Quote for the day: When insight is the harder task

"There is nothing abstract, or even subtle, about what happens when the writer attempts to apply a prejudice where only an insight will do.

"Proceeding blindly toward his preconceived conclusions, he asks his character (whether real or imaginary) the wrong questions: compounding the error, he twists the answer to make it match what he would prefer to hear. His goal immutably fixed in his mind, he ignores clues that would lead him to the unacceptable truth.

"The stories the young writer produces in such ecstasies of self-assurance are as unpalatable as green persimmons."  ~~ Jon Franklin, Writing for Story

Something to read today: "Words fail, but hearts understand"

A post on the Circe Institute Blog by Adam Andrews : "The Limitations of Language."

"What if [Jesus] isn’t underusing the language at all? What if He’s overusing it, stretching it to its absolute limit – all the way to the edge of simile and metaphor?"

Quote for the Day: T.S. Eliot and quiet places

There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

                                      If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets

Quote for the day: Listen first, knit later?

Some advice to mothers of young ladies:

"Some people like to live as if they were catching a train. They are really only running after their own tails; they cannot select what must be done this minute, and what can be put off to the next day. Put them where you like; they will still have no leisure. If you want to teach the methodical use of time and orderly habits of mind, you must first learn to show a calm front and have a heart "at leisure from itself." I heard a woman who had many friends spoken of as one "who when you want her advice does not jump up to fetch her knitting before she will listen to you.""--"Girls from Twelve to Sixteen," by Mrs. Hart Davis, in The Parent's Review, Volume 13, no. 2, February 1902, pgs. 81-93

Don't talk over the music

During a recent conversation about Charlotte Mason and education, someone described a class they had seen where classical music was played, but where the teacher continued to talk, describe, and generally interrupt so that nobody could hear or pay attention to the music.

Ann Voskamp has often talked about silences, listening. Most of us now do not come from a culture of nurturing silence or of careful, deliberate listening. Silence is not natural or comfortable for most of us, any more than total darkness is natural or comfortable for those of us who live in cities and always, even in the middle of the night, have some light around us somewhere.

But that doesn't mean silence is bad; we just have to work harder at listening. And at letting others learn to listen. And look, too.

Do our lives and our children's lives include enough of these? Looking at pictures, without interruption. Listening to music. Listening to beautiful words, without too much explanation. Looking at and listening to large and small things outdoors, without chatter about other concerns. Looking at darkness (and at whatever stars appear while we look). Listening to others' prayers.

Listening to silence.