I'll close the giveaway for God's Wildest Wonderment of All (affiliate link) tomorrow night — do be sure you've left a comment on the post!
GIVEAWAY CLOSED — but —
I'm so happy to offer you a code from TAN publishers for 20% off your purchase of the book from their site: LMLD20. This code will be good for the coming week!
My squash did not do well this year. I think my garden is actually getting shadier maybe. What a disaster! I had so many unripe tomatoes when the frost hit, and these squashes were totally green.
Do you think they will ripen in the house? And be any good at all?
In positive news, I planted 80 cloves of garlic in between the rain and the hard frost, so, feeling accomplished! And I got my DIY greenhouse frame back up and ready to go in the late winter.
Now turning my energy to knitting as the days grow decidedly colder…
bits & pieces
- I want to highlight this interview with Bishop Schneider. All of us, at some level, feel that we are fighting off some serious evil outside of our home, but we're not sure we can do it. Bishop Schneider draws on his own experience growing up with a committed, faithful mother and father to offer sound advice for all of us, no matter what the particular challenge we face might be. It's not long — please watch and share!
Some gems:
- “I had the privilege of living in a time of persecution.”
- “The children have to receive the faith with the milk of the mother.”
- “Establish a culture of domestic churches.”
- “You must withdraw your children [from schools pushing sex ed] — you cannot expose your children to a moral danger… be ready to suffer.”
- I had great success teaching my 6-year-old granddaughter to knit Continental Style (as I do), using a rhyme I found in this helpful post. She is off to the races — she already finished her second dishcloth!
- Our schola is (at last! I've been hoping for this!) learning the Bogoroditse Devo, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Ave Maria from his sublime All Night Vigil.
- My 11-Month-Old Baby’s HR Discrimination Complaint – McSweeney fun
from the archives
- Do you wonder how to begin a life of prayer with your family? I have lots of posts about just that, and of course our book, The Little Oratory (affiliate link), will have you on your way in no time!
- Here's how I did my greenhouse. I am pondering some sort of solar-powered battery-operated heater in there. Any thoughts on that?
the liturgical year
Prayer, to be something other than a good intention, quickly dropped (like most good intentions), needs to be grounded in the Liturgical Year. This is one of those things that the more you delve into it, the more important and fruitful it becomes. Today is a great example — it seems almost absurd to have a feast day for the dedication of a church! What will those Catholics think of next! But read the readings… soon you will get the hang of it and see how deep it goes.
Monday is the feast of St. Martin. Make your lanterns (lots of tutorials for jars and tissue paper — try this one, and please do use real candles!), have your procession! Sunday night is perfect for this!
Here's what I have posted in the past about this feast:
I know that interest in celebrating Martinmas (November 11 — also — and not merely coincidentally! Veterans’ Day) has grown along with Waldorf schooling*, and that’s understandable! It’s so appealing for children to have a lantern procession along with a charming story of charity — a soldier who, for love of God, is renowned for cutting his Roman military cloak in half to give it to a naked beggar – Christ in disguise.
*not that I endorse Waldorf, which has a surface appeal but is deeply misguided — just remarking on how this particular tradition came to be revived.
I have been asked on several occasions about music for the celebration and especially for the procession. I’m hardly any kind of expert, but I came across two hymns that I think would be great — if we start learning them now, we should have them memorized by November 11! The first is the traditional ancient hymn for a saint, Iste Confessor. Here is the Gregorian Chant. Here is a transcendent rendition of the Scarlatti setting by The Sixteen:
The other is a hymn which I think is perfect for the day: The Light of the World is Jesus. (There’s a whole choral wiki page for music for Martinmas!)
Perhaps a special libation is in order to keep the grownups bonded… let's not make the mistake of turning these things into “kids' activities” — they are meant to appeal on all levels, organically and in a way that everyone misses them if they don't happen. My suggestion would be to think of it this way: We aim to incorporate the children into a universal celebration, not to rope adults into a kids' event.
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Melissa D says
I sang the Bogoroditse Devo with a local university choir several years ago. Singing it felt like seeing the heavens opened. I can’t describe it any other way.
Leila M. Lawler says
Yes, Melissa, this music is out of this world.
Caitlin L says
Oh, would be interested to hear more about the shortcomings of the Waldorf style of education. My oldest is four; I am just browsing around in the world of home education and on the surface it certainly is appealing. I sense a bit of neopagan tendencies in most of the internet sources I’ve come across; is that what you’re referring to, or something deeper?
