{SQT} Many Joyful Moments

1. Seminar on Creation

On Friday evening and all day Saturday, I attended a seminar entitled "Evolution and the Culture of Death" by the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.

I will be digesting the information and reading a slew of new books and watching new videos for some time to come!

My background is one of no religion but a lot of honor for science. I minored in anthopology while at University and worked for an internationally known anthropologist as her undergrad research assistant for several years.

This is where I am coming from.

As a convert from nothing to Protestantism and then to Catholicism, I think I fell basically into believing in Theistic Evolution (without knowing that term) and deciding that I really had no need to figure out evolution. Does it really matter? One does not need to figure out the details of every subject in life (which is true). So God set it into motion and I don't really know what happened next, but it has no affect on my life now.

Except for those pesky children who, by about four years old I've found, consistently ask questions about Genesis versus anything else they are reading about in science, leaving me with questions I simply could not answer. I even went to priests over the years!

Then within the past year, I read an article that explained to me why this stuff matters: If molecules-to-man evolution is true, then nothing in the Bible matters and faith is utterly lost. Genesis says that death entered as a result of Original Sin: if evolution is true, death of creatures, animals, and humanoid ancestors was occurring for billions of years before that, so what exactly is Genesis saying? Is it all a symbolic myth? As Richard Dawkins asked of a Catholic bishop who declared Genesis a myth, "So, did Jesus allow himself to be tortured to death for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent person?"

If humans did not come into evolved existence until maybe two million years ago out of an earth that is maybe six billion years old (the final 0.0003 % of time), then is a Christian (child or adult) truly going to believe that God's crowning creation was to make man in His image and likeness? That a human is important? That God made all animals and the earth for Humans to have dominion over them? That my sins or my virtue even matter? That Jesus died for all of us and would have died even just for me in order to open the gates of heaven? Why would I believe any of that? Instead, if I believed I was evolved (not created in one moment with intention) at the last millisecond of time in the grand scheme of things, I'm going to feel very unimportant in the cosmos, I'm going to behave as if I'm very unimportant, which is, frankly, what I see as a society overall. It is truly a culture of death.

The presumption of evolution seems to lead to a loss of faith.

Therefore, I had to figure this out, I had to dig into these matters. After listening to about ten hours of the presentations of top scientific information gathered from researchers around the world, I don't have all the answers, but I can embrace biblical Creationism.

I have much more to read and am thrilled to have ordered some more books from the Kolbe Center.

(Here is an article written better than I can manage in snippets on this blog about why does it matter?)

You can watch every single talk that I got to enjoy by visiting the Sensus Fidelium website (and later they will be uploaded to YouTube). (Note that all the talks are family-friendly except the one directly about evolution and abortion, which gets into some graphic talk, including about Alfred Kinsey's experiments. Parents: preview that one.)

2. Piano Recital

On Saturday, I raced home from the creation seminar with John and Mary (who begged to attend and loved it) in order to hand Mary off like a baton to her dad to take her to a recital. We are beyond the age at which I may publicly post music videos without permission (harumph!), but I may still say that Mary (11) successfully performed in recital the Concerto in g minor, 3rd mvt., by J.S. Bach (a five-minute piece) and, after two years of preparation, will compete with it next weekend.

3. Joyful Moments

Being away Friday night and Saturday all day meant I had some straightening up to do on Sunday morning! (You mamas know!) Right after Mass, we welcomed dear friends with "only" seven of their children in tow for a chili dinner. We had such a wonderful time!

I snapped a picture of my precious 28-month-old when asleep, who this week ran up to me with arms outstretched, grabbed me tight, and said, "Love Mama! Love Mama!" for the first time.

My 8-year-old seems to be very amenable to domestic duties, more so than in other areas, so I'm trying hard to give honor to those pursuits and reduce pressure in other areas. It's not right of me to value education uber alles. Margaret loved helping me this weekend to make a lentil soup and a quiche for our overnight guest. She loved one night surprising me after I'd laid down all the boys for bed by announcing, "Mama, I loaded the dirty dishes, wiped the kitchen table and counters, and put away the leftovers, but I'm having a little trouble sweeping. Would you help me?" Having a bent toward domesticity is something to be cultivated!

John delighted in catching a lizard while we were at the creation seminar.

