This will make Turkson the highest-ranking African cardinal in the Church, and give him important experience in a curial position, at the heart of the Church.

(Here is a good article from Ghana Business News on the appointment and its significance: http://ghanabusinessnews.com/2009/10/24/ghana’s-cardinal-turkson-gets-closer-to-becoming-first-black-pope)

The appointment was announced at 1 pm in the Vatican Press Office, in Turkson’s presence, at a Vatican Press Conference held to “wrap up” the Synod on Africa, by Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., the Pope’s press spokesman… and Turkson looked surprised.

As I wrote the day before yesterday, in an article entitled “The Next Pope?”, I sat next to Turkson at a special dinner for journalists Thursday evening.

Turkson knew that this appointment might be in the offing, as all the journalists asked him about it. It had been rumored for many months.

But when the decision was finally taken and communicated to Turkson, it was evidently communicated without any prior warning.

Turkson, when Lombardi announced the appointment, seemed almost overcome with emotion: a legitimate pride, but also a bit of shock.

For a moment, he was speechless. Then he smiled, expressed his gratitude to the Pope for the appointment, and fell silent again, at a loss for words.

One description of the moment comes from my colleague and friend, Joan Lewis, known around the world as one of the most well-informed journalists covering the Vatican. She is the Rome correspondent for EWTN, the Catholic television network founded by Mother Angelica, and she has a “blog” about her daily experiences in Rome.

Tonight she wrote:

“Fr. Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See Press Office, who presided at today’s fourth and final press conference of the Synod for Africa, made the announcement at the very outset of the 1 p.m. conference in the press office.

“Cardinal Turkson was joined at the conference by Archbishop Damiao Antonio Franklin of Luanda, president of the Angola episcopal conference and special secretary at the synod, and Bishop Edmond Djitangar of Sarh, Chad, also a special secretary at the synod.

“Cardinal Turkson, who has been rumored for some time to succeed Cardinal Martino, seemed surprised at the announcement today, not so much for the fact of having been nominated but for the fact the nomination would be made public today. I do know for a fact that he was asked some time ago to assume this presidency, and I wrote about this in my October 2 blog, but I also know he was reluctant to leave Ghana as shepherd of his flock, and especially because he wanted to see to fruition a number of programs and initiatives that he had put into place there.”

(Here is a link to Joan’s blog: http://www.ewtn.com/news/blog.asp?blog_ID=1)

====================================

A Disappointing Press conference

The press conference was an anti-climax.

Two journalists, one from the New York Times, pressed Turkson on remarks he made at the outset of the Synod about condoms and their use in the battle against the spread of AIDS,

There were few questions about the truly central issues facing Africa, which I wrote about yesterday, including the fomenting of tribal wars by foreign corporations and governments, and the general impoverishment of Africa due to corrupt governments. This allows the riches of the continent siphoned off while tens of millions languish in poverty.

I asked Turkson if he thought he might be able to help draft the type of legislation that could impede this general exploitation of Africa, and he gave a thoughtful response.

This led Father Lombardi to comment that Turkson was demonstrating that he would likely be a “good president for the Justice and Peace Council,” which has supervisory authority in the Church over all justice and peace issues in the world.

But many of the reports about the African synod have tended to ignore the real problems of Africa, and to focus only on peripheral issues like condom use against AIDS.

Why this type of reporting?

Because this reporting reflects the agendas of the owners of the great organs of information, and not the real concerns of Africa and its people today.

Most of the world’s press views the world through the distorting lens imposed by its owners. This is to be expected: owners naturally wish to spread their vision.

But this vision, often, is of a secularized, humanistic world with moral principles in opposition to many of the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

The reporting on the Synod has tended to reflect this.

I received an email on this matter today from an leading American Catholic:

“Bob,
You should do a comment on how the NY Times reported the final statement! They almost completely ignore what you report here [in yesterday's newsflash] and make it seem that it [the African bishops' final message] was a statement about environmentalism and other things….”

My comment is this: Many journalists, no matter how well-meaning they are, cannot report in a full, balanced way on events, especially regarding the Church, because their papers or television stations are owned by corporations with little interest in the full truth, but great interest in those portions of the truth which will help sway public opinion, bit by bit, in the direction of their agenda, which is not the agenda of the Church.

The influence of these media companies, because of the financial power behind them, often is greater than the influence of all other blogs, emails and newsletters combined.

For this reason, I would like to ask a favor.

A Small Request

Could you help me by sending to me the email address of another person, or persons, who might like to receive this newsflash?

I have been sending it to about 14,200 people since June. The number has hardly changed in six months. (Hundreds have dropped off, hundreds have joined.)

If I could get the number up to 30,000, it would have 100% more impact.

Would you be willing to help in this way?

Sometimes in Rome, the ordinary faithful are the ones who best communicate the sensus fidelium, the sense of the faith, which is, after all, what we are after.

Today I met three such faithful here in the space of half an hour.

