YMB #73 Finding Truth in Every Subject: A Conversation with Brandy VencelPin
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On today’s episode of the podcast I am chatting with a good friend Brandy Vencel all about which subjects in our homeschools are appropriate for Morning Time. Are some activities and subjects holier than others? Are there any subjects that do not pertain to God?

These are all fascinating questions. While we do not claim to have a definitive answer we welcome you to join us as we begin the discussion. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Pam: This is Your Morning Basket Podcast, where we help you bring truth, goodness and beauty to your homeschool day. Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 73 of the Your Morning Basket Podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host and I am so happy that you are joining me here today. Well, today’s episode is a good one. But it was a really tough one to record. There was an idea I wanted to explore. But it was really hard to find the words to explore it. And so I had my good friend, Brandy Vencel from afterthoughtsblog.net come on, to hash out this particular idea with me and talk about it for a little while. We went way past an hour. There was a lot of editing done to this particular episode because there were so many moments where I just had to stop and wrestle for my words. The conversation just made my head hurt, I was thinking so much. But we hope that we did it justice for you guys today. So we’re taking a look at the idea that God is not just in certain things that we do in our homeschool but instead he’s in everything that we do in our homeschool. So have a listen and just know that we wrestled with it and let me know what you think in the comments on the show notes to this episode. And we’ll get on with it right after this word from our sponsor.

Pam:
This episode of The Your Morning Basket Podcast is brought to you by the Traveling Through the Pages, free Summer Reading program. Now this Summer Reading program was designed by myself and my good friend Jessica Lawton who writes all the Morning Time plans for the Your Morning Basket Plus subscription. We came up with this reading program a few years ago, in order to encourage kids to read widely across different genres through this summer.

Pam:
And so we have a special packet that you can come and download, absolutely free that has a passport that your kids can fill out as they read from our various reading suggestions and different genre ideas throughout the summer. Now also in the packet is a downloadable certificate, some bookmarks for your kids, different reading ideas and little reading scavenger hunts and also some celebration tickets where you can celebrate reading with your kids and the different milestones that they accomplish throughout the reading program.

Pam:
We give you some different ideas to use on those celebration tickets, things like taking your child to the coffee shop to discuss a book or getting a new book or going bowling or watching a movie as a family or even going out to breakfast with mom or dad. So it’s more than rewarding your kids for reading but instead it’s taking the time to celebrate their reading accomplishments for the summer. So you can find all of that at pambarnhill.com/summer-reading or by visiting the show notes for this episode of the podcast and we’ll link you to the Summer Reading program there. It’s absolutely free and we hope you come enjoy it. And now on with the podcast.

Pam:
Brandy Vencel is a Charlotte Mason homeschooling mom of four and the host of the popular podcast, Scholé Sisters. She is the author of Start Here: A Journey Through Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles, and The Afterthinkers Guide to Charlotte Mason’s Home Education, both of which can be found on her blog at afterthoughts.net. Brandy has a heart for serving classical and Charlotte Mason homeschooling moms through the AmblesideOnline auxiliary board and the Scholé Sistership, a community founded by the Scholé Sisters for moms seeking camaraderie around big ideas in education. Brandy, welcome to the podcast.

Brandy:
Why, thank you. Glad to be here.

Pam:
It’s so good to have you. Now I said Scholé Sisters three times in that bio, I think, I should let people know, I also show up on Scholé Sisters sometimes.

Brandy:
Exactly. I was waiting for it. It wasn’t there.

Pam:
Yeah, was it? No. So Brandy is the host, our host of Scholé Sisters. And I probably show up there about a third of the time, don’t you think?

Brandy:
Yeah. Maybe even more than that.

Pam:
Yeah, so we have some really great episodes. If you’ve never checked out that podcast. I highly recommend it. It’s a little more conversational than this one. Less interview back and forth and more conversational. But it’s so much fun.

Brandy:
It’s because I’m less organized than you are.

Pam:
I don’t know about that but-

Brandy:
If I could just get it together.

Pam:
It’s a really fun conversation.

Brandy:
It is fun.

Pam:
Okay, Brandy has been on the podcast before. You’ve been on twice before?

Brandy:
I think so.

Pam:
Yeah, once we talked-

Brandy:
You’ve been around so long.

Pam:
I have been around for a while. I’m showing my age here. But you came on, I believe it was number three or something where we talked about reading-

Brandy:
That’s right.

Pam:
… in Morning Time. And then you also came and talked about ideas-

Brandy:
That’s right.

Pam:
… in Morning Time as well. So both of those were really great conversations and I can’t remember the numbers, but we’ll link to both of them in the show notes. So if somebody wasn’t listening to one of those podcasts, go ahead and tell me a little bit about your homeschool and how you came to homeschooling and your history with Morning Time, the CliffsNotes version.

Brandy:
Okay. I have four students and they, this year, are fifth grade all the way to a senior. So I have my very first senior.

