This afternoon Anna and I were allowed to escape from our domestic prison for a spell (that’s a joke, ahem), to do a good deed, to run a special errand, and to do some shopping. We also put gas in the tank of the car, the vehicle we have set aside for the girls to use. It did not escape our notice as we filled up our shopping cart and gas tank that the cost of the necessities we purchased was more than last time we shopped. For example, for our large family we buy large eggs in a flat of 5 dozen, and at one store where we thought we might purchase them (since Steve forgot to get them at Costco yesterday, though he did a great job getting everything else on the list, bless his heart) the eggs were over $13.00! Thankfully, they had packs of 18 eggs on sale for a bit less, so we put five of those cartons in our basket…yes, all our eggs were in one basket (groan!) We don’t have chickens at the moment, though we will be getting more soon, but I do remember that in the spring, eggs are rather abundant, and I remember enough of our economics discussion to recall that when an item is abundant, the price should go down. Unfortunately, the grain to feed the chickens, I hear, is getting more expensive. So is the diesel fuel to take the eggs from the farms to the suppliers, and from the suppliers to the stores. Guess who gets to make up for the extra expense?

We are a-fixin’ to fix up our garden and chicken house. Our friends delivered some lovely boxes for raised beds today, and tomorrow another friend is coming to give some expert gardening advice. It takes some extra effort to take dominion of our land with the deer competing for whatever we grow, and the need for more water in our arid summers, so at first it’s not so cost-effective to produce our own food and coax eggs out of our own chickens. We do think there will be long-term benefits, though, for our efforts, and I will try to post some pics of our progress (notice how I’m assuming there will be progress?)

The compost bucket’s under the sink, the fences are being mended, and the manure will soon be spread, ha!

Planting a victory garden may be premature for some, but it’s a good idea to cultivate some thrifty habits in these turbulent economic times. Brenda has first-hand experience with dealing with financial woes, and much wisdom about weathering those storms. I like reading about her frugal finds, and she often has scrumptious pictures of the beauty she creates from limited resources, but she has started a series of posts relating some lessons learned from the trials of unemployment and loss of income her family experienced:

Recession ponderings #1– learn from my mistakes
Recession ponderings #2– getting our finances in order
Recession ponderings #3– inflation changes the rules
Recession Ponderings #4 — fear vs. faith
Recession Ponderings #5 — when challenges bring a better lifestyle

Last week Steve and I were in Berkeley. No, we didn’t take a wrong turn (or a left turn), but we deliberately chose to go there for an afternoon and evening, for a little counter-cultural immersion. We are counter-cultural ourselves, but this was in the polar opposite direction from our flight from normal. Oddly, though we encountered quite a few oddballs, we didn’t feel as out of place as we do in occasional visits to yuppie enclaves. Maybe the amazing bookstores covered a multitude of liberalism. I found some treasure, of course, including a book about C.S. Lewis the poet by Don King, my erstwhile correspondent. Whenever I run across a special book, I am wont to gasp aloud and clutch said book to my bosom. Please tell me I am not the only one to do this.

Another book I brought home, published by a Berkeley publisher, is a volume of essays by John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling. Steve says that there is a saying from Japan that “a nail that sticks up will be hammered down.” According to Mr. Taylor, that philosophy reigns in public schools, and his goal as a teacher was to subversively prevent the system from hammering his students down. He saved quite a few nails from being hammered, but being a square peg in a round hole, he eventually gave up, repenting of his complicity in helping educate for conformity. He has made it his quest to expose the agenda of the factory model of schooling and proffer alternatives to forced imprisonment during the formative years of a child’s life.

Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don’t hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn’t, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn’t go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren’t looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

There’s been some hand-wringing going on about the ludicrous pronouncements of some rogue judges in southern California regarding home education. Just this afternoon I had someone on the telephone mention the “law” that had passed here outlawing homeschooling. There’s been a lot of misinformation. I’m happy to say, though, that the outcry from sensible folks, along with God answering the prayers of many, has resonated in the places of power and now those judges are backpedaling, vacating their opinion and granting a motion for re-hearing the original case. This means their opinion is no longer binding on anyone. You can read the good news at HSLDA’s website. Praise God!

