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Monday, March 31, 2014

40 Days of Memory Lane

Yes, on this auspicious day, my fortieth birthday, I shall commence the forty-day parade down memory lane, beginning, fittingly, with a photo of my round self with my lovely grandmother (and my big sister, who hit 40 waaaaay before I did).

My parents, with Holly and me, traveled to Aruba to visit my grandparents. My grandparents spent many years on the island (twenty?) as missionaries. My grandfather ran a radio station there.

I was a very fat baby.

But my parents were glamorous.

And one more for this evening, before I run out to enjoy book club with my best lovelies. (It has been a busy weekend and Monday. I hope to have more time to post this week!)

P.S. I am the one in the red jumpsuit. Admit it: you’re intimidated by my fabulous style.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Witness

 

“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet; what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything—the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’” Shall We Dance?

Have you met Rueben, Swede, Davy, and Jeremiah Land? John Ames of Gilead? Jayber Crow? I would love to introduce you.

Rueben, John, and Jayber are witnesses.

In Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River (every sentence, from first to last, a masterpiece), eleven-year-old Rueben says this:

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.

I believe I was preserved, through those twelve airless minutes, in order to be a witness, and as a witness, let me say that a miracle is no cute thing but more like the swing of a sword.

Make of it what you will. Yes.

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a novel that struck me to the core. In a way similar to Peace Like a River, it is a profound look into the essence of life. What it means to live. What it means to be present. To be a witness to one’s own life as well as the lives of others. To be a being in time and yet part of eternity. To be filled with awe by the miracle of life. To have faith in times of grief. To see beauty in the ordinary. To wrestle with questions. To have grace for the human-ness of others.

But rather than seeing it all through the eyes of youth, John Ames of Gilead, Iowa, is reflecting over seventy-six years of hard life. This is a man humble, gracious, and profound. He sees eternity in a human story.

“I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all be changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.”

While both novels are works of fiction, they contain truth that is often inaccessible in works of non-fiction. Analogical truth. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

“Fable is more historical than fact because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.”

My friend Jessye and I read A Handmaiden’s Tale about the same time we read Gilead, and she remarked on the surprising coincidence (due to the extreme differences in theme and purpose) that both books have a Gilead. She discovered that Gilead means “hill of testimony or witness.” Knowing the definition brings a new depth to both books (words matter!).

In telling our own stories we must, whether intentionally or inadvertently, tell the stories of those whose lives are inextricably entwined in ours. We are witnesses to the lives, the stories surrounding us. [This blog is my Gilead, my hill of testimony. These pictures, my witness.]

And then I met Jayber Crow. He was my introduction to Wendell Berry.

I won’t pretend that I was sucked in from the beginning. Though well-written and full of interesting anecdotes of life and people, I spent the first two-thirds of the book wondering where it was going. I remember Andrew Kern talking about his "non-linear brain" and that he liked to think that he was seeing things from the perspective of eternity, which is exactly how I felt about Jayber Crow by the end (and Gilead in retrospect). It was outside of time, looking down at all the completed threads at once.

While I am decidedly a linear-thinker who connects best with a beginning, a straight, chronological line through the middle, and package wrapped with a bow at the end, I am learning to embrace the non-linear tapestry of eternity as well as questions without answers or formulas.

Jayber writes his story as he is looking back on his life, as non-linear as John Ames. In the early chapters of the book, Jayber has a little exchange with a teacher soon after he feels called (or obligated) to the ministry.

I said, “Well,” for now I was ashamed, “I had this feeling maybe I had been called.”

“And you may have been right. But not to what you thought. Not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

And then we are invited to live out the questions with Jayber as he observes life as a small-town barber. A little at a time. In stories of community and nature. Of soul-wrenching grief and loss and beauty and laughter. Of integrity, or the lack thereof. Of exquisite human-ness.

Berry allows his characters to be what they are, without manipulating them to be what they ought. Not white-washed. Not vilified.