Pam:
Whoo-hoo.

Brandy:
I know, it’s so weird. Well, and this is a really weird time to have a senior.

Pam:
Yeah.

Brandy:
But anyway, so they have always been homeschooled and I have always used or I feel like use is a weird word to use, but Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. So they have always been using AmblesideOnline, which I know you bring up every once in a while on your show. And so I mean, it’s just, I just love homeschooling. I guess I didn’t completely really know what homeschooling was all about. I mean, I had this vague recollection of growing up and knowing that there were a couple of kids at my piano lessons that were homeschooled or something. But I didn’t really know what that meant or what they were doing or anything.

Brandy:
But really, I think the main way I got into it, there was two big influences. And the first was that when we first got married, we lived in this little apartment over a garage in someone’s backyard. And the people that lived in the front house, I think they had six kids that they had adopted out of the foster system. And they were those kinds of eclectic people that do something different every year. So when we were there, their kids were going to the local public school, but in the past, they had done Christian school, they had done homeschooling and when I would talk to the wife, she would always say that homeschooling and those younger earlier years, were just some of her favorite things. So I think she put it on our radar.

Brandy:
So then the second thing would be that we just both, my husband and I, both felt like, oh, I don’t want to sound snobby. But when we met Elementary Ed majors, now this is not true of all of them, so that’s why I want to be careful and not sound snobby, because for example, I had a roommate that was an Elementary Ed major, and she was awesome. And I would have been pleased to have her be my child’s teacher…But with that said, a lot of them didn’t like to read. And I didn’t know much about education at all. But one thing I was convinced was that if a child loved to read, then a lot of stuff took care of itself.

Brandy:
And so like I said, I loved my roommate, but I knew that she was going to live hundreds of miles away. So she wasn’t going to be my child’s teacher. It was going to be some other random person that I didn’t know. And I think we just started out with this idea of like, “Well, how hard is it to do kindergarten? How hard is it to do first grade?” And then we just so fell in love with it that it was never any question that we were going to do anything different. So anyway, I hope that wasn’t a snobby thing to say.

Pam:
No, no. I’m just shocked that, yeah, you met Elementary Ed majors who didn’t love reading. Because now, when I went to college, I mean, I was surrounded by English majors and so I think that’s a prerequisite for that.

Brandy:
Right, oh, yeah, for sure. Well, and I really think that might not be universally true. It might just be the people I happened to meet. And then God using that to influence our life because I got this perception.

Pam:
Right, right.

Brandy:
So God uses funny things sometimes. But for me, I knew I had always loved books. And I knew that I wanted my children to love reading. And so that was really where it all started. Which I think is really why I ended up falling in love with AmblesideOnline and Charlotte Mason and all those things just because it’s such a book-centered approach, and I loved books.

Pam:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things I really admire about you. And I know I’ve told you this before, is that you got in there and started doing the CM, AmblesideOnline thing and you have never wavered. I mean, I’m like, I am a curriculum hopper from way back when, if something’s not working, I’m going to throw it aside, at least for a while and try something different. I may come back to it and usually do. But that’s one of the things I’ve always had great admiration for.

Brandy:
Well-

Pam:
It’s like, “How does she do this?”

Brandy:
I think I stumbled on something that was a really good fit for us at the very beginning is part of it. Because I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have jumped around if I hadn’t have start… I mean, if I’d started with something different, that I didn’t like as much, then the story may be a very different one. But Cindy Rollins was talking about AmblesideOnline one day, and my oldest was three or four years old at the time, and I just thought, “That sounds good.” So then I looked at it, and I looked at the booklists and I thought, “Oh, we could never afford to do this.” I had no idea it was free. And so I just remember thinking, “How wonderful. I wish we could do this.” Then when I found out it was free and so much of the stuff was online, I thought, “Ah, this is even in my budget.”

Pam:
Yeah, there you go. Okay, so you just brought up one of the magic words, because now we’re going to talk about your Morning Time. And you said Cindy Rollins. And is that where you started with Morning Time or did you come at it from a different direction and then find out that Cindy did it?

Brandy:
Really it was her, and then it was also Preschoolers and Peace.

Pam:
Kendra, Kendra Fletcher.

Brandy:
Yes, Kendra Fletcher. So I feel like Cindy gave me the vision for what I wanted to do in Morning Time, but Kendra gave me the vision of the relational aspect of it. So the big thing that I remember about what she was saying at the time, and oh, my goodness, this was, what? Almost 15 years ago or something but-

Pam:
Ages ago, yeah.

Brandy:
I mean, it was. It was, we were so young and cute back then. But one of the things that she was saying was that she wanted it to be a time to tell her preschoolers like, “I’m happy that you’re here. I want you to be here with us. I want you to be a part of this.” And so for me, Morning Time started out not just as this thing that we were doing with this content, which was true, but also as a way of making sure that I was still connecting with my younger kids as I was trying to do this whole homeschooling thing right, quote-unquote, with my oldest child. Because there’s a three year gap between my first student and then my next student.

