Resurrection

I have in my hands a leaf
Mine to hold, firm as belief

I saw it hanging on a tree
Crimson for the world to see

Beholding it, I looked at death
Blood-drenched in its final breath

The leaf will die, and join the mold,
Lay for a time, growing cold

Its glory is not finished just
There is a mystery in its dust

After stone-cold winter's grief
Will come a resurrected leaf

Not to the leaf alone I hold,
Nor tale of seasons, yearly told
But another resurrection story-
Christ crucified and raised to glory.


(Fall 2005)

Pet Peeves

I hate it when
I get grit in my flip-flops.
I love it when
I get somewhere on time.
I hate it when
I run over butterflies.
I love it when
The pencil sharpener works.
I hate it when
Bedsheets need to be changed.
I love it when
It's cold enough for two blankets on the bed.
I hate it when
I have to take two showers in a day.
I love it when
I get all the green lights on High street right in a row.
I hate it when
The alarm goes off and it still feels like 2 a.m.
I love it when
My dresser stays clean for more than half a day.
But I hate it when
It turns out I'm the one who has to put away my stuff.

Thank God It's Thursday

TGIT. As in, "Thank God it's Thursday." My "work week" (haha) is finished. All the mini English lessons for the week are wrapped up. Actually, I really love getting to do English with Mattie and my cousins and the Crowes, and being at the Crowes' in the mornings. I just discovered suddenly this afternoon that I was tired. So droopingly tired. Maybe it's the new schedule, late nights, or an extra dose of wacky, unpredictable emotions (as in, more than usual).

I realized just now that I did seven writing lessons this week between five different kids...and considering that I didn't prepare for it much at all and teaching them writing like that is pretty new, I guess that did take a lot out of me. I was happy about all the practice though. I feel like I'll be able to get in a groove of some sort before too long.

Everything feels like a big experiment, like a cat testing the way in the dark with its whiskers. Each of the kids is smart and shows signs of "getting" the things I'm doing with them though, and a get the sense that its "working." Only time will tell, I guess. That seems like it would be the scariest thing for homeschool moms-- the idea that only time can show if the kids are actually "getting educated." Since every family is different, school is an experiment. What if you wake up one day to find that whatever you've been trying to teach them for the past three years didn't take? AHHHHH!!!! Ok, I know that's a little exaggerated. I can tell that they are learning something.

Perhaps, I tell myself, my brain wouldn't be spread so thin if I had just taught my "students" together instead to privately tutoring each one of them. The only "class" lesson was with Mattie, Jane, and Catherine today when we went out in the woods and wrote poems about fall. (Since it mercifully dipped into the 50's last night.) But no. I try to teach them several at a time, but their individualness pops out everywhere and grabs at me...not to mention that they're different ages and levels. Each one has different needs, and, though I may be an audacious little pipsqueak still wet behind the ears, my greatest desire in teaching them is to meet and help them where they are personally. I feel like I'm accomplishing so much more when I work with them one at a time! Emotionally I can't seem to deal with more than one person at a time. That goes for mentally in a lot of cases, too!

Although the "teaching thing" is taking some adjusting right now, I am having fun with the variety I'm getting to experience this year. Here's what the teaching week looked like...

Tuesday: Counting, Robert Louis Stevenson, reviewing phonics cards, getting writing assignment started, telling time, 5x's table, poetry appreciation at the library.

Wednesday: More numbers practice (involving sidewalk chalk), Jack and the Beanstalk, two separate writing assignments, spelling lesson.

Thursday: A spot of geography, phonics, counting, Rumplestiltskin, reading about heliocopters and making model rotor blades (which flew beautifully from the top of the stairs when twisted properly), spelling lesson, writing fall poetry, revising writing assignment.

Ages 4 to 14. I guess it sounds kind of like a homeschooling Mom's day only minus the responsibilities of housework, cooking, being a wife, and taking care of the rest of the kid's overall school work, health, and wellbeing. Ok, so maybe I'm not as tired as I thought I was. Think I'll go give my Mom a hug :)

"Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of his benefits; who pardons our iniqities, who heals all our diseases, who redeems our life from the pit, who crowns us with lovingkindness and compassion..." Ps. 103

Potential Poem and Ghost Suits

I want to post, but unfortunately I've been recruited to make "ghost hands" and "ghost feet" for someone small and four years old. I have no clue how to do it and no clue how he even has a clue about ghosts...it's certainly not in honor of Halloween! He says that the ghost shoudl be brown and hairy (?)

So I'll just leave you with this...maybe it will become a poem...