I have no desire to spoil the unfolding of the conclusion, but I wish to share a few favorite quotes.

p 126

“They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have…”

p 127

“I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had use their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a networks of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstruck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.”

p 329

“It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain. It is a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that you are a human and therefore joined by kind to all that hates the world and hurries its passing—the violence and greed and falsehood that overcome the world that is meant to be overcome by love.”

p 353

“I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go.”

p 49

“Everything bad was laid on the body, and everything good was credited to the soul. It scared me a little when I realized that I saw it the other way around. If the soul and body really were divided, then it seemed to me that all the worst sins—hatred and anger and self-righteousness and even greed and lust—came from the soul. But these preachers I’m talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world.”

p 51

“But now I was unsure what it would be proper to pray for, or how to pray for it. After you have said “thy will be done,” what more can be said? And where do you find the strength to pray “thy will be done” after you see what it means?”

p 71

“The university thought of itself as a place of freedom for thought and study and experimentation, and maybe it was, in a way. But it was an island too, a floating or a flying island. It was preparing people from the world of the past for the world of the future, and what it was missing was the world of the present, where every body was living its small, short, surprising, miserable, wonderful, blessed, damaged, only life.”

p 204

“Time, which is supposed to heal, only made them old.”

p 205

"History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings."

p 210

“Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming back: Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of the community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn’t traveled around it a time or two?”

p 249

"Hate succeeds. This world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at... nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane. Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time, unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope.

"But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

"Maybe love fails here, I thought, because it cannot be fulfilled here...

“She was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity."

p 322

“The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?”

p 356

“I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say, “Good-good-good-good-good!” like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith.”

Sunday, March 23, 2014

SPRING!

 

I have good, good news. Spring is here. Not only is spring here, but we’ve had SUNSHINE in our neck of the woods. It does wonders for the mind and spirit. We have another day of lovely weather before it turns liquid gray around here.

 

We’ve spent time outside this week, working on yard clean-up and such. It has felt good to breathe fresh air and feel the rays of the sun—even if it hasn’t been super warm (50s and 60s, but tomorrow should reach 70 degrees).

The boys got new bikes, and they’ve seen a lot of action in just a few days—even when it’s hard to put down a good book.

 

The boys and Russ are also in the middle of a two week break from swim practices. Hallelujah. Russ desperately needed some breathing room in his schedule—even if the break has been full of other odd jobs.

 

We attended a wedding yesterday (Saturday) and a big joint sister-birthday party this afternoon. No pictures. Tragic. I also intended to complete this post days ago, and I’m just getting around to finishing it…

 

I turn 40 in one week. I had grand visions of a drumroll of some sort, but it may turn out to be anticlimactic after all is said and done.

About that energy thing… You may be very proud of me. I’ve been outside some, but I’ve also worked out with the Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred DVD FIVE TIMES since my “energy begets energy” post last week. Considering I could hardly move after the first two workouts, I’m very proud of myself. I tell myself that it is only 20 minutes. I have absolutely no excuse, and it is a great workout in 20 minutes. It felt rather terrific last night (for a lazy person who hates to exercise, anyway), and I’m not sore today. Progress.

Have you read those little poster things that mentions a bunch of things women should be able to accomplish (home-cooked meals, a clean house, homeschooling kids, quality time with husband, whatever) and then the punch-line: pick two. Well, my poster would read: pick one. This week—working out, yes; eating well, no; up early, no. Sigh.

Maybe I can manage TWO things this coming week. That would be fantastic.

In reviewing the past month or so of posts, I wondered whether my readers feel like they get whiplash bouncing from subject to subject. (Do you?) I sure am all over the place, aren’t I? Like a box of chocolates…

Are you on spring break this week? We don’t have Classical Conversations tomorrow, but the boys still have choir and we’ve had enough breaks in the past two months to last until June. Besides, it’s time for some serious Memory Master business! I’ve got all my memory work down, but the boys have a little way to go before mastery.

And some food for thought while I’m busy being productive this week:

On Reading

::  Hope from an Unlikely Place @ Story Warren

Perhaps the days we feel least like reading stories of knights and dragons, of giant wooden horses and sea serpents, and of mythical gilded boxes filled with the problems of the world – are the very days that we need to catch a glimpse of the shadow of Hope. In the beginning, Hope spoke while hovering over darkness. In the end, it will sound like rushing waters and blaring trumpets. But while we’re waiting, Hope’s whisper can be heard in the most unexpected of places – like the funerals of saints and the flutter of fairy wings.