Brandy:
And so it would have been really easy for me to just dive into educating him, my oldest child and hoping that everything came together later. So I feel like from the very beginning, Kendra’s influence was that it was always for all of them as much as possible. I wanted them all to feel they’re welcome at this table. This is for them too.

Pam:
Yeah, yeah. And Kendra even influenced you so much, you still call it Circle Time-

Brandy:
I do.

Pam:
… and not Morning Time. Even with a senior in high school. So do you ever get the side eye like, “Mom.”?

Brandy:
Well, the big thing is, at least once a week he tells me, “You know this isn’t a circle, right?” I’m like, “You know that’s annoying, right?” I told him, “Look, I never really thought of it in terms of the shape I was thinking more like we’re circling the wagons before we go our separate direction.” And so-

Pam:
Let the circle be unbroken man.

Brandy:
Exactly, there you go.

Pam:
Yeah. Okay.

Brandy:
It’s a metaphor for unity.

Pam:
Okay. So that’s so much fun, that it was Kendra’s influence as well. And you guys, if you haven’t heard episode 39 of the Your Morning Basket Podcast, we had Kendra Fletcher on to talk about-

Brandy:
Oh, that’s right.

Pam:
… building relationships with Circle Time. And that was a really great episode. Not because of me, because of Kendra.

Brandy:
Well, you may have had something to do with it Pam.

Pam:
Well, there are so many episodes I love but it’s not because of me, it’s because of the guests. Well, I wanted to have you on today Brandy, to talk a little bit about some of the subjects that we study in Morning Time or in Circle Time. And this idea, and I’m just going to jump around in the questions. But sometimes there’s this idea that if Morning Time is supposed to be about the most important things, that then all we should focus on in our Morning Time are things like prayer and Bible study and devotions or things like that. And that the other things that we might put in the Morning Time things like music appreciation, or art or poetry are secondary to those things, because they’re not the most important things. They’re not the things that are about God. And I don’t think that’s true. So let’s talk about this idea, why are those things not secondary?

Brandy:
I hope you don’t get disappointed in me for this one. But I mean, I guess they are secondary in the sense, and just in this one sense, that on a really short day, when I need to cut things down, I don’t cut prayer or Bible.

Pam:
Yes.

Brandy:
And I might cut music. But to me, that’s the only thing that makes it secondary. You know what I mean? So if I’m limiting the time… And there were a couple of years where we had to do a really short Morning Time. And so it really was those main, quote-unquote, main or religious sorts of things. But I know what you’re getting at, with just the bigger thing. And I mean, I guess I would ask the question, really, what makes us think that God has nothing to do with those things or what makes us have a secular view of those things?

And I wonder sometimes if it isn’t just the way we were all educated because, I don’t know about you, but I went to public school and the whole thing about public school was separating God from everything else. So we’re here to study things that have nothing to do with God. That’s the big message, of the public school system in many ways. But that, historically has never been the view of the church. And I really think it comes down to our theology. If we really believe that in God, in Christ, everything lives and moves and have being, that Christ holds all things together, that He is the word that gives the logic to everything that exists. If we really believe all of those things, and if we believe that, what is it? That none of these things came from somewhere else, He’s the sole creator. So if we really believe all of that, then these things have everything to do with God in the sense that they don’t exist outside of His will. And they’re not a surprise to Him. I mean, the big example I always use is math. If math is actually just telling us about reality, and reality is what God has made, then why would we think of it as something that’s secular?

And I think we think of it as something that’s secular because we don’t know how to slap a Bible verse on it to somehow sanctify it. But I feel like that’s a really superficial way of trying to Christianize something is to just slap a verse on it, and be like, “Now it’s Christian.” Because I feel like that’s the ultimate mistake that Christian schools make. They take the regular curriculum, and they slap a Bible class on it and call it Christian. And if we really deeply understand that reality flows from God, and is part of His will, then our Christianity has everything to do with everything. Including our music appreciation, or whatever.

And that doesn’t mean that the person who thought of this type of math or this type of music or whatever was a Christian. It just acknowledges that they were a creature created by a God who gave them this capacity and willed them to produce these things. So we can take all of that and we can enjoy it. And yeah, we’ll spit out the seeds. There’s seeds everywhere. But that’s true of everything. So anyway, that’s my initial thought on those kinds of things.

Pam:
Well, and the math was there before the person came along, whether the person was Christian or not.

Brandy:
Yes.