We still need to pray for a good outcome of the new hearing. We also need to be vigilant, belligerently exercising our rights, as our founding fathers advised. This is not shrinking violet time, not time to run when someone says, “Boo!” Be informed, not believing rumors about homeschooling suddenly being made illegal, and dig deep for the truth, especially when the welfare of your children is involved. Here’s the verse I am going to work on memorizing with my children tomorrow:

Be strong and of good courage;

do not be afraid, nor be dismayed,

for the Lord your God is with you

wherever you go.

~Joshua 1:9

Note: The Cates at Why Homeschool are looking for good news. “This can be as local as your baby taking his first step or you saw the first flower of spring. It could as earth shattering as someone has solved world hunger or there is a break through in a Grand Unification Theory. It could be some new insight you had about a topic you are studying, or life.” They invite you to add your post via Mr. Linky here.

I don’t want to write, just read and eat chocolate. I’ve spent a few hours the past couple of days reading on the back deck, in the comfy, cushy faux-wicker chairs Steve brought home on Saturday. I have no compunctions about kicking the children out of them. The young can sit anywhere and spryly spring up to blithely expend their energy without a care. I, however, creak rather than spring, and thus I intend to sedately sit my tushy in my cushy spot and rise with slow dignity and small reluctance when I am forced to vacate, whether by family duties or fear of sunburn.

We had a lovely Resurrection Day…feasting early in the morning, then church, then more feasting in the afternoon, with friends and loved ones, celebrating with joy the victory of our Lord over sin and death. Everything about spring reminds us of that victory over death, with new life bursting forth wherever we look.

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want–oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

I know some of you wonder what would possess a person to persist in inhabiting California, but this time of year I remember one of the reasons we are still here, and why (Steve reminds me) real estate in our state is so pricey: the weather. There’s also a lot of natural beauty in this place, even though some ugly things conspire to distract us from it. But here are a few of the springtime blessings we have recently enjoyed:

This is me with two of my oldest friends, Brenda and Susan. They are also two of my tallest friends. Actually, all of my friends are taller than me. I don’t know why that is, but I’m sure someone can dream up a nefarious, psychological explanation for it. A few weeks ago, when the weather was beginning to warm up and daffodils began to appear, I got the idea of going flip-flop shopping to celebrate. So that’s what we did. I bought two pairs. We all laughed a lot, too.

These are our daughters, whom we allowed to come flip-flop shopping with us. The young lady in pink, Jane, is my age, but she is young at heart so she got to be in a picture with the girls. My girls are in the front row because they are short like their mother, though all three are taller than me. The girls had fun shopping, even though they were with their mothers, and they giggled a lot.

This is my second-to-youngest boy. He didn’t go flip-flop shopping…as you can see, he doesn’t even require footwear. Rather, he prefers staying home and doing his school reading in a swing (It’s Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories, “The Taming of the Shrew”). Life doesn’t get much better, though I prefer reading in my cushy chair to that hard board, even though there’s no swinging action.

This is the forsythia bush in my backyard. I can see it from my cushy seat. I can even see it from my old people rocker-recliner, looking through the parlor’s French doors. The color is still vibrant yellow, almost glowing, and my youngest daughter filched some of the blossoms today to put them in a flower press for making cards. I am grateful that it blooms so profusely every year in spite of my brown thumb. Anna has become the family gardener, and we are preparing to put in a vegetable garden, as soon as we take care of putting in a deer-proof fence. If the garden can survive my brown thumb and the deer and other critters, then I may jump out of that cushy chair and dance a jig. Hope springs eternal.

I’m contentedly rocking in my “old people chair” (aka, Lane rocker/recliner), digesting a delicious dinner, our traditional St. Patrick’s Day feast.