::  Threads @ Story Warren

When our children emerge from home and set out on their own adventures, they will encounter many foreign lands, each with its own set of myths, customs, and adventures. Yet they will not be venturing on their own. Deeply embedded in their souls, they will carry the adventures of Pooh on a blustery day, Sir Lancelot as he fights for all that is good, and Bilbo Baggins, although conflicted, as he sets off for his Tookish adventures…

On Fear, Sorrow, and Joy

::  Love Begets @ The Rabbit Room (This post was about the death of a pet, to which I cannot relate, but this passage jumped out at me)

So here is what I want to remember and never forget: Anxiety is the devil. Fear is a taste of hell because it cuts us off from the ever-offered rest of God’s love. And fear cannot do one damn thing to avert the thing feared. Sorrow, on the other hand, is a kind friend, and when it comes, grace comes, too, and all the tender mercies of God. All fear is the fear of loss and death; all love comes with a price tag of pain; all true sorrow has its counterpoint of joy. And it’s real. We’re living it in the most vivid way. And if we’re running along the beach laughing at one moment and weeping over the grief that is coming the next, well then, this is life abundant, the full package. And the joy is more real than the grief because the joy is forever and the pain is for but the passing shadow of this life.

On Music and Repetition

::  One more time: Why we love repetition in music @ Aeon Magazine

In fact, part of what it means to listen to something musically is to participate imaginatively.

Repetition serves as a handprint of human intent. A phrase that might have sounded arbitrary the first time might come to sound purposefully shaped and communicative the second.

Repeated exposure makes one sound seem to connect almost inevitably to the next, so that when we hear ‘What is love?’, ‘Baby, don’t hurt me’ immediately plays through our minds. Few spoken utterances contain this irresistible connection between one part and the next. And when we do want bits of speech to be tightly bound in this way – if we’re memorising a list of the presidents of the United States, for example – we might set it to music, and we might repeat it. Listening seems musical when the current bit of sound feels like it’s inextricably pulled to the next bit of sound. Repetition intensifies this effect.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Classical Conversations ~ Let’s Talk about Challenge A

We are wrapping up our fourth year with Classical Conversations. Can it possibly have been that long since we took the plunge?

I wrote a detailed post about Classical Conversations a short while into our third year, and not much has changed. All three boys are in the morning Foundations classes for the fourth year while Lola hangs out in the nursery. This is Levi’s second year in the afternoon Essentials class and Luke’s first. Leif attends an afternoon play camp and then an early elementary choir class. (Levi and Luke attend beginning choir after Essentials.) Levi, Luke, and I are all working toward becoming Memory Masters again this year (Cycle 2).

But next year opens a whole new chapter. Challenge.

Levi will be enrolled in the full-day Challenge A class for 7th grade, with a full plate of assignments for his week at home.

The Classical Conversations Challenge levels include 6 “seminars”: Grammar, Exposition and Composition, Debate, Research, Rhetoric, and Logic. Students complete work at home and come prepared to present and discuss during class one day each week for 30 weeks.

This is going to be a tremendous transition for Levi. Half of me is excited for the new opportunity and half is filled with trepidation. It is fairly easy for me to pinpoint what will come easily and what will be a struggle. Time will tell if I’m correct.

I’ve spent some time thinking over the ways in which he is prepared, and where we might be able to close the gap during the next few months.

:: Grammar—“Latin A” using Henle First Year Latin

We’ve been progressing slowly with Latin for the past 4 years using Prima Latina, Song School Latin, Latina Christiana, and First Form Latin. I think Levi will be well-prepared for a strong start in Henle Latin if we can finish up First Form Latin in the next few months.

The strong grammar foundation he has received in Essentials will be helpful as well.

:: Exposition and Composition—Literature, Discussion, & Persuasive Writing

Challenge now uses The Lost Tools of Writing, and I’m excited that Levi has the opportunity to use this program. I have the teacher’s manual and the DVDs. Now I just need to find some time to read and watch. I did attend a Lost Tools of Writing workshop a year ago, so I’m hoping that gives me a little head start. Levi has been writing with IEW’s history-themed writing books for the past two years in Essentials, but prescribed writing is definitely a struggle (he enjoys free-writing on his own topics). He has two big writing assignments coming up at the end of this school year—a research paper and a persuasive essay. I’m praying for a strong finish.

I think Levi has previously read all of the literature selections, and both of us will re-read them over the summer. It should take him a day or so, and me all summer long. [sigh]

 

:: Debate—Geography

Levi has had a lot of geography exposure through CC Foundations, but drawing the entire world from memory is going to be a huge challenge! I hope to have him regularly draw maps through the summer, and he’ll be spending quite a bit of time on the geography quizzes at Sheppard Software. I’ve purchased the recommended Compact Atlas of the World to get him started.