Pam:
So going back to what you were saying that I was going to be disappointed in you, I mean, I’m not at all. Because if we only have, let’s say, we have 15 minutes to do Morning Time, we’re going to sit down and do prayer and probably nothing else. I mean, that’s where we’re going to start, is we’re going to do prayer, we’re going to sing a hymn, we’re going to read our scripture, maybe we’re going to do some memory work or something like that. But that’s definitely where we’re beginning. But I think, is there a danger in, and I don’t mean to… I’m not quite sure how to phrase this one. What if you never get to any of the other stuff?

Brandy:
Oh, that was a great question. I’ll tell you why, because I used to get frustrated with people who would say, “Well, we did Bible so we did school. That was enough.” And there is a sense in which man does not live by bread alone, but every word that comes out of the mouth of God. So we don’t want to minimize the Bible, but I mean, what is education and what is its purpose? We have to answer those essential questions to know if what we’ve done can be classified as such. And if education is really the process of… Well, what did Milton say? “We’re restoring the ruins of our first parents.” That is more than just a religious education. That is saying man was created to be a certain thing, and we’re helping him become that again through how we educate.

And so if that is true, then we have to ask the question, “Well, what does a human being… What was he created to be? What can he be? What are his possibilities?” And his possibilities include music and math and history and literature and poetry and all of these things. I mean, we see Adam speaking poetry when he first sees Eve. So what was man created to be? A poet, apparently. So if we say that education is just reading our Bibles or something, I think we’re ignoring what humanity was created to be. Yes, we desperately need the Bible, because we are fallen creatures. But that’s not the whole story. And we don’t become what we were created to be, without perfecting the human things, which would be a lot of these subjects that we’re putting into Morning Time.

So for me, it’s just we’re truncating a view of humanity. And we’re saying, “Well, humans are just religious creatures.” And I don’t think that’s the whole story about mankind. I think man is, I want to be really careful how I say this, because I don’t want to fall into heresy on accident. I think man is deeply religious, but I think he can be religious while being fully human, and that might include doing geometry. And he’s not less human because of that. He’s more human, because geometry resides in the mind of God. So, yeah, I’ll just leave it at that before I end up a heretic.

Pam:
Well, I’m trying to think through this because I think there’s a danger in, you’re afraid of falling into heresy with what you’re saying here. But I always feel like there’s an equal danger in stating this is about God and this is not about God. I mean, who are we to say that?

Brandy:
Well, that’s Charlotte Mason’s 20th Principle. Where she says, “We shall allow no division to spring up between…” I mean she’s not saying secular and sacred. But she’s getting at that divide. Because it’s between the child’s spiritual or religious life and his intellectual life. And so if we are unified, we talk about body, mind and soul. But that’s actually, I mean, you can’t separate that unless you’re talking about death when your soul separates from your body. But that’s not a good thing. So we want to be this unified whole, as human beings. And so if those three are actually inseparable, then to be fully human is not just to develop my soul, it’s to discipline my body and discipline my mind as well.

So I mean, what was that conversation you and I were having a while back? When Paul says that physical training has some value. Yes, he’s saying that we are to seek these greater things, but he’s actually saying it has some value. That there’s some value to physical training, you should try it. So, anyway, I really think it comes down to two theological weaknesses we can have, and one is putting God in a box and not recognizing Him as… I think, how do I put this? It’s almost like we’re just seeing Him as too small. That we’re not seeing Him as infinite. And so we don’t see how he relates to our science lesson. But if He’s the Creator, and He is infinite, then He is infinitely involved in your science lesson, we should try to harmonize that, instead of just cutting Him out because we don’t see the connection. That’s a problem with us, not a problem with Him.

So I think it’s that, but then also our view of humanity is small. So as we start, it’s as if we start trying to worship properly, we start to define ourselves in the small way without realizing that God has created the whole person. So I think it’s just we just have to recover this bigger vision. Charlotte Mason, she goes to this fresco, where she has what she calls her ‘Great Recognition.’ So this is a fresco that is in Santa Maria Novella, the Spanish chapel in Florence, Italy. And she goes, and she looks and it’s this… Well, another name for this fresco is The Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas.

And so you’ve got Thomas Aquinas on this throne. And you’ve got all these virtues in the air, and you’ve got all these things going on. And near the bottom, you have these… It’s like the seven theological sciences on the left, and it’s this seven liberal arts on the right. And she looks at this and she says, “Oh, my goodness, hundreds of years ago, it was totally natural for people to see that God’s authority,” because at the very top is a dove which symbolizes the Holy Spirit and then there’s a symbol for Pentecost at the top of that. And so this fresco is set up, where basically like, here’s the Holy Spirit. Here’s the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and as a result, trickled down, we have theological sciences and we have liberal arts. And all of that is under the Lordship of Christ.

And she looks at that and thinks, “Why did they know this? To them, this was so common sense that they put it on a wall in the chapel, like, “Here’s a painting of our view of reality.” Somehow we lost that and we have the sacred-secular divide.” I mean, but she admits, “It’s so easy for us to look at the seven theological sciences, and, “Oh, yes, of course, God is involved here.” But then we look at Lady Grammar over on the end, and we’re like, “What does He have to do with that?”” What he has to do with that, is in the beginning was the word, right?