Today my niece, Abigail Murray from Boston, Massachusetts (my sister Susan’s daughter), was in town.

She is staying with an Italian family in central Italy while studying Italian on a fall semester program with her American university. She is 20, the same age as my son Christopher.

After meeting Joan Lewis by chance at lunch, we went to see Sister Margherita Marchione.

Sister Margherita, who is from New Jersey, is known as the “fighting nun” because she has spent her life defending  the reputation of Pope Pius XII. She is visiting Rome right now.

Sister Margherita, who has written 61 books, told us she had just seen former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti at noontime. (I wasn’t able to go along with her because of the press conference on the African Synod. Sometimes one would like to be two people in order to be in two places at the same time…)

“Are you married?’ Sister Margherita asked Abigail.

“No,” said Abigail.

“Would you like to become a nun?” she asked her. “I’m almost 88 now. I need someone to take my place.”

Abigail was non-committal.

And then Margherita spoke about her life as a nun.

She told us how she entered her order, the Maestre Pie Filipppini, a teaching order of nuns, in 1935, at the age of 13, in New Jersey.

“I’ve had a happy life,” she said to Abigail. “Very happy. And I can promise you, that if you become a nun, you will have a happy life, too.”

Abigail didn’t decide to sign up right there.

But she was so impressed that she asked if we could come back and talk to sister again. (I agreed that she could try to write a profile of Sister Margherita for a future issue of Inside the Vatican.)

Then we walked down the via delle Fornaci to the point where the Apostolic Palace comes into view, just at the underpass.

In recent years, I have come to know two simple Romans with large hearts, Claudio, who runs the La Vittoria restaurant on via delle Fornaci (this is on the Holy Office side of the Vatican, the other side from Borgo Pio) and Pina, who runs the sandwich shop next to La Vittoria. The sign outside her door says: “Here you can eat the best sandwiches in the world.”

I asked Claudio for a word of wisdom on this day.

“You want a word?” he said to me. “I’ll give you a word. Simplicity. La semplicità…”

He furrowed his brow, and gestured with his hand toward the city around us.

“Why do we chase after all that is new? New cars, new clothes, new experiences? Why don’t we recognize how content we can be with what we have? Our desires make us unhappy, and endless desires make us endlessly unhappy.”

He paused.

“I myself am almost ready to leave Rome and go back to the countryside, to the mountains, to my father’s farm where I was raised, and pick up a rake and hoe and grow vegetables. Life is simpler there. All this complexity of modern life… (he gestured again at the city) is a mirage. It promises happiness, but never delivers it. I’m just about ready to go back to Campobasso…”

Then I went to see Pina.

“A word of wisdom?” I said.

Pina paused, looked at me, looked at Abigail.

“A word of widom?” she said. “Heaven and hell are here.”

“Heaven and hell are here?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she said. “Inferno e paradiso stanno qui. Heaven and hell are here.”

“And?” I said.

“What ‘and’?” she answered. “The key is love. Amore. Love, and you have everything. Without love, you have nothing…”

========================================

“I really love Italy,” Abigail said to me, as we headed off to a get-together at the home of Elizabeth Lev, the writer and tour guide who is the daughter of former US Ambassador to the Holy See, Professor Mary Ann Glendon. “It’s different here than in America. The people are different…”

As part of divorce proceedings between North Raleigh residents Thomas and Venessa Mills, last Friday Wake District Court Judge Ned Mangum told Mrs. Mills that it would be in the "best interests" of her children, ages 10, 11, and 12, to attend public school next fall.  The children have been homeschooled according to a Christian-based curriculum for the past four years.

The verbal ruling reportedly came about because Mills’ estranged husband said he "objected to the children being removed from public school," as he was "concerned about the children’s religious-based science curriculum" and wants them "to be exposed to mainstream science, even if they eventually choose to believe creationism over evolution."

"It will do them a great benefit to be in the public schools, and they will challenge some of the ideas that you’ve taught them, and they could learn from that and make them stronger," Mangum told Mrs. Mills at last week’s court hearing.

Venessa Mills said in court papers that the children socialize with others their age at homeschooler activities. She also emphasized their academic success, with two performing two grade levels above their age and one performing at grade level.

"These kids are doing well," Mills told the Charlotte Observer Thursday. "That’s why it’s such an injustice. It was an injustice for the kids."

Venessa Mills and her supporters claim that Thomas was a bad parent who engaged in an adulterous relationship. Thomas Mills admits to the affair.

The judge’s order is not yet official, and is expected to be formally pronounced in a written order within weeks.  In the meantime, the story has elicited widespread outrage from conservatives and homeschooling families.

"If [Judge Magnum's] idea of socialization includes the need to challenge the Christian ideas their mother has taught them, then he not only interferes with her natural right to raise up her children, he tramples on one of the most important elements of the free exercise of religion," wrote conservative leader Alan Keyes on his blog.

Mills’ friend and fellow homeschooling mom Robyn Williams launched Homeschool Injustice, a website dedicated to overturning the order (http://www.hsinjustice.com/ ).

