After months of writing, actually a few years, I post this journal piece by grace and by God. May it find and make its way to whoever needs to read it.  Our Journey Through Ulcerative Colitis.

* It is long-form journalism. Make sure you have a hot cup of tea and a soft seat before you take time to read!

The American Scholar, Musings on Emerson for Our Time

   The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn.  The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius....

    In this hope, I accept the topic... — The American Scholar. Let us inquire what light new days and events have thrown on his character, and his hopes.

     I come to this space, after a long absence, unable to remove The American Scholar from my mind. I lie pondering in the night, and by day I write - just not here. 

   I write about Thomas Nuttall who traveled the continent, unparalleled in his time, and I write of issues which Oregonians will soon be aware, of privacy concerns, love, and rights to safeguard, unparalleled in our time. 

   I keep certain convictions ever before me: I can love what I do not comprehend, and children and privacy rights are honorable to protect.

   At home, we are reading through Great American Speeches. We are discussing, pondering, and seeking to live words. We are inviting them into our awareness and actions, as we are ever aware that awareness and actions are needed today. 
 

   Questions of interpretation on The Oregon Equality Act (Senate Bill 2) sit before our governor and legislators. Right now. Today. Oregon parents need to know. Interpretation of The Oregon Equality Act will effect privacy rights for all Oregon's school children. 

   Other issues rise about us: Justice Scalia's passing, presidential races amok, education needs, and privacy concerns. Will we, together, come to the table to labor and think?

   If our age is marked by fear, so too, it's marked by apathy. It's time to act: to find loving solutions together, to be Man Thinking and cooperating together. 

   Let us look to Emerson, let us look to God. In these times, who is the American Scholar and what influences them?

   1. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature....The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages....He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? 

   There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — so entire, so boundless. 

    ...to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?
 
   So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim. 

   2. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth....

   Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.

  When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. 

   The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakespeare's. 

   Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, — to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. 

   3.  Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

    I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. 

   I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It (action) is pearls and rubies to his discourse.

  The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. 

    I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgements and modes of action.  

   They are such as become Man Thinking. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.  

   These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. 

   In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide his own time....

 

   He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks...they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature....

   The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels, This is my music; this is myself. For a man, rightly viewed comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men. 

   If there is any period one would desire to be born in, — is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?  

   This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The Beauty of Rest

Love

Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

~TS Eliot

Advent Emerging

   I love the image below by Rockwell. Do you see St. Nick's book has only the words "Good Boys" on it? The hysterical implication is all girls are good, but that good boys can be confined to a single volume.

   From previous experience, I proffer that good boys may be hard to find in art museums near Christmas, and that Christmas does not always bring out the best of good girls nor their mothers!

   As for Advent: It's been a month. J has worked 3 weeks straight, 12 hour days (at least) with 1 day off. He's ready for a much needed break; we are ready for his presence with us. 

   Yet God's grace sustains us. God's grace holds us close. It helps us do the next thing, share the next word, and shop and wrap joy. We walk into the dark holding the light.

       We began advent with our favorite German inspired advent walk.

       But we also began advent with the loss of another lamb.

      And the terror that comes with watching a cougar haul off a precious lamb while your son plays soccer nearby cannot be described. And it occurred within 90 minutes of sharing these words with someone I love:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.

Isaiah 11:6

  There is a battle between light and dark. Winter solstice has come and gone, and so too the darkness must give way to the light. The darkness hasn't a choice, dear ones. The light is coming, and it comes from a single source.

   Yes, this December, we have dashed the mouth of the lion. We overcame through Christ - it is He who shuts the mouth of the lion from our children, and pays the cost Himself. He is the Lamb of God.  Do you see?

   Through Him alone, we celebrate amidst the pouring rain, dark days, and loss. Through the lashing wind and rain, He emerges, He is enough, and He is good.

      And His rainbows this month? There have been too many to count!

   And Sunday, we finally made it to a local tree farm to cut a massive Nordmann. She's 10' tall and drinks like an elephant. I do miss the fir smell which Nordmann's lack, but maybe this is your tree if you have allergies.

 

   Note to self: A tree with a 5" diameter base in a 6" diameter tree stand means watering every few hours. Brother has been using his hydrodynamics water works to keep her full up. It has been a great gift which has lasted years.

   We have settled into baking and are working on peppermint bark, chocolate gingerbread cookies, baklava, and chocolate peppermint crackles. The kids are really enjoying audible Cinnamon Bear stories while they bake, and make origami decorations for the Christmas tree. We are keeping it very low key this year for everyone. 

  More and more, we are moving toward home made presents and giving the gift of our time and presence. We cannot buy what truly counts. We can only give it.

   There will be a few small things under the tree. We will see if this and this is a hit. I hope so! 

    She offered up songs in the middle school Christmas Cantata. It was wonderful to see her sing with joy after being so sick last year. God is exceedingly gracious. 

   We took in White Christmas at The Gallery Theatre in McMinnville. Darling. They've watched a White Christmas too many times to count, and yesterday watched The Christmas Story. We are writing stories all around us, living stories, breathing stories, and we are being invited into the One's story.