Pam:
Yeah.

Brandy:
And grammar is really bringing us into right relationship with words. So it is under His authority and comes from Him and grammar, is as we recall a discovered truth. It’s how words work and it’s the authority in our life and if we’re talking about authorship and that thing, but all of that comes to us from God, but it’s hard for us to see it, but it’s because we are a deeply secular people. It was probably a lot easier in Florence, where the primary culture was a Christian one. So I just feel like these struggles really point to a weakness in us. That we have limited the connection between God and the world around us. We’re not seeing that connection.

Pam:
Okay. So what I’ve heard you say so far is that we’re not trying to establish a priority of one over the other. We’re saying that prayer and scripture is a priority in our home schools. But we’re also saying that we as humans seem to have this tendency to separate things into two separate boxes when they don’t necessarily need to be separate into two boxes.

Brandy:
Something about what you said reminded me of, what’s the name of the guy, who was in the Olympics, he was the runner? The guy that wouldn’t run on Sunday.

Pam:
Yes, “Chariots of Fire.”

Brandy:
Yes, the “Chariots of Fire” guy. I’m trying to remember his name. And I’m totally forgetting the name.

Pam:
He was Scottish. Hold on.

Brandy:
Yes.

Pam:
Yeah, I can get all this stuff about him. But-

Brandy:
But it’s-

Pam:
… there’s a quote.

Brandy:
Yes, where he talks about running. And it’s really, when you get really involved in his story, he’s being pushed and pushed. He’s obviously called to be a preacher, he’s being pushed into the ministry, and people are like, “The Olympics, really? But you’re religious. Why would you go run?”

And his whole thing was…

Pam:
… has a quote about running. Yes, I saw that not too long after we thought about… It’s Eric Liddell.

Brandy:
He says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Pam:
Yes.

Brandy:
And I’ve always thought about that, that this didn’t stop him from being a missionary. He did go on and he did go into ministry, and he did preach to many people and all those kinds of things. But it acknowledged his humanity, that God also made him fast. He was acknowledging that God gave him more than one gift and it was good for him to use the gifts that God had given him. And I think sometimes this is how we end up ostracizing people inside of the church who are not called to formal ministry, because we have been secularizing education on accident. I mean, when we’re asking questions like this, we have good intentions, because what we want to do is we want to say, “Scripture is the highest thing, it’s the most important thing.” And I mean, I respect that. I agree with that. That’s why when we have to drop something, it’s not Bible and prayer that we’re dropping.

But with that said, how do we… Let’s say you have a child that’s really gifted in music or art. And I use that example because 100 years ago-ish, most Christians completely abandoned the arts and then were like, “Gosh, Hollywood’s awful.” Well, that didn’t just happen, right?

Pam:
Right.

Brandy:
It happened when a bunch of people, a little over 100 years ago, decided that they just couldn’t see the connection anymore between Christianity and art so they were just going to opt out. And so we essentially abandoned whole swathes of society to the secularists.

Pam:
When you create a void something else is going to come in there to fill it.

Brandy:
Exactly. But how do you look a child in the eye, that has that gifting? Or maybe you have a child that seems like a gifted engineer in the future, or whatever. And if we don’t see the connection between God and these subjects, and if we don’t show our children how they can glorify God in what they were born to do, then really, I feel like we’re leaving them at risk. Where they’re going to start having this divide in their minds that, “On Sunday I’m a Christian and I worship God. But on the average workday, I’m an engineer, and I use my brain.” And there’s this dichotomy that’s being created, that I think it’s completely unnecessary. Because I think we should be able to stand up with Eric Liddell and say, “God also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” So God also made me, well… Fill in the blank for your child.

I have a child that is breeding rabbits and wants to learn to butcher them, which I find horrifying. But I also feel like, “But she was born…” I mean, it was very obvious, from the time she was little that she was born this way. She’s our outdoor girl. She loves her animals. She takes care… I mean, and I want her to know that she can glorify God and who God made her. It was God’s delight to make her this way. And so I just think if we’re not careful, we end up sending the message to kids that aren’t called directly to formal church ministry, that somehow what they’re doing can’t honor God or isn’t as important or whatever. But really, if you think about, what do we want for society? What do we want for this world? We would love to see Christians everywhere, doing all sorts of amazing jobs, and worshiping the Lord in what they’re called to do, right?

Pam:
Right.

Brandy:
And so, I mean, what’s the path to that? The path to that has to be that God is Lord over every subject, and he can be honored in every subject and as we become more fully human, that means we become good at math and science and art and music and not just good at reading our Bible or praying.

Pam:
Let’s talk about, the tagline for this podcast is truth, goodness and beauty for your homeschool day. So what are we talking about when we’re talking about truth, goodness and beauty?

