Live Out Light

  I am thrilled to have finished another fabulous book this month! Life Worth Living (by Volf, Croasmun, and McNally-Linz) was a perfect follow-up to Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death .  Let's dig into what really resonated for me.   This book was based on a very popular course offered at Yale. Its aim is to take the reader on an excavation of sorts. Uncovering what exactly it is to YOU that makes a life worth living.  First, I want to share this cautionary tale from the opening of the book. A man named Albert Speer was an impossibly talented architect.  He fancied himself an architect to his very core.  His ultimate dream was the chance to build the unimaginable.  Unfortunately, Hitler made him an offer he decided he couldn't refuse.  He would build the New Reich Chancellery. Hitler's foreign headquarters which included a marble gallery, along with many other massive, groundbreaking structures. See them here .  His work was funded by Hitler and his buildings were b

  I love this cross stitch, it was made by my Great Aunt Margaret and it hung in my Mema’s house. That is actually HER farmhouse in the picture. When they moved her the house had no plumbing or electricity. There was an outhouse and a well on the property. A great big pecan tree. I grew up on the property right behind her home and barns. Wow, this sounds about as southern as you can get.   Anyway, it hangs in my home now, and I don’t know if you can read it, but it says “Let me live in the house by the side of the road and be a friend to man” This was basically Mema's rule of life, not that she would have called it that.   She was a friend to everyone she met.  She never had an Instagram account or a Facebook feed.  I have no idea how social media would have shaped her for better or worse. Her life was lived out in those flesh-and-bone days that we seem to be stepping away from. My memories of her are all wrapped up in my senses. I remember the feel of the skin on her arms wrapp

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops – but not on our lives. The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die”   -The Machine Stops E.M. Forster I love a chilling quote, and this quote from The Machine Stops DELIVERS.  If you have not read this short story, I highly recommend it. I first heard about this story on Tsh Oxenreider's podcast: A Drink With A Friend.  Her guest was Autumn Kern, a fellow Charlotte Mason Homeschooling enthusiast.  Th