A brow of wizard-shaggy clouds
Broke with yellow in the early sky

Maybe it doesn't even make sense yet, but just read the words

A Piece of Delight

The last post was a draft I had to wait till today to finish, but I'm wanting to catch up on all the non-posting days I've had this week. And since I'm in the vein of other people's poetry, I may as well continue.

A writing teacher named Marjorie Frank wrote that if you want a lot of [writing] output from kids, you have to give a lot of input. (That's not word for word, but pretty close.) I've often noticed how true that is for me, but I just as often forget it and think I'm going to write something great without bothering to read anything great! Blatant arrogance, on my part! And foolishness. So, I'm trying to get "input," by reading more.

The painful thing about reading poetry, if you read anything good, is that you need to share it with somebody. And who reads poetry? It seems kind of out of date. The whole point of communication is human beings understanding each other. When you understand, and delight, you want other people to understand and delight. That's the whole idea of sharing your faith as a Christian, too, I think. You find life, and you have to share it. I'm sure God meant for other delightful things to be shared as well! So, here I'll share a poem that has delighted me since the first moment I read it, curled up in my Dad's chair entrenched in a gloomy english textbook:

BEING HER FRIEND

Being her friend, I do not care, not I,
How gods or men may wrong me, beat me down;
Her word's sufficient star to travel by,
I count her quiet praise sufficient crown.

Being her friend, I do not covet gold,
Save for a royal gift to give her pleasure;
To sit with her, and have her hand to hold,
Is wealth, I think, surpassing minted treasure.

Being her friend, I only covet art,
A white pure flame to search me as I trace
In crooked letters from a throbbing heart
The hymn to beauty written on her face.

— John Masefield, Poems
Macmillan, New York (1951)

And oh, how I ache to be "her"!

Poetry Happens Again

The anonymous comment from a few days ago sparked a little nag in me about poetry. About reading it, not writing it. I thought, "It's true, I probably ought to be reading more poetry if I want to write it, huh?"


I've been reading some great children's poems and rhymes lately, curled up with Ethan, but suddenly it dawned on me that I could try some "grown up poetry," something beyond Aunt Jobiska's cat :)

I didn't really mean to, but last night, I pulled out my book of Miltons poems- the greenish grey one with the black binding; the one I randomly bought at an antique store three or four years ago on a whim (I never buy things at antique stores!) The book has merely been decorating my dresser with a few neighbors- some of them books I actually have read, like Lord of the Rings.


All day I'd been tired, irritable, and stressed over all the little uncontrollable things in my life, and I just needed God...needed Him very much to just be more than a distant enthroned deity, or a religious teacher of bygone days. But I was laying there on the floor, cracking open a book of poetry I was sure I'd never really tackle. I read some. I skimmed some gushy stuff. Then I came to a poem called "The Passion," about the suffering of Jesus, where I read these lines:


"Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight."


That tender discription of Jesus melted me. I remembered the sermon we heard on Sunday about Jesus being the Beautiful Servant...It's so hard to picture Jesus as the tender, able, humble, unassuming Hero I need when I have a head crowded with Jesus Film images of the celsestial looking man with silky locks.


If God had been the legalistic deity I sometimes am tempted to think He is, He would have tapped His fingers impatiently, waiting for me to finish my little poetic fling and move on to, you know, the Bible before speaking to me like that. But He was so kind to just touch me with a piece of poetry.


I keep shying away from it, like an orphaned child who fears offering affection to an adopted parent, and He keeps impressing it gently:


Poetry is a ministry...
A ministry to me...
A ministry through me...

Using My Processor

I'm really all interneted out right now, but I felt a need to post, because I don't want to get out of the habit of blogging. It was hard enough to form a habit, and I'm a little disappointed at what a tenuous one it's proving to be. I guess I should just be thankful I don't have problems on the other extreme, such as addiction :)

For most of the afternoon, I've been studying computer terms on the web. The results have been delightful! Why, oh why, did I wallow in my muddle of ignorance and confusion for so long when it's no more difficult to learn these terms than to learn...well, parts of speech, for instance. Or the parts of a car. (Not that I know anything about cars either-- perhaps I should tackle that next!) Now, when I flip through the computer ads, I can reasonably comprehend what "1GB memory, 80 GB Hard Drive" means for every day life. It means that I could probably store whatever I need to in the computer and would be able to do a lot more at one time than I'm doing now!

Well, that was short, but I really have to go. My CPU is kind of strained and the bus is having trouble getting from the motherboard to the uh...never mind. I'll let it go at that.