   I keep coming back to Rohr's words during our advent devotional times: Jesus did not come to change God's mind about humanity, but to change humanity's mind about God.

   For those of you facing loss this month: One day, in Him, we will gain those we have lost. When the dawn of new time arises, our lanterns we will lay down. We won't need them - the world will give way to the Light. 

   Even now, all earth speaks to His birth and resurrection - if only we would believe. If only we would ask for eyes with which to see.

   Wishing you a blessed Advent, and the awareness and awe of His glory emerging. 

~ Kim

The Remedy by Thomas Goetz

      Miss Conolly's fall writing has been a fairly grim endeavor. Around here, a steady writing lull has only been exceeded by a steady rain. She did complete a paper on Vermeer and a fiction piece called Sweet Crime. Of course, a crook covered in sugar from head to toe and partaking of sweet shop doughnuts is a sweet crime indeed. I keep reminding myself that Rod and Staff 7 is a full grammar and writing curricula, and we are doing that. Thankfully, she just finished a book review for The Remedy. Enjoy!

The Remedy Book Report

     The Remedy, by Thomas Goetz, is about Tuberculosis and the quest to find a cure. On the whole, it is a very interesting book, but in some places, it is unfortunately necessary to wade through chest-high tediousness to get to the interesting parts. German physician Robert Koch, French chemist Louis Pasteur, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a medical doctor before he began writing full-time, are all included in this captivating book. With excellent documentation of medical issues that were controversial at the time, this book will interest both those with an understanding of healthcare and laymen alike. Learn about the origins of microbes, antiseptic, and  “germ theory”  in this enjoyable read!

All  Those Little Idiocracies

      Pasteur disliked shaking hands. Koch was seriously introverted. Conan Doyle was a doctor, even though he wanted to be  a writer. Everyone has their “thing”.  Often one’s “thing” is just that: a silly little thing. But these guys…. Well, Pasteur was a germophobe, of all things, yet he upheld the “germ theory”. He actually advocated for the existence of germs- and he did things (like dissecting anthrax infected carcasses) in his lab that were a lot germier than shaking hands. Dr. Robert Koch, for all the wonderful work he and his lab staff did, was completely, hopelessly, introverted. When he was called on to speak at a medical conference, the people in the front row had to strain their ears to hear him! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle practiced as a doctor, but what he wished to do was write! Of course, there are also silly things that whole people groups do. For instance, if you see a red lamp in Britain, you have located a doctor. Here’s another strange fact: It typically takes approximately 17 years for a lab breakthrough to become a common medical procedure, a reality that could certainly create some very annoyed patients. Everyone and everything appears to have something a little crazy defining them.

Everyone Has Rivals

Contemporaries, Pasteur and Koch were rivals from the time Koch became known for his discovery of anthrax baccillus. With national pressure thrown in, both of them raced to find the cause and develop a cure for diseases such as anthrax. Koch provided some rather heated words on the topic of Pasteur’s ability to grow anthrax bacteria, but Pasteur was the one to develop a vaccine for anthrax. While Pasteur may have used control groups in his experiments,  small-town, back country Koch was the one to develop the revolutionary lab procedures and techniques that are standard today.   It’s strange how things work sometimes. Even though they were both working for a common goal, Pasteur and Koch were personal enemies!

        When Robert Koch emerged from the German countryside, no one expected him

to build up his reputation, only to strike it down. Koch pretended that he had

found the cure for Tuberculosis, but what he actually found was tuberculin, a

substance that did nothing to strike down this particularly vicious disease. Sir Conan

Doyle realized the substance for what it was, and somehow learned through the

process of discovery that his destiny was to be the author of the Sherlock Holmes

series. Somehow amid all the scientific turmoil of the time, people were able to

document this time period for what it was: an amazing Golden Age of Discovery.    

That is the essence of Remedy,: the fascinating story of Sherlock Holmes, Tuberculosis,

and the race to find a cure for a deadly disease. Read on!

 

     Next up, she begins working on the biography of a woman mathematician. She will submit it in mid-January to the Association of Women in Mathematics Essay Contest. Tomorrow, she will need to take the leap to begin connecting with some women mathematicians. Write on!  

Snowy Thanksgivings

Thou that has given so much to me,

Give one thing more - a grateful heart;

Not thankful when it pleaseth me, 

As if thy blessings had spare days;

But such a heart, whose pulse may be,

Thy praise. 

~George Herbert 

Many many cuddles,

a bit of trekking,

and the best turkey and gravy ever! 

Hours of outside time,

 and hours of sledding =

  lots of smiles.

 Food, more food, and family +

cold sunny sunsets =

wonderful.

A new face in the crowd,

chapped lips and ice skating,

= warm hearts.

 A little sugar, photos, and icy sun =

Advent season has begun! 

    May God bless your family as you draw near to Him this Advent season. While there are no perfect seasons, nor perfect families, there is a perfect Grace holding us close, pulling us close. New beginnings are being birthed about us; let us open our eyes to see. Let us open our ears to hear.