Brandy:
Ha-ha, okay. So I came armed with this because I knew you were going to ask this question. Okay, so I love Aristotle’s definition of truth. I mean, how dare I because he wasn’t a Christian? Turns out, non Christians have good thoughts too, sometimes. So Aristotle, he said, when… I’m trying to think about how he describes truth, hold on. He says basically, “When you say that what is, is, and when you say, what is not, is not, you speak the truth.” So really, what we call truth is when we apprehend reality, then we have the truth.

So the truth can be both negative and positive. This is true because it is or this is not true, because it is not. And both of those things are, according to Aristotle, the truth. Which I think actually, is, I think that is the key to us being able to talk with our kids about why we have to do X, Y or Z. Because when we start talking about, well, these things are part of reality. And where do you think reality comes from? If you really believe in a creator, and you really believe He’s the source of reality, then we can apprehend truth, more or less. I mean, obviously, we’re limited by our finite minds. But I think that is the key, because that gets us away from all the practical, “When am I going to use this stuff?” The idea that as a human, you can apprehend truth, it doesn’t mean you’re going to use it all. And it doesn’t have value based on whether or not you use it.

That’s a materialist point of view. That, “The only things that are useful to me are the things that I can directly use.” And the idea really comes down to things like money. Like, “If I can use this to earn a dime or better my life and somehow then it has value,” but that’s not the Christian view of humanity. It has value, because you’re understanding a little bit more about this world that God made. And isn’t that a wonderful thing? So I feel like-

Pam:
Well, and you’re becoming more fully human too.

Brandy:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, we all have this capacity to apprehend these things, because you were made in His image. So I feel like truth is really our key to having these conversations with our children. So then, I feel like beauty and goodness are so much harder to define. I mean, we tend to know beauty right? But beauty, okay, so I actually brought my Peter Kreeft because my son and I just read a section on beauty very recently. So we’re reading The Philosophy of Tolkien, by Peter Kreeft. By the way, if you have a high schooler that you want to introduce some basic philosophy to, but they’ve read a lot of Lord of the Rings growing up, and stuff, I think this is just the perfect little introductory way to do it. I just absolutely have fallen in love with this book. And it’s not huge.

So I assigned this for my son’s senior year, and we’re just reading a little bit every week. It’s not a lot. So by the end of the year, he’ll have read the whole book. But it’s not tons of overwhelming reading or anything. It’s super great. Anyway. But he has a section, Peter Kreeft, has a section in this book on beauty and he’s really trying to explain the tension or not tension but how we’re trying to balance out beauty and goodness and where one leaves off and the other starts. Because it can get confusing. But he says, “Putting first things first is the key to the health of second things and beauty is a second thing. It is very good, but not as good as moral goodness.”

So he describes goodness that, obviously, as having this moral quality. That it is in accordance with how things ought to be. And he means that even in a moral or ethical sense. So then he says, “Beauty is one of the more important forms of goodness. Beauty is very good. And goodness is the highest form of beauty. The most beautiful thing in this world is a saint.” I’ve loved that idea that, so beauty is in many ways, it’s sensory. And then goodness is this intangible quality.

But when we think about, “What is the ultimate human like?,” they’ve arrived at the tangible and…the place where the intangible and the tangible connect. So that this idea of sainthood as an ideal, is where the beauty and goodness have come together. So we end up with affirming that truth in scripture where the most beautiful thing, that beauty fades, but there’s this inner virtue that lasts forever and that is goodness, but that is actually the ultimate beauty. The great irony is that it didn’t fade at all. It was an internal quality.

Pam:
Okay. When you reach that, that sainthood, I mean, that’s-

Brandy:
That’s what Kreeft is saying, yeah.

Pam:
… the sainthood is where it is.

Brandy:
Right.

Pam:
Which we’re not going to get there here. So it’s got to be beyond.

Brandy:
Right. Right. I think what Kreeft is really getting at, is really this idea, what’s an ideal?

Pam:
Right, right.

Brandy:
And what is our ideal as humanity? And I think it’s easy for us to say the ideal human knows the truth, but we’re uncomfortable talking about and we’re… Well, and we’re comfortable saying the ideal human lives a good life. Like we’ll say talk about moral goodness. But beauty makes us uncomfortable. Because if you say the ideal human is beautiful, then it’s like, “Well what about people born with birth defects?” Or, “What about as I get older and how that falls away,” or whatever. So I like the way he’s connecting all three, that even though beauty, it’s very sensory, right? Because we find it in music and in poetry and rhythms and in art and all that stuff. So it’s very sensory, but he’s saying ultimate beauty is found in the supreme moral goodness. So it’s where truth, beauty and goodness all came together.

Pam:
Okay, so what does that look like in our Morning Time?

Brandy:
What? We have to apply all this?