"I have never seen such injustice and such a direct attack against homeschooling," said Williams.

"This judge clearly took personal issue with Venessa’s stance on education and faith, even though her children are doing great. If her right to homeschool can be taken away so easily, what will this mean for homeschoolers state wide, or even nationally?"

Home school students and their parents plan to come to Raleigh on March 24 to lobby at the state Legislature, according to local news station WRAL.

The North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education estimates that 71,566 students were homeschooled in the state in the 2007-08 academic school year.

To express concern, contact:

Judicial Standards Commission: (you may reference case #08CVD17753)
P.O. Box 1122
Raleigh, North Carolina 27602
919-831-3630

State Legislators:
NC Senate–Neal Hunt (R)
919-733-5850
Neal.Hunt@ncleg.net

NC House–Ty Harrell (D)
919-733-5602
Ty.Harrell@ncleg.net

Governor Bev Perdue:
Office of the Governor
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699
Phone: (919)733-4240
Fax: (919)733-2120

We finally settled in Massachusetts five years ago. For the first couple years here, our older children attended our parish school. The first year, I was pretty active with school activities and started to feel like part of the community. Then, we bought a house on the other side of town, and had a new baby over the summer. The children started riding the bus to school that fall. The feeling of “being connected” evaporated like a summer rain. Between bus and school time, my first and third graders were gone 8 hours a day. I didn’t see the other parents in the parking lot, and I no longer had time for fundraisers. At the end of the long day, the kids would come home with homework. Many afternoons were filled with crankiness. The next year, my third child joined the ranks of school-aged children, so now we had children in grades K, 2, and 4. More cranky afternoons. The baby and I had time together, but our family wasn’t the happy, nurturing environment it should be. I started to seriously consider homeschooling. I had homeschooled the oldest child when he was in first grade — a year that saw us move from West Virginia to Michigan and finally to Massachusetts. My skeptical extended family saw wisdom in my decision (Divine Inspiration in my mind!) by the end of the year. But now, we had Mike’s family here. My mother-in-law taught at the school and my niece and nephew attended there, too. If I pulled the children, would they be offended? I offered the question to God in prayer.

The baby and I went to weekday Mass in the late spring of 2007, and I saw a mom with two junior high students. I approached her after mass with a shy, ”Do you homeschool? Are the laws strict here? Do any other Catholics around Western Massachusetts homeschool?” This gracious mom answered my questions and invited me to First Friday Mass with the group. I saw this connection to the group as a sign that God wanted me to homeschool, and our extended family has been supportive of our decision.

The Western Massachusetts Catholic Homeschoolers offered more than I had imagined. We joined the group that fall and started attending the monthly First Friday Mass and luncheon. There, the children and I all found new friends. Once a month, we looked forward to worshipping together at Mass and Eucharistic Adoration, then fellowship afterward. However, as winter set in, that feeling of isolation set in too. When I read through our Catholic Cantor newsletter, I noticed an event listing that included a Mom’s Bible Study. I called the Mom who was hosting that week to find out more. She told me about the group—moms pray while the kids play. They met weekly and were just starting a new book by Kimberly Hahn, Chosen and Cherished. I couldn’t wait to go! This group was exactly what I needed. The first time I went to Bible Study, the kids went off to play, and the baby stayed on my lap. The moms had tea and conversation until the children had all settled in. The hostess started the opening prayer, asking our heavenly Father to bless our time together, to bless our husbands in their work, and to help our children establish good friendships. As we prayed, I felt warmth and peace—the Holy Spirit filled that room.

At Bible Study, some of the moms mentioned Co-Op. I was curious—What did they do? How did it work? When I found out that French, sign language, and science were some of the subjects the students could study, I thought it would be a great opportunity for my children for the new school year. At Co-op we met more families. I never imagined how many Catholic homeschoolers there were in Western Massachusetts!

Through Co-op, Bible Study, and First Fridays, the Western Massachusetts Catholic Homeschoolers provides weekly and monthly support to area Catholic homeschoolers. The group will take that support to the next level by hosting the New England Catholic Homeschool conference, scheduled for Saturday, June 6, in Chicopee Massachusetts (just north of Springfield). The conference has commitments from 17 vendors to date (see full list at WMCH.stblogs.com), including Seton Home Study School, Bethlehem Books, and Scepter Publishers as well as registrations from homeschoolers in all six New England states, as well as some from New York and Quebec.

The agenda for the day includes two dynamic speakers and four innovative workshops to help homeschoolers plan for next fall:

Speakers

Fighting the Good Fight:

The Homeschooling Family and the Church Militant: Cynthia Montanaro

Cindy, a lifelong Catholic, is a mother and grandmother, retired after a 25 year homeschooling career. She pursued a liberal arts education at Thomas Aquinas College in California and has continued this interest in the classical method and the Great Books. She has written for Catholic magazines and newspapers, taught in various capacities at the parish level and has recently completed a memoir of her youngest son Tim, entitled Diary of a Country Mother. Cynthia is a secular Carmelite, happily married for 32 years to Andrew and lives in rural Blandford, Massachusetts.