• Corned beef
• Cooked cabbage
• Boiled red potatoes and baby carrots
• Irish soda bread with black currants
• Guinness extra stout (for those who are allowed to partake) or orange soda (for those who aren’t, and as a colorful reminder that we are of the Protestant Irish heritage)
• Key lime pie (made by my daughter)

The recent economic news may give me indigestion if I ponder it too much, but sometimes ignorance is bliss, so I won’t wrack my brain to understand it this evening. I’m sure I will have to digest the bad news sooner than I wish.

We are not into worshipping saints, and we had a good discussion today about why some historical figures are given that designation when all who name the name of Christ are called saints in the Bible. However, we do have a fond spot for dear, old Patrick, who so boldly took the gospel where darkness reigned, and who left a legacy of Christianity in a land which had been filled with paganism.

Today Dr. Grant wrote about the “Apostle of Ireland” (scroll down, no permalinks yet), and he framed his mission in terms of paradox:

We know that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to “those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness” (Matthew 5:10) and that great “blessings” and “rewards” eventually await those who have been “insulted,” “slandered,” and “sore vexed” who nevertheless persevere in their high callings (Matthew 5:12-13). We know that often it is in “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, sleeplessness, and hunger” (2 Corinthians 6:4-5) that our real mettle is proven. Nevertheless, we often forget that these things are not simply to be endured. They actually frame our greatest calling. They lay the foundations for our most effective ministries. It is when, like Patrick, we come to love God’s enemies and ours that we are set free for great effectiveness.

Jesus said, “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:44) And again, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27). Therein is the missionary impulse. Patrick’s life provides us with a stunning reminder of that remarkable Gospel paradox.

Tonight, after dinner, Daddy read us more about Patrick’s life, from an article by William Federer, explaining “how St. Patrick changed the world.” Make sure to read the outline of the decline of Rome that led to the vulnerability of the Irish coastline which led to the capture of Patrick by pirates, which led to his enslavement in Ireland, which led to the gospel bringing light to all of Europe, and thence, America. (I feel like that guy from “Connections.”) Hearing about some of the events involved with Rome’s fall made me feel a little queasy (I’m sure it was that and not eating too much corned beef) as it sounded like events in today’s news. But the culmination of the story restored some equilibrium. You see, when darkness appears to be winning, it’s only an illusion. Yes, bad things happen, but our transcendent God is not surprised nor stymied by that.

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. (Isaiah 40:22-23)

Yes, we must be doing, but we must also be trusting in God’s providence in every circumstance. Imagine the courage Patrick had, facing druids who used the heads of their enemies for footballs, and exposing their false gods for frauds and threatening to upend their hold on the souls and minds of the people of Ireland. And he won, because God has won the victory at Calvary, and Satan is not, nor ever has been, able to do the smallest evil deed without God’s providence directing events toward His own purposes. This is true even in the greatest evil deed, which was also the greatest good deed ever accomplished—the death of our Lord for the sins of His elect. And like the light which shined in Christendom through the faithfulness of Patrick, the Light which shines in the darkness is not comprehended by the darkness, but the darkness is overcome by it and always will be. Blessed paradox.

It is usually a mark of cults that they do not accept the deity of Christ, though there are some that make too much of deity (or spirit) and denigrate our Lord’s humanity, such as the Gnostics. The common denominator with those who miss the mark is that they cannot accept paradox. God is love and wrathful at the same time…huh? God is just and merciful at once? God exalts the humble and brings low the proud? It’s all quite confusing to those who want God to be understandable, but comforting to those who have any understanding of the immensity and magnificence of God. And when you embrace that paradox, then it begins to make sense, though you will never fully comprehend it in this life.

From the Valley of Vision:

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold

thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,

deepest wells,

and the deeper the wells the brighter

thy stars shine;

Let me find thy light in my darkness,

Thy life in my death,

that every good work or thought found in me

thy joy in my sorrow,

thy grace in my sin,

thy riches in my poverty

thy glory in my valley.

You can listen to the song “In the Valley” from Sovereign Grace Music here (you may need to scroll down).