If you like Slavic/Orthodox church music, for personal devotion I highly recommend “Agni Parthene” https://youtu.be/YhXReeCLQQs (English) and https://youtu.be/C7vvPXz-Qes (Slavonic, starts about a minute in).
Also this setting of Psalm 134-5; the first fifteen minutes or so of this video 🙂 https://youtu.be/mOOuuU0VUYQ
Jennifer says
Oak Meadow curriculum (oakmeadow.com) has many elements of Waldorf education (gentle learning, nature based) without the quasi-religious elements of Waldorf. As children get to older grades, there is an emphasis on reading classic literature. I have found it to be a great “spine” for our homeschool and very compatible with Charlotte Mason style too.
Caitlin says
Neat, thank you for the tip!
Marie says
Did you get the tomatoes in before the frost? You probably already know a trick for ripening in the house, but thought some others might not! This is the one my parents used to do. We had a ton of unripe ones this year, so we put them in a cardboard box with newspaper between layers and on top. Put it somewhere out of the way (we use the basement). Check them every few days, move around as necessary, and you’ll wind up with red tomatoes. We’ve been enjoying our own tomatoes for nearly a month since we had to pull them… and still have a bunch now in the fridge. (Plus, all the spaghetti sauce we made in August and September will last even longer. We had very fruitful tomatoes this year.)
Leila M. Lawler says
Marie, the tomatoes are fine, thank you! I was wondering about the squash! They are slowly turning a bit yellow and I just wonder if they will be any good!
Lisa G. says
Hey, Marie – this is what we used to do with green tomatoes: wrap ’em up in newspaper and let them get red. Except that now I have come to realize that they don’t need to be wrapped up, or in a box, or anything! I had some in a plastic bag and they started to ripen. I have others on a windowsill and they are turning red. I think they will turn red anywhere. 🙂
Kristin Wilde says
The squash should also ripen fine. I live in Southern Alberta and our frost date is Sept 21 so my butternut, acorn and sugar pumpkins are almost always un ripe when we take them in with the tomatoes and peppers. And they ripen in the basement over the next few months and we eat them throughout the winter.
Diana says
What a lot of wonderful articles! It’s going to take me all week to savor them – thank you!
I would love to hear your thoughts on Waldorf. I was at first entranced with it, having a friend whose children attended one, but then began to detect not-so-subtle themes of neo-paganism in what she was telling me about her children’s activities there. I quickly realized, for example, that the children’s celebration of Martinmas had absolutely nothing to do with St. Martin or with the Christian faith in any form.
We make our Martinmas lanterns out of tin cans. The cans are cleaned and washed, marked with a dot pattern with sharpie, filled with water, and frozen (to maintain the form while working). Then one uses a nail and hammer to punch out the dot pattern (plus hanger holes in the top). Then they are painted. I also love your lovely idea of colored tissue-paper Martinmas lanterns – maybe we will try those for next year!
I’m so glad to see the blog active – thank you!
Your Martinmas-celebrating Protestant reader,
Diana
P.S. Since we usually have your Christmas pudding on Epiphany (that is, when we make it sooner than April, which was when it was made last year), we are going to try making your Honey Cake for Candlemas. Thank you for the recipe!
Victoria says
Rudolf Steiner (creator of Waldorf education) was a neo-pagan with some really odd ideas. You don’t have to do a whole lot of internet searching to read about it; among other things, he believed that Lucifer and Gabriel are both Angels with different qualities that we can learn from and that we find balance between the two. I give Waldorf a wide berth.
Montessori was a committed Catholic and her style shares similarities with Waldorf. Most Montessori schools today are secular, with her Christianity stripped out, but do a little digging and you will find them (Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a good example)
Charlotte Mason was a committed Anglican who’s method also has some pedogogical similarities, but Christ and the Holy Spirit are integral parts of the whole.
Leila M. Lawler says
Yes, the philosophy is not grounded in reality at all. There is an appealing surface attraction and many beautiful aspects, but underneath is occult mysticism and gnosticism.
But of course, Martinmas long precedes the interest revived by Waldorf education — let’s recover it as our own.
Dixie says
Amazing interview with the Bishop. He spoke with such candor!! He used the word “traitor.” Nobody says that but, well, of course.
Candor is what is lacking now in the Church. I find his words hugely encouraging.
Thrift at Home says
I had so many green tomatoes! I made salsa verde and canned it – my most recent blog post is on that, in fact. We have tried in years past to ripen the tomatoes wrapped in newspaper, but honestly, when the weather turns frosty, we are less interested in fresh tomatoes. They taste best to us in summer.
Lisa G. says
Margo, it’s true that when they ripen indoors they are not the same as those which ripen outside. 🙁