Accepting God’s Call with Grace: Jean Golden-Tevald, D. O., FCP, CFCMC

Jean’s life includes Medical school, private practice and missionary work, marriage, children, adoption, and homeschooling. She tells us, “I took a sabbatical from practice in 1997 to homeschool our daughter (then 11 and in 6th grade), middle son (then 8 and in 2nd grade) and youngest son (then 6 and in 1st grade). In September 1999, we went to Russia and brought home two daughters (10 ½ and 9) and a son (7). I homeschooled all of them for the first year, then we started the round robins of trying to meet the educational needs of them all. We went back to Russia for one more girl (at age 10) in 2003. The 4 Russian children are full siblings. I homeschooled through 2005, by that September, everyone had returned to school in one form or another. Our biggest challenges were meeting the special needs of the children, from very gifted to severely learning disabled (not to mention learning a new language!). I learned a lot!” She runs MorningStar Family Health Center where she is a certified FertiltyCare practitioner offering Family care, Creighton NFP and NaPro Technology.

Workshops:

#1 Magdalen College answers questions about Catholic Higher Education

#2 TORCH Leaders from Traditions of Roman Catholic Homes will facilitate a discussion among support group leaders throughout New England covering topics such as organization, communication, pitfalls and of course how membership in TORCH can help. We expect Carmen Ana Klosterman, Regional Director for the East Coast and Jeanette and Bob Cohen, Associate Directors of the National organization. Bios are available at the TORCH website.

#3 Art History Museum: Need a quiet break? Stop to see these prints received by a member as a Picturing America grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

#4 Nick Morganelli, Meteorologist and homeschool dad, will present ideas for making science fun at home and in the co-op classroom. Nick, realizing his boyhood dream of becoming a meteorologist, graduated from Lyndon State College, VT with a B.S. in Meteorology in 1991. A member of the American Meteorological Society, Nick holds their Seal of Approval for Broadcasting Excellence. His love of science stems from his middle school science teachers: turning bookwork into hands-on fun and excitement!

For registration information, please visit WMCH.stblogs.com.

We hope to meet you at the conference!

We know that February is actually the longest month. 

The weather is too cold to take the children out, and the children are way too restless to make even the roomiest mansion large enough.  The bleak gray skies lower everyone’s spirits as the family stares out the window day after day, hoping for something more exciting than snow flurries.  And you can’t even remark cheerfully that spring is just around the corner.  It isn’t.  Not until after March, and maybe not even then, depending on what part of the U.S. you live in.

How can we possibly brighten up the dreariest month of the year?  Here are a few ideas:

Do St. Valentine’s Day up well.  Have the children make homemade valentines for friends and family, using stickers, rubber stamps, doilies, etc.  Short poems or spiritual bouquets make the valentines more meaningful.  The children could make up short poems about St. Valentine or compose poems about the person to whom they’re sending each valentine.  Heart-shaped cookies and maybe a skit about the life of St. Valentine would turn this into an unforgettable day.  (Granted, we don’t know tons about St. Valentine, but there is a charming legend about his curing the prison guard’s blind daughter.  Robert Sabuda’s picture book St. Valentine retells this legend for children, although I think it’s out of print.  See if you can get it through Interlibrary Loan or buy a used copy off the Internet.  Abe.com is a great resource for used books.) 

Organize a treasure hunt in whatever language you’re teaching your children.  Write the clues down in Spanish or French or Latin and hide them all over the house.  The children can find them, translate them and find the next clue.  At the end of the hunt, there should be a stash of candy or baseball cards or some little gift each child will appreciate.  (You might be able to do something similar for other subjects if you’re creative.  For example, write down math problems on each paper.  When the children figure out the answer, they can refer to a secret code you’ve made up and find out where the next clue is hidden.  This will take a little more effort but it should be fun!  Clues can be written on different colored papers and each child looks for papers of one color so they can do math problems on their own level.)

Have a concert or recital just for the family.  Children could memorize a poem, sing or play a song, perform magic tricks, or put together a skit.  Do a small recital once every week or two until the weather hits a certain temperature, say 60 degrees.

Think of indoor field trips, such as roller skating rinks, museums, aquariums, pet shops, and historical houses, depending on your location and your budget.  Some museums are free on Sundays.  If you have a baby or toddler, find out if strollers are allowed inside before you go.

Set aside one day of each week in February for educational games, science experiments, and crafts.  Surely the children will help you come up with ideas, or you can find a book in the library that will help.  This will provide a little change to your routine, and give everyone something to look forward to, without sacrificing school time.  You may want to continue this tradition into March!

Teach your children to dance — the polka will wear out the most energetic child — or have contests to see who can do the most jumping jacks or sit-ups.  You’ll have to come up with a small but tempting prize to motivate the contestants.  This will use some of that bottled-up energy for sure.

