First day of school

Even after I started homeschooling, the first day of school has always frighteningly exciting for me. Don't ask why...

This summer, we worked on fixing up this oddly-shaped room in our house, previously an office, and I'm using it this year as my "study" for schoolwork. My grandmother's old desk in our back porch and a bookcase from IKEA have been appropriated by yours truly for school purposes. ;-) That, with a window looking out to the front garden & street (you know, so that you can spy on neighbors unwind during 5 minute breaks) makes the room a very pleasant place in which to spend 8 hours of the day. In fact, I was so excited about it, I took a picture of it all nice and clean before I started school this morning:

I'm still incredibly embarassed about that list of 24 books I made out last year......this year's is 15. And since I know you're dying to see what's on it, here ya go -

• Erasmus, The Praise of Folly
• Machiavelli, The Prince
• Luther, The Bondage of the Will
• 2 Shakespeare plays (Hamlet & A Midsummer Night's Dream)
• More, Utopia
• Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
• Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
• Milton, Paradise Lost
• Swift, Gulliver's Travels
• Edwards, A Narrative of the Surprising Work of God
• Voltaire, Candide
• Paine, Common Sense
• Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
• The Autobiography of Ben Franklin 

So right now I'm reading The Praise of Folly, Erasmus's satire on the foolishness of the ostentatious scholars/rulers/clergy of his day. Well, knowing that Erasmus wrote it, I was quite petrified to read it. You know, it's just going to be a bunch of illegible Renaissance Humanism. As it turns out, however,  it's actually very funny! There were several times today that I laughed out loud (I have a total weakness for dry, sarcastic humor). Need proof?

[Folly is speaking] "In general I think I show a good deal more discretion than the general run of gentry and scholars, whose distorted sense of modesty leads them to make a practice of bribing some sycophantic speaker or babbling poet hired for a fee so that they can listen to him praising their merits, purely fictitious though these are. The bashful listener spreads his tail-feathers like a peacock and carries his head high, while the brazen flatterer rates this worthless individual with the gods and sets him up as the perfect model of all the virtues - though the man himself knows he is nowhere near that; "infinity doubled" would not be too far away." (p. 11)

The "infinity doubled" phrase did me in. Please tell me you laughed too. :-)

All in all, I pronounce this to be a very good first day of school. Let's hope the rest of the year is half as enjoyable.

Travelling, ect.

Last week I was in Illinois with my mom for a conference and this week I'll be up north visiting relatives. Therefore the lack of posting around here. It'll be a nice way to relax before school starts again. (What happened to this summer?)

At the conference, we heard Susan Wise Bauer speak, and she mentioned that highschoolers ought to do 2 essay/papers/some-type-of-assignment-that-has-an-opinion a week, so maybe I'll make one a blog post. A desperate attempt to keep blogging, I know. There's weeks where you're on a roll, full of ideas to write about, and there's others where you feel totally uninspired. I guess the only way to remedy that is to keep practicing writing.

Speaking of school, this year I'm studying Renaissance-Enlightenment history/great books/etc. Totally excited. The Renaissance/Reformation era is one of my favorites. Yes, the former was full of humanism and earthly-mindedness, but without it, the latter couldn't have survived. One of the things I soon began to appreciate when we started homeschooling was how we studied secular and church history simultaneously. (i.e., the King Ahasuerus whom Esther married was quite possibly the Xerxes who was involved in the Greek-Persian Wars)

Anyways, I hope to get some nice pictures while I'm gone (I got a new camera!), so if any are good, maybe I'll post some when I get back.

To close, wisdom from my favorite author:

Accustom yourselves to holy thoughts. Serious meditation represents everything in its true color. It shows the evil of sin, and the luster of grace. By holy thoughts, the head grows clearer and the heart better: "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto your testimonies" (Psalm 119:59). If men would step aside a little out of the noise and hurry of business, and spend only half-an-hour every day thinking about their souls and eternity, it would produce a wonderful alteration in them! (Thomas Watson)

Isaiah 52:7-10

How lovely on the mountains
         Are the feet of him who brings good news,
         Who announces peace
         And brings good news of happiness,
         Who announces salvation,
         And says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

    Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices,
         They shout joyfully together;
         For they will see with their own eyes
         When the LORD restores Zion.

    Break forth, shout joyfully together,
         You waste places of Jerusalem;
         For the LORD has comforted His people,
         He has redeemed Jerusalem.

    The LORD has bared His holy arm
         In the sight of all the nations,
         That all the ends of the earth may see
         The salvation of our God. 

What must it have been like to be an Old Testament member of God's church? These verses make me wonder how it must have been to be waiting in anticipation for the coming Messiah. We today seem to take the Incarnation for granted. It'd be interesting to have been there when Christ's disciples finally figured out that not only had the Messiah come, but He was God. It's downright stunning that God would become one of us and take the punishment we deserved for offending Him.

"See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God....."

1 John 3:1