A friend gave me a paperwhite bulb a couple of weeks ago and it shot up from 6" high to nearly two feet and is now blooming. Every single day, I wash dishes at my sink and am delighted by my collection of houseplants because I, a lifelong gardener at heart, remember when I had only a couple of toddlers and I had to rid my home of all plants--and I certainly was not caring for outdoor plants--because I simply could not manage to take care of two tiny tots, vomiting all the time from the next pregnancy, and keep plants alive. It was a sorrow to me and a humbling, and I had no plants in the house for ten years until recently. They make me smile!

Mamas, if God is humbling you in such a way, I encourage you to know that it probably will not last forever!

There was a pack of cowboys running around our home all week, and I just wish I could show you the really excellent movies (including special effects and scripts!) that they created (but they vetoed me!). Making movies was a brand new pursuit for them and they did a neat job of it.

A cowboy's duties make him one tuckered-out dude . . .

Thomas has listened to our "Frog and Toad" CD so often lately that he has memorized most of the stories. One day, I caught him during Quiet Time just sitting on the bottom stair step dictating aloud the stories (with near perfect accuracy!) as he quietly turned the pages for nearly an hour.

These tiny brothers used Suspend (a really cool game my sister gave us) one morning as a band, tooting into pretend horns and tapping them as drumsticks. I probably appreciated this more than all the other sleeping family members at 6:00 a.m.

4. Morning Prayer Time

Sometimes I wonder what my morning prayer time will look like in much later phases of my life, God willing. Right now, it looks like me being interrupted very often with requests, my setting up my two- and four-year-olds with Melissa and Doug cutting food (only to have them drag it from the kitchen to right next to me), with my six- and twelve-year-olds playing Monopoly nearby, debating loudly the rules. We parents of faith just have to keep fighting the fight to get in any amount of prayer time any way we can!

5. Scholastic Scenes

I am trying to devote one morning per week to going above-and-beyond regular catechism to prepare for the Catholic Quiz Bowl. This week, we played the Divinity Board Game, which is so good because it has question levels at easy, medium, and hard so that the whole family can play together.

I wondered if I lived in Bizarro World when I was teaching school to Margaret and four-year-old Thomas asked me sweetly if he could just lay down on the red couch, where he promptly fell asleep for a long nap as siblings walked in and out doing school work.

I have found over the years that requiring dictionary work is very important. This year, I outright forbade ever looking up any dictionary words online, requiring them to use a book. The third, fifth, and seventh graders have to look up six dictionary words and write down the definitions on one day each week. They do not like this (and I do not mind that), but they are getting really good at it!

Joseph (the Cowboy) is a reader! At almost seven years old, Joseph has transitioned to reading only his phonics books to reading actual outside material. It is such an exciting milestone every time!

One day during math, Joseph told me, "I can't do this math, but I can draw a pretty good picture of Winnie the Pooh being chased by bees." (What a darling moment to halt me in my tracks when I was getting stubborn and frustrated with my first grader and his math!)

We sure are enjoying our No Sweat Nature Study! This week we studied seed dispersal.

6. Finishing Closets

We have had our dedicated and talented contractor in our house for a week and a half mainly finishing an attic closet for us, but also doing a bunch of other littler projects. (This caused no small amount of exciting distraction during school time.) This unfinished attic is off of our bonus room (school room) and my intention was to store camping gear and Christmas decorations in there. However, we realized in our first couple of months here that the location made the space far too valuable to waste on storage, so we decided to have the closet finished and turned into a little room.

BEFORE

On Thursday, we closed the books for the whole day and taught a course in How to Paint Interior Walls. That is education, too! I love homeschooling.

Now it is a little monastic cell for quiet pursuits in what is otherwise a Very Loud Home. I pulled furniture from around the house to furnish the room: a desk for doing solitary study, a child-sized arm chair, a tiny bookshelf to hold a few volumes, and the girls' violins, as they currently prefer to practice violin in privacy. This room is for any of the children to use when they need quiet, and I am wondering if I could hide out in there at times.

7. Skating for a Commercial

On Friday, our children had a super fun opportunity to go ice skating for free and be filmed for commercials for our local ice rink! John is on the hockey team there, so rink members like him and any of their siblings were invited to participate all afternoon while film crews filmed for creating commercials. What fun! And what a great motivator all week because, as I repeated often, "Only children who have done all their schoolwork all week will get to go!"

I headed home with the rest of the kids while Chris stayed behind with John for his regular Friday night hockey game, where he tried his hand at being offensive and got an assist! Great job, John!


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