Find out what plants grow well indoors, and invest in a flower pot, potting dirt and seeds. 

Some of these ideas will take a little energy on your part, but dealing with restless, argumentative children stuck inside all day takes more than energy — some days, it takes nothing short of heroic patience.  At least this way, your energy is going toward something productive.

All of the ideas I mentioned, by the way, can count for either language arts, science, math, social studies, music or physical education so you can include days spent on these activities as part of your required 180 days of school.  They may not exactly correspond to what we’re covering in our curriculum, but if they cause us to laugh, relax and return to our books with refreshed minds, then they’ve served their purpose.

In many regions of this great land, March isn’t much easier to bear than February.  These ideas may help you muddle through March, too, and St. Patrick’s Day is certainly easier to celebrate than St. Valentine’s Day.  Learn some Irish songs, do a skit about St. Patrick (there’s plenty of legends to choose from here!), memorize appropriate poems (each child could learn one verse of Phyllis McGinley’s “St. Patrick the Missioner” for example), have your own St. Patrick’s Day parade and finish it off with a nourishing dinner of corned beef, cabbage, and Irish bread (cupcakes with green icing or cookies shaped like shamrocks work, too). 

One way or another, we can shake those winter blues!

A pencil is more than just a tool with which to write, at least in our home – uhh school.  It can be an instrument of torture for siblings.  When my back is turned, I suspect it is used as a weapon.  When kids get angry and write too hard on their papers, they can make pencil dents in tables.  If you ever plan a Pencil War Workshop, be sure to mention that if you school at the kitchen table, you had better use a table pad and vinyl tablecloths. 

Then there could be a workshop segue on making the most of those pencils.  One writer wrote that pencils make great math manipulatives.  They can be grouped in sets of ten and easily help teach skip counting by tens, etc.  So years ago, I bought a whole box of yellow number two pencils.  If there were an achievement test torture chamber where prisoners spend their time completing bubbles on test blanks, my children would be ready.

The problem with having all matching pencils – the industrial yellow – is that my kids didn’t want the yellow pencils that all looked the same.  They wanted the blue pencil.  Or the novelty pencil.  Or most often, the pencil currently in use by another sibling.  Over 10 years, we used up that box of yellow pencils.  My children are German like their father which means they breathe frugality.  A side battle in Pencil Wars is getting a child overly attached to that two-inch pencil to finally, finally throw it away.  “Just one more page, Mom.”  If a child gets attached to that one special pencil, you can schedule an extra hour into your week which will be spent looking for the pencil, dropping the pencil, accidentally tossing the pencil across the room, picking up the pencil, and then using it.

That does not include the hours spent sharpening pencils.  The pencil Pythagorean theorem should be that the complexity of the math formula to be solved is directly proportional to the time required to sharpen it to just the perfect tip.  For our first five years as a homeschool family, we had a hand crank sharpener.  I thought I had the Pencil Wars licked years ago when I asked for – and received – an electric pencil sharpener for Mother’s Day.  No longer would it take a child 5-15 minutes to sharpen a single pencil.

The electric pencil sharpener poses a new challenge.  It is so easy to use that the same pencil can be sharpened between every single subject.  That alone can add half an hour to your school day.  Then you can count that when it needs to emptied, that will kill at least another hour.

I have schooled my children ten years, and I will not concede defeat in the Pencil Wars.  Our local drugstore was selling 6 Christmas-themed pencils for $1 this weekend, so I bought 6.  They were put into our pencil jar. 

Last night, when the kids were asleep, I got one up on them.  I sharpened every single one of those new pencils and left them in a line on the counter.  My weapons of choice were sharpened, ready to do the battle of Schooling in December.  They were my surprise pre-dawn attack, ready to hit the troops at breakfast.

Update from the battlefront – December 1, 2008, may go down in history as a day of infamy.  It is the first time a morning of our school has passed without a single pencil skirmish.

If this battle is ever won, I will tackle erasers.  Then I’ll write a mystery novel on the case of the mysteriously vanishing textbook.

I didn’t understand why those butterflies were not present much during summer and then suddenly appeared near its wane. “Why do the monarchs come through now?” I asked my mother one warm August afternoon as hundreds seemed to pass through, steadily, and ever so quickly. She replied, “The monarchs migrate to warmer places when the fall is about to come. They go where the flowers are.”

 Go where the flowers are.

What a lovely thought, I realized, even back then. Isn’t that a wonderful philosophy for life? To go where the flowers are is to look for the best, to seek the beautiful, to search for the fragrant, and to actively pursue what is life-sustaining. When we turn from a cold comment or troublesome situation we instinctively are ‘going where the flowers are’. When we refuse to allow life’s troubles to keep us down, we are ‘going where the flowers are’.  I have thought about that imagery often.

