Four Great Things #11

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Four Great Things #11

Kate Stevens • April 26, 2024

Here are Four Great Things from the week of 04/26/2024.

I've had my mind on how to best influence my girls' taste level lately—me being interested in a variety of subjects and placing good things with longevity and a rich history in front of them has been our pattern thus far. There are dozens of factors to keep in mind when exposing them to new ideas, for I cannot always anticipate how they will receive it or what they will do with a new thought. But at times it doesn't feel like it is enough.

This is one of those things where I concede, once again, that I do not own my children. I faithfully and obediently follow God in how I teach them, but ultimately their response to modernity is their own. This is a steep work, but I cling to 1 Peter 3:6 where we are instructed to be like Sarah and not to "fear anything that is frightening."

William Shakespeare

This past week was Shakespeare's birth and death day—the 23rd. Joel Miller re-posted an article he wrote in honor of the poet, actor, and playwright: Shakespeare's Plan for Personal Growth.

"It’s more than his plays that teach us about personal growth. Shakespeare’s own career as a poet and playwright instructs us as well, particularly by showing us a primary driver of personal growth: our peers." He goes on to show three major social shifts in his life along with his works to prove how his peers sharpened and shaped him.

Does that make you want to hang out with people smarter than you? It does me!

C.S. Lewis's Writing Advice

As if anyone needed another reason to love C.S. Lewis—he carried on a ten year correspondence with a Narnia fan. She was a young girl in grade school who aspired to write novels as well. She sent him samples of her writing, and he read them and even gave her advice.

In this article, Aaron Earls addresses 5 pieces of advice he gave to her. The first: "Use the clearest word possible: Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else."

How to Have Fun Thinking with a Paper Dictionary

This one is quirky, to be sure. Austin Kleon is a writer and artist who inspires me to journal and write—even when I don't think I have anything to say. I've featured his work on Great Things before.

In this article he follows a train of words/ideas throughout a real dictionary. The conclusion is thus: "So that’s how you go from thinking about Walt Goggins to thinking about monks, pretzel, and prayer in a just a few steps. All thanks to the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, purchased for $5 at Goodwill."

Either you will love or hate this exercise—I have a dictionary of obscure and ambiguous words I like to read some evenings before bed, so I loved this.

How to Restore Rhythm

Maybe it's because of our cross country move and that I have eyes for it, but I keep running into articles about rhythms—of which, we just don't have yet.

So I aim for gratitude at this gypsy pace of life, complete with living in the basement of some friends.

School of the Unconformed states: "Within a household, each person must to some extent adjust their own rhythms to the other members of the household. When are meals eaten, so that people can eat together when possible? When is sleep time, so that nobody is doing aerobics after midnight and waking everybody else up? When is the time for prayer, for ritual, for conversations, for shared activities?

So it’s not enough that we each enjoy our own personal synchrony, isolated from others. Although a home can’t function with the orderliness of a monastery (at least, not if there are kids!), some shared coherence is needed among the different members of the household, a degree of synchrony between the individual variations of life."

What I'm working on:

A friend asked me to write a blog about why I wear so many bracelets all the time. It is a story I truly love to tell.

Quotable:

"The health of the soul is not a recipe that can be doubled or halved. If a man pours bleach into his eyes, he cannot balance the effects of the bleach later by contemplating icons of Christ because he will not be able to see those icons. Likewise, social media is not atoned for in the reading of Paradise Lost because social media makes Paradise Lost incomprehensible." Joshua Gibbs, "Love What Lasts"

Worth the Memory

The Hare

By Walter de la Mare

In the black furrow of a field
I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled of the green;
And I whispered "Wh-s-st! witch-hare,"
Away like a ghostie o'er the field
She fled, and left the moonlight there.

What are your great things from the week?

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I'm Kate

Worshiper, wife, mom—with the help of the Lord, this is my hierarchy of work. Beyond this I homeschool the girls and hold down a staff position at Zionsville Fellowship in Zionsville, Indiana. I read, write, do yoga, cook, and practice thinking pure and lovely things.

More about me

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Somewhere between zoology and theology.