Pam:
No, not necessarily. I mean, maybe we can or maybe we don’t. Or what is the application? Because now you’ve given us really deep thoughts to think and I’m going to have to listen to this two or three times. But how does this apply to what we’re teaching our kids and how things like grammar and math and music and art, where do they fit into this? And is it that they are a reflection of beauty? Is it that they’re helping us along the path to being able to grow closer to that ideal? I mean, what?

Brandy:
I think so. I mean, I think everything can be our tutor bringing us closer to God and what He created us to be. And so I don’t want to be trite to say that, all truth is God’s truth and truth is truth, no matter where you find it. But these are things that people say because there’s a sense in which this is very real. If someone says something that is true, something which corresponds to reality, that belongs to the Lord because He is the Creator. He’s the source of all that is.

So then I feel like it’s easy to get these really big concepts, truth, goodness, beauty and feel like, “Oh, that’s so untouchable, and I’m just me.” But the idea is like, “Well, yeah, we’re not saints.” So we just take the next step. So what’s the next step? The next step is the next sample of excellence that we can give our children, which is the next poem we read, and the next piece of art that we look at. And then there’s other things, like, with the formal grammar lessons, where you’re diagramming a sentence or whatever, you’re learning to play with words, so that you can better form them so that maybe someday you will be able to have the capacity to bring forth some great work of art that will benefit other children some other day.

So I feel like these things, if we say like, “Oh, sainthood, so this idea of the virtuous woman or the virtuous person,” or whatever. If these are ideals that we have floating around out there, how do you get there? It’s one sample of excellence at a time. And that builds our moral imagination or whatever, where we start to actually even have the capacity for virtue and for goodness, and all of those things. Because you can’t embody something that you can’t imagine. And so I feel like we’re just storing up the internal resources for hopefully, living a better life, and following the Lord more closely than we did the day before. So, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time?”

Pam:
One bite at a time, yeah.

Brandy:
I mean, it is that thing. I mean, it’s just we’re taking the next step and the next step. So the next step is… We’re doing one of those Simply Charlotte Mason composer studies right now. And I love those little things. And so, what’s the next step? Well, it’s just the next piece. And the thing, you have your Morning Time plans, and there’s music in there. It’s just the next thing. But why did you select the things that you select in your Morning Time plans? Well, because these are samples of excellence, right?

Pam:
Right.

Brandy:
These are some of the greatest things ever produced by someone. Listening to those things is how we tap in to truth, goodness and beauty. I think it’s easy for us to put those things up on a pedestal and feel like they’re unreachable. But it’s just one step at a time.

Pam:
Yeah. Yeah. And if we don’t do that, I mean, then we’re not taking those steps forward.

Brandy:
Right.

Brandy:
We’re reading… So N.D. Wilson has that series that he wrote…it’s the time travel series. I’m trying to remember exactly what it’s called. But it’s The Legend of Sam Miracle is the first one and then The Song of Glory and Ghost is the second one. We’re on something about The Last of the Lost Boys. I don’t know. You can link them in your show notes. I’m sure you can find them from this description.

Pam:
Yeah, yeah. Outlaws of Time.

Brandy:
Yes, there you go, The Outlaws of Time series, which, by the way, I wouldn’t read them to really little kids because they could be scary. But I have big kids. So anyway. So we’re doing this as a read aloud right now. So one of the things that’s happening in this third book that I found so interesting was that this kid who’s becoming the villain in the book, basically had been really protected by the people who were raising him. And so there were whole sections of reality that weren’t given to him, because they thought they were protecting him. And then it turns out that that was the big weakness. That by not giving him that reality, he was left vulnerable, unprotected, and able to be influenced by seriously evil people.

And I think of that. There’s bad music out there. And there’s bad poetry. There’s bad ideas. And if we are not equipping our students with a generous amount of really good things, then how are they going to spot a counterfeit? This kid has some hazy idea that this is probably not a good idea. But he was not equipped. He did not have the resources inside of himself to not be deceived. And I just think… I mean, we can’t know the future. We can’t really protect our kids. But sometimes in the name of protecting our kids, we’re actually removing things that would be equipping them.

Pam:
Well, I liked what you said about a generous amount of things. But then also the idea that everything doesn’t come with an explicit label on it. And what I mean by that is everything doesn’t come explicitly labeled religious and good. You know what I mean?

Brandy:
Right.

Pam:
That it’s like everything that’s good is going to be labeled good for you and everything else you need to completely stay away from. I mean, there’s good out there. And that’s how we get that generous amount of stuff.

Brandy:
Yeah. We have to make our peace with living in a fallen world and accept that everything isn’t all of one or all of the other. There could be a really beautiful poem that has a line in it. That isn’t quite true. But we can’t just throw everything. I mean, I think this is where some of the desire to just focus on scripture is, because we know we can rely on scripture. Scripture isn’t going to let us down.