::  Research—Natural Science

The first semester involves researching an assigned topic each week. The students record their research, illustrate or make a model of their findings, and present the results in class during the seminar. If I understand correctly, the students are able to use the IEW model for writing these papers. Levi and I might try a practice run or two with our own science topics over the summer.

The second semester involves drawing, labeling, and memorizing nine body systems. I have the biology worksheets used in class, so we will probably just browse the book so that we can familiarize ourselves with the general idea. The Foundations classes will be memorizing human body systems during the first half of the year (and Levi went through that cycle a couple years ago).

::  Rhetoric—Clear Reasoning

The first semester (I believe) uses the book It Couldn't Just Happen: Knowing the Truth About God's Awesome Creation, which I’ve purchased and will pre-read. Students are assigned weekly reading, outlining, and summarizing, and also memorize a series of catechism-style questions.

During the second semester, students work through The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning. Levi attended a 3-day logic camp (using the same book) last summer, has read the book, and has watched the DVD. He enjoyed it all, and I think he’ll be glad to go through it in-depth.

[Edited to add] This is a fantastically fun illustrated book of fallacies, online for free, that complements The Fallacy Detective. I’ll have Levi read through it a few times.

::  Logic—Mathematics

Levi has been using Teaching Textbooks, but the recommended text for Challenge A is Saxon Math 8/7. Since Levi has just finished Teaching Textbooks 6 and it is not necessarily a rigorous program, I’ve purchased Saxon 7/6 with the Teaching Tapes (recommended by Leigh Bortins). Levi will work through 7/6 over the next five months. He won’t finish it (I don’t expect that he will complete a lesson daily over the summer), but I’m hoping it makes the transition to Saxon 8/7 a little easier.

 

This Challenge program will be a new experience for us, so I’ll keep you posted as we go through our year!

(Nothing will change for Luke and Leif, though Lola may spend our community day off-campus with my mom or sister. She doesn’t turn four until the first of October, and I’d like to wait another year before enrolling her in Foundations.)

Have you had a child go through Challenge A? Would you like to share your experience or tips that might be helpful?

[Edited to add] The recent post, What’s it like to be a Challenge parent?, at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood is a great resource and encouragement. Check it out!

Friday, March 14, 2014

Energy Begets Energy

 

“And what is a man without energy?   Nothing - nothing at all.” ~Mark Twain  

But what do you do if you don’t have any to start with?

Overwhelming surroundings or circumstances throw me into energy conservation mode. And it doesn’t take much to overwhelm me.

Fight or flight? Nah, I just play dead.

When I hit energy conservation mode, a grinding halt, it is only by God’s grace that I can bust out of it. How does one change by sheer force of will, when one has no will to force?

Seriously, while most of you are itching to get outside and stretch your limbs and breathe fresh air, maybe dig in the dirt a little, I just want to huddle into myself. A small cocoon.

Driving the boys to swim practice the other day, I noticed people out and about. They were running, biking, walking and talking, throwing javelins, gardening, busy being alive. It made me weary just watching them. Can you imagine?

Exercise is the last thing on my priority list when the day’s to-do list is stacking up like Mt. Vesuvius about to blow, and I can’t summon the energy to tackle it. Why stop at today’s to-do list? What I wouldn’t give for tunnel vision when I allow the week’s, the year’s to-do list to beat me down.

By God’s grace.

Today He gave me periodic blue skies and sunshine. And the will to go outside with the kids and walk/run/bike for a little bit.

A mustard seed of energy. That begat energy.

 

It’s not like the world was coming to an end this past week.

Just post vacation disaster and laundry explosion. Ants. [shudder] Subsequent deep cleaning of several areas I had no desire to deep clean (and the in-progress disaster). Deep cleaning of bathroom cupboards while in procrastination/avoidance mode. Daylight Savings (there went my early mornings). A disastrous house (again, still, always). Carb binging. Clean eating detox. Classical Conversations (for which I was totally not prepared). PMS. Enneagram rabbit trail (more about this in a minute) and subsequent emotional breakdown (see “PMS”). Schedules thrown off by unplanned visitors and broken appointments. Lessons. [cough] (We’ll be schooling through August…)

 

I knew exactly what I needed to do, even if I didn’t want to do it. Eat well. And I have—for the past six days. Well, except for the plain semi-sweet chocolate for a couple days because, ahem (see “PMS”).