 Today I teach my own children at home. Sometimes there are days so challenging I want to throw in the books. Children slink off between subjects. The baby is uncharacteristically uncooperative. The math lesson produces tears in an otherwise enthusiastic student. My own passion to teach wanes. It is days like these we chuck the school books and head outside. I give the children field guides, binoculars and magnifying glasses, much like my mother did when I was young. The children explore the field, and feel the sun on their faces. I just breathe in the fresh air.  It’s not copping out to take a break, to seek beauty and rest. It’s okay, in fact good, actually imperative, to “go where the flowers are”.

The mother on the other side of this conversation stared skeptically.  

I am reminded of Moses, when God called him with a burning bush.  Moses argued; he didn’t speak well in public.  God was persistent, and finally Moses relented.

How closely that rings to my experiences.  I was called to homeschool eleven years ago, when my daughter was three.

But I argued…

“I can’t homeschool because I can’t teach a child to read.  I didn’t study education. 

“You still want me to homeschool?  I read these books and the authors must be patient, and I’m not.  They don’t have strong-minded children.  They control their tempers and never yell.  Every time they get irritated, probably the whole family bursts into a hymn, sung a capella in four-part harmony, with two doing it in sign language or dances on hilltops like the Von Trapps.  We’re not like that.

“You still want me to homeschool?  My daughter’s preschool teachers gave her the wild colt award because of her high spirits.  Don’t you know how alike we are and how often we butt heads?

“You still want me to homeschool?  I still don’t know how to teach reading.  We’ll make a deal.  I’ll put them in kindergarten until they learn to read and then bring them home.

“God, I don’t understand.  She’s figuring out how to read.  We found this phonics reader at the library, she learned to read a few pages, and we made our own reading book.  She’s drawn pictures on the pages as she’s learned to read them.  I don’t know how it happened.  I was going to send her to school until she got reading and then bring her home.  We’ve enrolled her in the perfect kindergarten.  What if we keep her in school this year?

“God, yes, I know you’re calling me to homeschool her, but what about my son?  Now, he needs special speech therapy – four days a week and a day a week with a music therapist, maybe for seven years.  I’ve got to work in case insurance doesn’t cover the therapy.  How can I work, help him learn to talk, and school her?  Her kindergarten class must have been a Godsend.

“Okay God.  What now?  She went to her first day of kindergarten, carrying the reader we made together.  When she came home, she said no one else could read and if they couldn’t read, she wouldn’t either.  She told me she would never read from the book we made again.

“God, I would homeschool, but will my children have friends?  I don’t know homeschool families anywhere.  My family thinks I’m nuts.  It’s day 2 of kindergarten, and she came home sadder.  What do we do now?

“God, it’s after day 3 of kindergarten.  She came home and asked to homeschool.  How do I answer?  I signed a contract to work 2 afternoons a week for 3 months in case we need the money for our son’s therapy.  How will this work?

I cowered in the winepress of my kitchen, just as Gideon cowered when God called him.  How would we make the impossible happen?  I didn’t realize that we couldn’t make the impossible happen, but He could.

Finally , I said yes to the call God placed in my heart, with which I wrestled for two years.  That first year was a challenge.  I didn’t know where to buy schoolbooks, so I bought a kindergarten curriculum book from Sam’s, and we went to the library weekly.

My son worked through his schedule of 4 speech therapy sessions and 1 music therapy session weekly.  Two mornings weekly, I sat in a public school hallway with our daughter, while our son was in preschool early intervention therapy.  Two other mornings, I sat with her in a waiting room of a rehab center while he was in therapy.  We read books while we waited.  I participated in his music therapy while she sat and waited.  When I worked afternoons, a neighbor (who happened to have been a special ed. teacher) babysat our kids and gave them preschool/kindergarten activities.  

I prayed every morning a prayer of desperation to carry us.  In spare time, I sought ways to incorporate language therapy into our daily lives.

Six weeks after we began to homeschool, I met another homeschool family.  Three months later, we found a small local network.  Maybe we weren’t the only ones in the Midwest. 

Somehow, by the grace of God, we survived that first year.  The seven years of therapy were mastered in two.  Our methods and philosophies have changed in the past ten years.  We’ve done unit studies, Charlotte Mason, studied Latin, followed what my second grader should know, worked history chronologically, and more.  Some things worked, and others didn’t.  Along the way, we’ve had great experiences and made wonderful friends.

While our hows and our whats of homeschooling have evolved, the why hasn’t.  God called us to this path and we will follow wherever He calls us.  As I grow older, I hope I argue with Him less.  And listen more.

He called us to a lesser traveled path, and that has made all the difference.

I love your blog, but honestly, reading it makes me want to quit homeschooling…. I can never imagine myself doing what you do. Do you even sleep??… I just feel very small and incompetent next to all the things you have done and do with your kids.

And I really wanted to cry, but I knew it would make my head hurt worse. My feelings weren't hurt. I was just so sad for this lady. Why do women do this to themselves? We all do it. We all compare ourselves to someone and come up short in our own eyes. And then we are discouraged and we kick the dirt around at our feet and figure it's all hopeless because we can't reach some other person's standard. We're not supposed to reach some other person's standard!

