Sunday, June 15, 2003

Briefly Garverizing
I'll be back by the Fourth of July!

In the meantime, here's a hymn for Trinity Sunday.

Holy God, we praise Thy Name;
Lord of all, we bow before Thee!
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign.
All on earth Thy scepter claim,
All in heaven above adore Thee;
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign.

Hark! the loud celestial hymn
Angel choirs above are raising,
Cherubim and seraphim,
In unceasing chorus praising;
Fill the heavens with sweet accord:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord.
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign.

Lo! the apostolic train
Join the sacred Name to hallow;
Prophets swell the loud refrain,
And the white robed martyrs follow;
And from morn to set of sun,
Through the Church the song goes on.
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign.

Holy Father, Holy Son,
Holy Spirit, Three we name Thee;
While in essence only One,
Undivided God we claim Thee;
And adoring bend the knee,
While we own the mystery.
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign.

~Ignaz Franz
tr. Clarence A. Walworth

Monday, June 9, 2003

Celebrating the Sabbath
This post at Matt's blog has me thinking about a few things, especially the questions raised by Kolbi: "WHY don't we, as Christians, celebrate the beginning of the Sabbath day in the form of a weekly meal ushering in God's day of rest, like the Jews do? WHY don't we use that meal to formally and verbally "bless" our children, like the Jews do? And when would we do it, anyway? Friday night? Saturday night?"

For about six or seven years now, our family has begun the Lord's Day with a special meal on Saturday night. The details have changed over the years, but nowadays we generally begin the meal with a loaf of sweet bread and cup of wine that Mike offers thanks to God for (Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth - or, ... who created the fruit of the vine), and then passes around to the family. As we are passing the food, we say "I love you" to each person we give it to.

I really like the idea that Kolbi raised, of using this time as an opportunity to "formally and verbally bless our children." I have a few vague ideas knocking around in my head, but in the meantime, I'm open to suggestions. :-)

Sunday, June 8, 2003

A hymn for Whitsunday

O day of rest and gladness, of day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright:
On Thee, the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing holy, holy, holy, to the great God Triune.

On Thee, at the creation, the light first had its birth;
On Thee, for our salvation, Christ rose from depths of earth;
On Thee, our Lord, victorious, the Spirit sent from heaven,
And thus on Thee, most glorious, a triple light was given.

Thou art a port protected from storms that round us rise;
A garden intersected with streams of paradise;
Thou art a cooling fountain in life’s dry dreary sand;
From Thee, like Pisgah’s mountain, we view our promised land.

Thou art a holy ladder, where angels go and come;
Each Sunday finds us gladder, nearer to heaven, our home;
A day of sweet refection, thou art a day of love,
A day of resurrection from earth to things above.

Today on weary nations the heavenly manna falls;
To holy convocations the silver trumpet calls,
Where Gospel light is glowing with pure and radiant beams,
And living water flowing, with soul refreshing streams.

New graces ever gaining from this our day of rest,
We reach the rest remaining to spirits of the blessed.
To Holy Ghost be praises, to Father, and to Son;
The church her voice upraises to Thee, blessed Three in One.

~Christopher Wordsworth
My sister is coming tomorrow for a long awaited visit.
She has never seen Lilian, who will be five months old on Tuesday. Sissy insisted that Mike and I go spend the night alone someplace while she's here (isn't she brave?), so we're planning to drive down to Fredericksburg one day.

We'll be awful busy for the next three weeks, so I probably won't be around much.
Hobbit Food
We've invited some friends to come over Friday night to eat supper and watch the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring. Mike is going to borrow a projector from his office, so we can shine the movie on the wall and have a real Big Screen event.

I thought it would be fun to have Middle Earth food for supper, and a quick web search found this site that has some interesting recipes. There's a dwarvish recipe that looks like yummy bread, only it's all metric. "7 dag soft fresh yeast" - what on earth can a "dag" be?

Thursday, June 5, 2003

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Didn't mean to be gone so long!
For the first time in a few years we're taking a real break from academics for the summer. We're having a lot of out of town company this summer, plus we're planning a trip to Mike's grandmother in Georgia for later this month, and we're hoping to make it to Boston in August to visit my best friend whom I have not seen in nearly three years!

Also, I've had a few rough years with home schooling and I wanted to take a nice break so I could start back refreshed after a couple of months off. In the last three years we have had two babies and moved two times. I keep trying to figure out why I've been so tired and disorganized lately. Do you suppose this might have anything to do with it?

Speaking of being disorganized, the other thing I've been doing for the past month is trying to work up a schedule for me and the kids. When I was expecting my 4-and-a-half-year-old (btw, today is Grace's half-birthday!) somebody told me about Managers of Their Homes, a scheduling help especially for homeschooling moms with lots of little blessings running around. It was a big help and I used it up until my almost-three-year-old was born, at which point I, um, quit being Organized. So a few weeks ago I pulled the book out and started re-reading it, ordered a new scheduling kit, and came up with a summer schedule which we started using this Monday.

The big thing I have trouble with is motivating my kids to do their chores, so I arranged the schedule with blocks of free time following the blocks of chore time. This motivates the kids to get their work done so they can have free time, and it reminds me not to let them play when they still have work to do. So far it is working nicely!