Selah

"Cars break down and people break down and other things break down, too, so let's go down together." ~The Refreshments This week's five minute friday prompt - Broken - doesn't bring to mind cars or material items or even promises. It brings to mind people.  The world is broken. It is shattered into a million (billion) pieces, and all I want with my heart and soul right now is to put it back together again. Like the ever present egg, though, I'm afraid that if all the king's horses and all the king's men can't do it - well, how could I?  But I need to begin. I need to wash out some wounds with water and peroxide. I need to put on a soothing salve and bandage. Even if it's just a paper cut on the finger of this world, it's something.   Because there is one thing I know about this word - Broken. It didn't make me think of myself, and there was a time, not so long ago, when it would have. I am not broken, not any more.  ...

Remember. Remember things you never knew. Remember what's deep inside the Universal Consciousness, those primal things that we know before we can know. Reflexes. Crawling to our mother's breast to eat. Crying, breathing, sucking. Is there something spiritual in there to be remembered? Should we remember those things? Do we have a choice? Remember. Remember these moments. You always hear people talk about how happy they were when they were young, and they didn't know it. I know it. And I need to remember. This is why I take pictures, why I blog, why I Facebook the funny things my kids say and the sweet things they do. I heard  someone complain recently about how fake their friends' Facebook pages are - how they only ever post the good, happy, cheerful moments, and never the real, raw ones. Well, who the hell wants to remember those?!  Granted, sometimes I think it would be nice if grandmothers and mothers and mothers-in-law would remember more about how...

When we officially return to homeschooling next fall, Quentin (my 8 year old) will begin reading age-appropriate translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey . Despite a few attempts, I have never read these myself, but was hoping to learn along with or a little ahead of my son. So when the opportunity presented itself to take a free online course through HarvardX this semester, entitled " The Ancient Greek Hero " and largely composed of the study of those two Homeric epics (come join me if you like, the class only started today, and is semi self-paced), I jumped at the chance. The introduction to the course involves some discussion of the Ancient Greek world, political structures, and civilization in general. As I read, my brain was quick to make associations between the writing and the topics marinating deeper in my brain (about religion and Unitarian Universalism, in particular). In The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours  Professor Gregory Nagy begins to explain the Greek ...

Lately, I've taken to tagging many of my Instagram pictures with #homeschoolersatheart . After all, we didn't  stop  being life-learners just because  Quentin started attending public school . Both boys continue to ask fascinating questions, and we keep helping them learn to find answers. This morning, around 7:45, after Luke had left for work but before it was time for Quentin to walk to school, Jude and I started talking about sex and gender. He has taken to calling boys "XY" and girls "XX" lately, after having watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode about genetics (or was it probability?). Jude, who sometimes decides he's a girl, thought that maybe his chromosomes change periodically. Quentin wondered what would happen if someone had two Y chromosomes, either together with an X or without any X. Then he wondered about having three Xs or just one. Ask me how much I know about genetics. The answer is only the most basic jr. high leve...