Invariably, February brings burnout, particularly for mothers at home with young children. And, I think, they are particularly inclined to look at magazines, television shows, and weblogs for some other representation of life that seems brighter, cheerier and more orderly than the one in their own homes. This year, almost all of February has been Lenten. Jesus didn't go into the desert with a stack of magazines and a computer. He went alone and He spent the time immersed in God. Can we do that? Can we shut out the cacophony of comparisons for just a few short weeks? Can we look not to the world for our standards but instead to God's unique plan for us?

Lent is half way over; it's not too late. Today, set aside time to sit quietly with your husband and to discern what God wants for your household, then surround yourself only with things which encourage you, educate you, and build you up. Resolve to spend not one minute more reading or watching anything that causes you to compare yourself to someone else unfavorably and to ultimately become discouraged.

Magazines and blogs are staged re-creations of real life. There is no way to convey to the reader the intricacies of exactly how any life is lived. And that's just fine. Because God calls each of us to our own unique mission and, while we can and should share freely, no one's mission looks exactly like anyone else's. The trick is to read everything prayerfully. Whatever the author presents is only the beginning for the reader. It's got to be poured the prayer sifter. What does God want me to do with this inspiration, this seemingly good idea? Is there anything here of use for me or am I supposed to just leave it alone? Or pass it along to someone else?

I watched an overweight woman thumbing through a weight loss magazine in the checkout line last week. By the time she got to the checker, she'd put the magazine back and put a candy bar in with her groceries. She ate the candy bar on her way out the door. Clearly, the magazine didn't inspire her to lose weight–just the opposite. The problem wasn't with the message of the magazine; it was with the heart of the reader. She was searching, looking, perhaps desperately wanting to find encouragement between those glossy pages. Instead, she allowed whatever potentially good advice that was there to sabotage her good intentions. Often, people look to magazines, self-help books, blogs and television to fill a hole, a longing. And they can't fill that hole with what's in the media. The hole can only be filled with the understanding that God has a perfect plan for every soul He created and we are only happy when we live according to that plan.

We can't live someone else's life, no matter how lilting and lovely the prose is that describes it, no matter how beautiful the pictures that illustrate it. God calls us to write our own stories and when we cooperate with Him in the authorship, those stories are more beautiful than any we've ever read.

Sure, everyone wants to be unique, think they're the only one, but come on — she is the only one in her parish from an extra-large family, the only homeschooled one and on and on.  Too much unique-ness can be a tough; it all can get to a kid.  So, over a bowl of ice cream, late one Friday night, when the little kids are asleep and she is home again with her parents.   She begins her dump.  It is a tongue-in-cheek rant against how she's living her life.  A life she really loves, but she needs to just vent!

Perpetua Felicity: "I don't have any friends, no one calls me to talk endlessly on the phone, hang out at the corner or waste time after school, no one is like me, no one else is from a hugely large family and no one — and I mean no one — is homeschooled in our town…that's so bad."

Mom: "You do have friends, friends just like you — but they happen to live in other towns, cities and states.  You know they are out there and you do talk to them sometimes endlessly on the phone or e-mail and while you may feel you are stuck at home you have become best friends with your brothers and sisters so it is all good."

Perpetua Felicity: "I have never attended school, I've never had health class, gotten undressed for gym with kids I don't know, had cafeteria food or had to be at class by 7:30 in the morning…that's so bad."

Dad: "You have had health class with Mom and me, where we have talked about very private things in a very private manner.  No getting undressed in front of relative strangers, no talking about often-embarrassing girl things in front of surely embarrassed boys.  And I think you will agree with me that missing out on cafeteria food and 7:30 classes is all good."

Perpetua Felicity: "I don't have access to endless TV or even cable TV for that matter.  I have never seen an episode of Hannah Montana and don't even know who Jamie Lyn Spears is…that's so bad."

Mom: "Perhaps, but what you do have is a huge list of books read and re-read.   You're in line first for the new books at the library — you meet new worlds and new friends on paper almost every week and hey, there are no annoying commercials to disrupt the action.  You watch TV; but seeing those two girls is not required.  It is still all good. 

Perpetua Felicity: "I can't see any movie I want, even the some of the PG and PG-13 ones (and I am 13!) and I've never seen an R-rated movie, ever, except The Passion of The Christ and that doesn't really count because it was about Jesus!.  I can't talk about pop culture with my friends (if I did have friends) …that's so bad."

Dad: "You have seen some great movies we've rented or borrowed from the library.  Some movies your non-existent friends would never take the time to see because they aren't mentioned in pop culture or have been long-forgotten.  And you'll just have to trust me on this one kiddo but not seeing some PG, many PG-13-rated movies, any R-rated ones (except for the above-mentioned movie) is all good."

Perpetua Felicity: "I don't have a cell phone, I don't even know how to text my friends (if I had any) and I can't take pictures on the go….that's so bad."

