, and nature journals are not used exclusively in the CM method, and these and other techniques can certainly be employed in a Catholic homeschool, as long as the books and materials used are not in conflict with Church doctrine. In this I agree with Mater Amabilis, and I have found some book suggestions on their online curriculum list to try. 

As to the fleur de lis, the central petal represents Catholic faith formation; the left petal stands for order on the homestead; and the one on the right is CM, open source learning. The base of the fleur de lis in my little way corresponds to the Holy Family, with Jesus at the center and Mary and Joseph on each side. I think St. Therese would agree with keeping it simple in our homeschooling so that we do not break our heads over it, as she was wont to say. I want my family to be grounded in the Catholic faith in all things; I wish to continue to bring order to my home and yard (for how else can anyone who lives here relax?), and order is also necessary for the blossoming of Beauty; and I feel that using the CM method in a relaxed, Catholic way gives me a firm foundation for educating my child, along with keeping the good aspects associated with unschooling in mind as we seek open sources for learning.</sup>

Homeschooling's Little Way of Love

On St. Therese of Lisieux, from Wikipedia:

In her quest for sanctity, she believed that it was not necessary to accomplish heroic acts, or great deeds, in order to attain holiness and to express her love of God. She wrote,

Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love. 

 Therese in July, 1896

St. Therese's "little way" was the pursuit of sainthood through simplicity in an everyday life of love and in doing the will of God in the smallest of tasks.  Hers was a way of gentleness and the belief in the prevalence of the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus. How can the homeschooling mother emulate the saint's little way? First of all, by grace, by centering one's life on the love of God and the practice of the Catholic faith. We are models for our children of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, practicing patience and virtue in all things; and when we make mistakes, we make amends. We allow our children to be imperfectly themselves as well, and forgive them, bless them, and comfort them. We have self-discipline, and we model this virtue to our children. We correct them gently, being firm but never harsh, not allowing our anger and frustration to turn into severe and humiliating punishment. 

There was a Montessori teacher by the name of Pen, and when you walked into her classroom, it seemed as though a magic spell had come over the children. Pen's eyes were everywhere, but you would not hear her voice, so soft spoken was she, whispering into the ears of children who worked quietly and with intense concentration. They were not sitting at desks, listening to her droning attempts to cram their minds with facts and figures. She gave lessons to individual children and small groups, while the rest pursued activities of their own choosing, whether on a floor space designated by a rug, at an easel, or sitting at tables in chairs. How did this petite Asian woman exercise such control of her classroom without speaking above a whisper? Her authority was in her demeanor, the look in her eyes, the tone of her low voice. Her quiet grace was contagious. 

Pen is an example of a true artist at work. Are we mothers required to be any less?

Collage Style Catholic Unschooling

We did get to lesson time today, after Beezy's homeschool friend left. She read three pages aloud to me from her Ginn reader, On Cherry Street. I usually have her read at least two pages, and this evening she wanted to read a third. I read a chapter to her from Little Town on the Prairie, which she narrated Charlotte Mason style. Then she did copy work from the Hail Mary prayer. Her dad came home in the midst of this bearing a new Monster High doll, so lesson time ended, and we had dinner.

Considering again Holly Pierlot's objections to Catholic homeschoolers adopting the use of the term unschooling, I think her point about John Holt's educational theories being secular and perhaps opposed to the Catholic parental vocation are valid. However, I will need to revisit his writings in more depth, because I'm not certain that what he advocated was anti-teaching. Certainly he was against a coercive, one size fits all, institutionalized schooling situation. But from what I have read from Catholic unschoolers, they are able to take the ideas of John Holt and apply them from within the domestic church.

The open source style of learning can incorporate faith formation; lessons of the child's choosing, such as piano or dance; apprenticeships; any curriculum that is useful and fits the child's needs; chores and family responsibilities; varying degrees of structure, etc... The direct teaching of skills such as reading is not frowned upon if children do not pick them up naturally, nor is formal work required by the parents forbidden. A common theme is that there is no timetable for when to learn any particular thing, and there is no rigid establishment of what is important for all children to learn. Learning is individualized, largely driven by a child's interests and each family's values.

In addition to John Holt, the names that most commonly come up on the path to unschooling are Maria Montessori and Charlotte Mason. Classical Catholic education is also often utilized in an unschooling approach. The key seems to be that parents and children are not slaves to a commercial curriculum and the daily checking off of items completed. Segue style learning, which I have written about before, is an approach of following an organic process of making connections between ideas, experiences and subject matter--the science of relations about which Charlotte Mason wrote. Learning is not compartmentalized from the rest of life. By "collage style" I mean that you take what you like from any number of sources and use whatever fits your family best, producing a customized education for each child that promotes faith, self-discipline, useful life skills, and an authentic human character.

In future posts I will flesh this collage style of Catholic unschooling out, giving ideas for a basic format and implementation of such a prospect. I will also incorporate the teachings of Therese of Lisieux and John Bosco, who are called upon as patron saints for Catholic unschoolers, as well as the writings of other notables of the faith such as Pope John Paul II.

St. Therese