Turning that around was a minor miracle in itself. But I must. MUST.

My go-to versatile, convenient, tasty, healthy, paleo food has been the sweet kale salad kit from Costco. It's a crunchy green salad mix with broccoli slaw, thinly-sliced Brussels sprouts, shredded cabbage, kale, and chicory. It comes with cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and poppy seed dressing, but I've found many ways to use it without. The greens mix adds great crunch to any other salad (I specifically LOVE it in taco salad, with or without other greens). It is great stir-fried as a hot side dish with sliced almonds or as a main dish with chicken sausage or bacon. Or stir-fried and covered with spaghetti sauce (instead of noodles). But my most favorite way to eat it is with a creamy slaw dressing and pulled pork. Delish.

And then I cleaned up a few rooms. No, not clean, but passable enough not to trigger emotional and mental breakdown upon entry.

Yesterday I busted out the basic to-do list. Dishes, laundry, lesson prep. And got to bed at a reasonable hour.

Today I managed to kick myself out of bed early. Spent some quiet devotion/study time. Buckled down to lessons with the boys. No screens for the kids. Breathed fresh air. Stretched my legs and lungs.

Life begets life. Energy begets energy.

Now, about that Enneagram rabbit trail. I was going to skip it, because it’s bedtime, but it ties into and leads to another thing that I want to end with.

Y’all know I have a thing for personality tests. I have a serious passion for Myers-Briggs types. Well, the rabbit trail started with a blog series by Leigh Kramer. So I took this free Enneagram test.

According to my friend Tsh, Myers-Briggs supposedly deals with your consciousness; Enneagram deals with your unconscious. MB is about our "True Self;" Enneagram is about the defenses we use to protect our "True Self." It reveals our weaknesses; our tendencies when we're stressed.

And this is what my results told me:

Type 6: The Security-Oriented Type

I must be secure and safe to survive. (Very strong score on this one.)
I must be helpful and caring to survive.
I must be knowledgeable to survive.
I must be perfect and good to survive.
I must maintain peace/calm to survive.
I must be impressive and attractive to survive.

And then it told me that my score was “very unhealthy”, that I needed to “work on my physical health and fitness and my “psychological health.”

Like a knife, people.

Maybe I took the test on the wrong day of the month.

So then I took another test because I couldn’t let it go, and I wanted different results—which I received.

Type 4: The Individualist

They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity.

  • Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance
  • Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an
       identity)

That was the last personality test I took.

[Maybe this is a good time to change the subject and tell you about a test that went much better for me. I conquered the world history timed test. I can now type the name of every world country in under 9 minutes. Because I must be knowledgeable, perfect, and impressive to survive.]

I was going somewhere with this…

Oh, yes. I went to a swim team awards potluck this evening and made good food choices because I’m on a roll and energy begets energy. While I was sitting at the table eating my fruit, veggies, and meatloaf, the guest speaker got up to talk about…health and fitness. Yep. “Eat whole foods. Do strength training and cardio for a half hour (not more). You need to push your body. You need to breathe hard so your lungs get stronger. You need to stress your muscles so they get stronger.”

Okay, okay. Message received. I drove home, dusted of the 30 Day Shred, and did cardio and strength training for 20 minutes.

That’s something. A very little something, but maybe it will beget another something. But first, sleep.

“Energy and persistence alter all things.”  ~Benjamin Franklin

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Andrew Kern on Rest and Assessment

For those of you eagerly waiting for me to organize and share my notes from the Andrew Kern seminars I attended, I have exciting news. CiRCE is releasing the video of the Medford seminar, so you are able to hear exactly what I heard. This is the first video in a six part series.

CiRCE also has an audio version of his talk, Assessment That Blesses. The audio version is a focused talk, which is wonderful if you are specifically needing to hear more complete (and linear) thoughts on the subject. The conference in Medford was more interactive, therefore more rabbit trails were taken. [grin]

I’d love for a few of you to watch the video and then join me for a conversation in the comments!

Have you listened to Andrew Kern before? Sometimes his ideas take a while to sink in. I was slightly overwhelmed the first time I listened to him. I think it was this interview (without the benefit of the visual presentation):

)