Mom: "You do have a cell phone – mine – you can carry that anytime you want and I'm sorry it doesn't text but you don't have any friends anyway and I like pictures I can actually hold in my hand so it is all good."

Perpetua Felicity: "I don't hang out at the mall, none of my clothes advertise anything and I'm not sure what the latest fashion trends even are….that's so bad."

Dad: "By not being at the mall, you don't have the pressure to buy stuff you don't need and don't like.  You make up your own mind about what you like to wear and don't like to wear.  No pressure from kids you don't know, or store mannequins who are as plastic as some of the mall rats who hang out there.  You wear what is comfortable and looks good on you.  You dress only for yourself and not for anyone else — boy or girl.  And, by not spending on ton of money, you've got more money from babysitting in your savings account than I have, so it's all good."

Perpetua Felicity: "I cannot cruise the internet to wherever I want, I can't visit chat rooms and I've never even seen a single download from You Tube…that's so bad."

Mom: "You Tube does have some funny and even educational things on it, I'm sure; but it won't make it past our filter — sorry.  It keeps out the crap, the creeps, and the lousy websites that will tell you all about how to be an anorexic and hate your parents.  But I know you've found some great sites with interesting things on them that do pass our filter because you spend a good deal of time there when I let you, so I'll take that as another good."

Perpetua Felicity: "Speaking of hating your parents.  I don't!  I don't resent you and I actually like spending time with you guys.  I have never badmouthed you to my friends (if I had any)…that's so bad."

Mom and Dad: "Which is exactly why we do what we do all that we do!  Loving us and us loving you is all so very good!"

The bowls are placed in the sink and after a good long group hug everyone heads off to bed.  Perpetua is feeling okay.  She can't decide if it was the conversation she just had or the peanut butter ice cream but who cares — feeling good is good when you are 13.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad discuss getting a new cell phone — one that takes pictures.  It's not a big deal but it might make their wonderful daughter feel just a bit better about her life.  And that is a good thing, too.

Team spirit is a funny thing.  It makes people do crazy things such as paint themselves in their team colors at zero degrees, dress up like Hogs and wear cheese on their heads.   For some fans, it is all about the mascot.   It is easy to back a Patriot or a Viking but harder for some to consider throwing their support behind a Dolphin.  No offense to intended to the Miami fans, but many a living room conversation on a Sunday afternoon or Monday has revolved around fictional match-ups.  "Hey, could a raven beat a forty-niner?", poses one avid football fan.  "Does he have his pick-axe?", asks another.

We can all understand this.  Most of us were attended high schools or college and the school's mascot may have been a real source of pride.  I, myself, was a Mustang in high school while my husband was a Raider.  We still argue about who would win that imaginary fight.

However, it in the midst of current Super Bowl fever that I realized that my children are missing out on this team spirit a bit as homeschoolers.   We have no mascot for our ‘school'.  However, a recent homily at my home parish made me realize we do.  My pastor, Fr. Joe Piekarski was telling us of the recent funeral, here in the Diocese of Wilmington, of Fr. Robert Kenney.  He was an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales and served for many years as a teacher, principal, president and baseball coach (for 34 years, record of 411-168 including 2 state championships) of Salesenium School in Wilmington, DE.  Fr. Joe told us that the funeral was packed with current students and alumni, as well as others who came to celebrate the life of this great man.  He was particularly impressed with the many, many baseball players who lined the sidewalk honoring Fr. Kenney as he both entered and left  the church.  Their love for their sport was evident when, during the homily, Bishop Michael Salterelli inadvertently said that Fr. Kenney coached soccer.  BASEBALL! came the quick correction from the congregation.  Their allegiance is not to be questioned! 

Neither should ours, Fr. Joe went on, telling us that in the gospel (John 1:29-34 ) of that Sunday, 2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, we have John the Baptist making it clear that Jesus is the Lamb of God.  Here is a mascot, Fr. Joe told us, we can all get behind no matter our sports affiliation.  Just like John the Baptist we can shout, "Behold, the Lamb of God!"  His homily went on, concluding with encouragement for us to realize the power of that phrase for our faith lives and ourselves.

I went home thinking about that in regard to my home school and our lack of mascot.  But, let's be honest a lamb isn't going to beat anybody's mascot – not even the Anaheim Ducks or Maryland's Terrapins (that's a fresh water turtle).  A lamb is pretty much going to lose any battle against another mascot.  Unless, of course, the lamb is a supernatural lamb capable of rising from the dead! There is no contest when the lamb has conquered the devil.  Not the Blue Devils of North Carolina but the real, truly living Satan.

So, my kids have got themselves a mascot — the Lamb of God.  He takes away the sin of the world, has conquered death itself and with the Creator of the whole Universe as His Father, his family connections made Eli Manning's seem insignificant.  Our mascot is impossible to beat.  Now, we just have to decide on our school colors.  Should we change with the liturgical year or stick with two colors year round?