Stopping to Think

This is a somewhat overdue follow-up to my post on Speaking With Your Kids . A while back, my children and I finished reading through The House at Pooh Corner  by A.A. Milne (you can see my mini-review here ). While there were things all throughout the book that struck me, this interchange near the end of the final chapter snagged my attention like a flashing red light: So they began going there, and after they had walked a little way Christopher Robin said:  "What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?"   "Well," said Pooh,"what I like best----" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. What is that called? The thing which brought this particular exchange to my attention was the fact that what Milne, through the honey-stained lips of Pooh, describes is the...

How should we speak to and with our children? Realizing that a) I'm no expert and b) I'm mostly thinking aloud, I think we need to ponder these things. That is the intention of this blog, after all. To think aloud, and to invite you to join my thinking. On Conversing: Some form of this post has been stirring in my mind for many a moon, but what finally kicked me over the edge to put finger to keyboard was this article in The Atlantic . The focus of the piece, if you have not read it, is on early childhood education, preschool specifically, and the fact that though children are being taught  more information than every before, they are in fact learning  less. The author, a professional in the field, discuses various reasons for this, but then points to a number of things that provide a genuinely healthy learning environment for children. Here is a section: As an early-childhood educator, I’ve clocked many hours in many preschool classrooms, and I have found that I c...

Just a few thoughts on, as the title suggests, repentance, forgiveness, and consequences. Many of you may be familiar with the story of David and Bathsheba (if not, you may read it here ). You may also be familiar with David's prayer in Psalm 51 ( here ), In Psalm 51, David makes a most curious assertion when he says to God, "against you, you only, have I sinned." Having performed an even cursory reading of the story, we know that David has either coerced Bathsheba into adultery, or (perhaps more likely) simply used his power as king to demand her "services". At best he's led her into sin, at worst he's raped her. Then we have her husband, Uriah, whose wife has been used sexually by a man to whom he has been exceedingly loyal, and continues to be, even after the fact. And when Bathsheba becomes pregnant, David tries to trick Uriah into coming home and making this look like his kid; when that fails, he has him purposefully killed in battle. Those are ...

This something of a procrastination post. I have far more important things to be doing. Yet here we are. I love gardening. That is not to say that I am a gifted, skilled, or even particularly competent gardener. I just enjoy it. As I took a walk around my neighborhood this evening with my pipe stuffed with some Old Shenandoah tobacco, and eventually wound up back in my yard, I had a few rambling thoughts about this activity, at least as it exists in my life. Gardening is far from cost effective. Every time I endeavor to start a garden, my rationale is that I will be saving my family all sorts of money in the long run. Sure, I have spent forty plus dollars in seed and at least that again in topsoil, compost, and potting soil, but surely there will be a payoff, right? Then I realize that I have planted the sorts of things we tend to eat...cabbage, spinach, lettuce, zucchini. Do you have idea how much produce of that nature you can buy for eighty dollars? A lot. But homegrown things...