Intelligent Design Is Definitely an Understatement

We were too hot and tired for tennis tonight, so we abandoned our planned trip to the park in favor of a Moody Science Video on the solar system. It's always good to be reminded of how unfathomable God is--and how graciously condescending are His relations with man. Thoughts along this vein also provide the perfect opportunity to slip in another good quote I've come across recently from the biology field:

Now, when a man sees that his vital operations could not be directed by reason--that they are constant, and far too important to be exposed to all the changes incident to his mind, and that they are given up to the direction of other sources of motion than the will, he acquires a full sense of his dependence . . .

When man thus perceives, that in respect to all these vital operations he is more helpless than the infant, and that his boasted reason can neither give them order nor protection, is not his insensibility to the Giver of these secret endowments worse than ingratitude?

--Sir Charles Bell
19th century Scottish anatomist, surgeon, physiologist for whom Bell's Palsy and several other discoveries were named

Dinner

Dinner tonight was a big deal. It started first thing this morning with boiling three chickens. By mid-day, Anna had asked several times if she could help "peel the chickens". (We'll get the term "deboning" added to Anna's vocabulary some other time.) She and Lewis did a great job of that, after which they scarfed the skins for an afternoon snack--bleh! I proceeded to make a huge pot of chicken and dumplings with some of the resulting meat and broth.

However, the crowning element to our meal is pictured here: Titus's first cucumber! (And I don't mean of the season; I mean of his gardening career.) He's very proud of it, as are all the kids, and we all think it's the best tasting cucumber we've ever had. May all those to follow live up to this precedent. And there are watermelons and cantaloupe in the boat garden, so stay tuned!

Keeping All the Plates Spinning

Our math time today reminded me of a little tidbit I've been learning over the past year or so: a multitude of responsibilities for Mom means greater opportunities for initiative in the kids. It's easy to view the little ones' needs, the kitchen work, the laundry or whatever as an impediment to the older kids' education. However, I find that precisely because I can't sit and hover at their elbow during an entire lesson, they seem more apt to apply themselves and get it done.

Everyone knows the frustration of trying to convey something to a child who is not mentally engaged. Something that's been working for me lately in that situation is putting distance between myself and the stalled-out learner, i.e. moving on to other tasks on my list. Once on their own, the kids suddenly realize they'd better kick it into gear if they ever hope to get their studies completed and move on to other things. If I tell them that they must get a certain amount done before they can come to me with questions or for checking, that seems to help, too.

Of course there are times they need my undivided teacherly attention for a while, but it's good to realize that my need to be about many things is also helping train my children's character and intellect.

More on Work

Now I can't even briefly peruse a random book without coming up with another good quote on work:

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker . . .

--Helen Keller

quoted in The True Woman by Susan Hunt

Same Old Story

The only difference this time (besides my letting him ham it up for the picture) was that Ian helped Anna with her dental woes right before he took his shower, so he's a drippy dentist in this one.

Sticking with the Poetry Theme

Just finished Screwtape Letters. It is a wonderfully thought-provoking read, and I can't resist posting one final quote:

[A loving Christian household] bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: 'the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.' Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell . . . no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise . . .

--Screwtape, C.S. Lewis's senior devil

A Psalm of Life

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(from the chapter on Work in Bennett's Book of Virtues)