Just a little image I made of one of one my favorite evening prayers.  A wonderful request invoking the holy Angels.  

May you be surrounded and protected, friends. 

As I so often do when books move from place to place, I am pausing over old favorites lately.  While I was reminiscing over the Home Teacher's Process Manual, purchased years ago as gentle teacher training, it struck me the counsel is sound, both for those now tasked with helping their school aged children complete assignments at home and those who find themselves working from home offices. This particular bit is especially good:

Clear Your Time and Space…. if you intend to have any focus at all in the work you intend to do.  If you are constantly distracted by numerous interruptions, you will find it very difficult in the beginning stages, to remain focused upon the process at hand. 

Keep a daily schedule in which you provide time for everything that must be done.  This relieves your mind of the pressure of "all those things I must do." 

 Unplug your phone while you are engaged in your process. This is absolutely essential, especially in a busy household. You must be very clear that, for the duration of the process, you will not be available to anyone but the person with whom you choose to focus in this process. 

Resolve any uncertainty you may feel which keeps you from being very clear about the fact that you deserve a special uninterrupted time for your processes.

If you have younger children, explain to them that you have something you must do, and that you will give them something special to do, but you cannot be interrupted during this time.  Children are quite capable of adapting to a routine and will be more willing to give you the necessary time if you are consistent in your time. For example if your children expect they will eat breakfast and go for a walk most days, then return home to draw or play with certain toys, they will eagerly anticipate this special time.

Teaching children that parents need time for their own processes has to be done with loving attention. If you use anger, they will be unhappy and resentful the whole time, and may make it impossible for you to focus. It may take a week to get young children used to spending time totally alone without calling for attention, but the time spent cultivating this will be well worth it. 

Gather all the materials you will need for the process you are doing. Lay out all the materials very clearly so you are certain you haven't forgotten anything.  Make sure that the space you are using is clean and orderly. 

Take a minute to relax and center yourself on the work you will be doing. If necessary step outside a moment, listen to some relaxing music, or just sit quietly. When you are centered and poised, sit down together with your partner to begin the Learning Process for the current assignment. 

After the Learning process is finished, sit down and review the events that occurred. If you got into a mess during the process, just review in your mind the events that led up to the mess and try to see where you went wrong. Discuss how it might have happened differently. Above all don't blame anyone, especially yourself. Just learn from your experiences, let it go, and get ready for the next one. 

The most important aspect of any learning process is the relationship that you have with the other person. The quality of this relationship can either help or hinder the learning process.  

That last part is essential.  Home is a haven but it is not a panacea and simply being there will not automatically ensure that each day will be full of unending sunshine and success.  There are likely many imperfect humans now in closer proximity than ever before and possibly under a good deal of stress as well. Take steps to stay a bit ahead of them.  Look forward each evening to the next day's tasks and how you can prepare.  When each day is over we must let it go, good or bad.  We learn all we can from both and move forward with peace and resolve.  

Forward movement is good. Keep going.

image: little flower.org

"The Little Flower of Jesus, St Therese, became a saint by seeing in everything that happened to her an opportunity to grow in merit before God. As long as we must endure certain disagreeable situations anyway, we might as well be philosophic and " fool the devil" and let those very hardships help us to heaven."  -Character Calendar

Tess read the story of Martha and Mary for bible study this week.  I try to base my own reading and journaling around what the children are studying, both to be efficient with my time and to help them flesh out what they are learning. Knecht's Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture has been such a treasure in this regard.  So wonderful! The practical application questions are challenging. 

Today's reading notes are from both this short study and an essay I read on Essentialism (do click through to her thoughts) based on this book. The premise is that we often experience great temptation to sample all the good things and experiences we hear about and as a result we spread our efforts so thin that we make little impact in any of those areas.  Instead we are encouraged to consider what is truly essential in our lives, our days, our vocations.  Do those well – Multum Non Multa. 

To discern what is essential at any given moment Lou Holtz, Notre Dame football coach, says to ask ourselves:

The acronymn obviously is WIN.  What's Important Now?  It may be most important that we stop procrastinating and finish our chores or prep for the morning.  It might be most important at a given moment that we set aside our work and listen intently to a small person with big things to say.  It might be important to go outside or say our prayers or make a call. There is no right answer for each person or each moment.  That's all discernment. 

 Knecht's commentary echoes this thought.  Instead of a pat answer, he urges us towards integration of corporal and spiritual works.  Work and rest. Martha and Mary – who both loved the Lord tremendously. 

The dissipation question was convicting and a big focus point for this year. I like to think big thoughts.  Too often they are lost in my head because the thinking is often more appealing than doing.  Big thoughts can disintegrate into daydreams, a little of which is delightful but too many, left unchecked, lead to that dissipation, a frittering away of our energy. 

Solution?  Back to that buzzword – What's Important Now – which ought to lead us towards doing the next right thing and the next. 

Two stories have occupied my thoughts this week.  The first came during our morning time reading in Character Calendar about St Lucian, whose scriptural expertise paved the way for St. Jerome to produce the latin Vulgate.  He 'labored abundantly for the edification of others, but could not prevent being sometimes judged and despised by others," reads his biography.  The author goes on to explain that history has largely forgtten St Lucian and given St.Jerome the credit for the Vulgate we have today. We were challenged in the day's reading to ask ourselves if it bothers us when others are credited for hard work we have done or made possible. 

A different spin on that question came in the form of a story told around the prison camp fire by the peasant Karataev in War and Peace. The old man, a gentle, working class philospher told the story,

"…of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion- a rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried, knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, grandfather?'- 'I, my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep.

Now it happened that in the group was the very man who had killed the other merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,' he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you were asleep. Forgive me, grandfather,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'

Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and he drew the logs together.

"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears. Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in the papers all in due form- the authorities I mean- time passed. The affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man. 'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him- he was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile."

Teresa of Avila and other Carmelites have written extensively about unjust accusations, insisting odds are that we have also had good attributed to us which we did not merit.  Further, if we are being unjustly criticized it is also often true that we are guilty of other wrongs which have mercifully gone unnoticed. 

These have been challenging concepts for me. I am a melancholic by nature, keenly – often, overly – focused on justice.  As is so often the case, God's ways are not ours however, and we rarely consider things from as many angles as we ought.   The old man, without in any way approving of man's wrongdoing,  knew all things went through God's hands first. The court had sentenced him falsely, but he was in truth, convicted by his own personal sins.  He knew his fate was not actually in the hands of men, but ultimately of God.  A more perfect trust in Divine Providence would be hard to imagine. Likewise we are assured St Lucian was quite content knowing God was aware of his efforts in this world and that any accolades accrued here are worthless in comparison to those in the next.   

It all comes out in the wash is the gist.  Easier said than done, no doubt. I am grateful for the inspiring examples literature and history provide. We are encouraged to focus more on how our things look in the eyes of eternity than on the approval or condemnation of our contemporaries, whose judgement can never be omnipotent.