But the point is, I don’t know all about you, but I’m a mixed bag. I’m not all good or all bad. I’m not all one thing. I’m, hopefully, better today than I was yesterday, and better tomorrow than I am right now. So if we’re preparing them to live in the real world, then they have to be prepared for a world where discernment has to happen, because not only are things not explicitly labeled good or bad, but nothing is 100% good or bad. Because it’s coming from a human who’s just as human as you and me, which means that even when he’s trying really hard, just like I was earlier, “I should just stop talking because I’m going to become a heretic if I keep talking.”

And it’s not going to be because of my desire to be a heretic. It’s just because as a human, we are not perfect. And so we struggle to bring forth something that is true out of our imperfect selves. So I think that part of what generosity does, is it safeguards. Because now I have many samples. And so maybe we’re this one thing was weak, this other thing had a different weakness, but it had a strength in that one area. And so when the two things are meshed together, hopefully I’m getting more truth and I’m getting more goodness with every sample because the weaknesses are being shored up. And the rough places are being smoothed by greater exposure. And so I feel like generosity, this idea of-

Pam:
Well, and there’s also a practice in discernment too.

Brandy:
Right, yeah.

Pam:
Yeah. Because you’re always going to be faced with things because everything is created by fallen humans, you’re going to be faced with constant exposure to things that have this mixture in them. So by strengthening that discernment muscle, especially when you’re home, learning and growing up, then you’re going to be able to… It’s going to serve you better later.

Brandy:
Right, right. Well, and I think when kids see something truly ugly in themselves, they can realize that’s not the end of the story. Because they’ve seen some samples of that too. I think about my kids and I, we’re reading Hard Times right now, which honestly, if my fifth grader was my oldest child, would not be happening. But my fifth is my youngest child, so he’s just there. Because everybody else is a teenager, and they’re ready for this. But the main, or one of the main characters in there is tempted to have an affair. And it’s been a wonderful opportunity for dialogue about people who come into your life and try to tempt you. And then she, actually I didn’t know which way this was going to go because I hadn’t read the whole book before. I had only read excerpts of this book. And so I was biting my fingernails secretly, like, “I hope this ends up being a good example for my children, because I don’t know which way this is going to go.” But-

Pam:
Put it in the freezer.

Brandy:
Yeah, seriously. But thankfully, she runs home to her father. And we were talking about this, that she was very tempted. And she had multiple reasons why she was a weak person who was not prepared to make good moral choices in her life and all these things. But we talked about, “What was the one thing she did?” She didn’t just stay by herself when she was facing temptation. She went and sought out someone that she could trust who was wiser than her and who she knew would protect her. And her dad is far from perfect, but he was the right person to run to. And so I feel like working through all that stuff with my teenagers, it’s like, “Okay, so you faced a temptation to do something really horrible. That’s not the end of your story.” Right?

Pam:
Right.

Brandy:
And so these books that have these things that make us parents uncomfortable, and I mean, you hear parents, like, “I don’t want to read Shakespeare because…” Or whatever. And I mean, I’m not saying every Shakespeare play is appropriate for every child. In fact, there are a couple of Shakespeare plays that probably aren’t appropriate for any children. But with that said, this idea that somehow not acknowledging temptation is going to do them a favor, I mean, they’re going to be tempted just like we’re tempted.

And so helping them see people deal with it, overcome it, or even fall to it and suffer horrendous consequences, I mean, at some, and that’s not appropriate at every age, but at some age, they need to know the whole truth. Because I keep going back to that N.D. Wilson book, “Why was this child vulnerable?” Because he didn’t know the whole truth. That he had been protected from aspects of reality and he paid the price. Which makes an N.D. Wilson book a really great book because it’s dealing with ultimate reality itself in a weird fantastical way.

Pam:
Okay, well, it’s funny because I think we’ve wandered away from where I thought-

Brandy:
Oh, yeah, sorry.

Pam:
… we would be. No, no, it’s okay, because it’s all really good conversation to have. And I keep going back to that idea of, I mean, this certainly wasn’t supposed to be an episode about, how much do we shelter? Do we shelter? Do we not shelter? Because the idea was, that there are so many things that are good and full of God that are not necessarily labeled with that label. You know what I mean?

Brandy:
Right, yeah.

Pam:
And so we did get away from it. But I think it was an important conversation to have. So any final words?

Brandy:
I guess I think, if we want to circle back to your original topic, so that we feel like we did justice a little bit to it. I feel we need to realize that God, and I say this, we, meaning me too, because I feel like this is just an inherent weakness in our time more than anything because of how we were educated, how we were taught that there is such a thing as secular and that you can have a whole secular education. And so of course we don’t want to do that. As Christians, we don’t want to do that, we want our kids to have a deeply religious education, and we think that that means religion proper. But I feel like what we have to do as the adults is recover a full view of humanity. What was man and all his glory supposed to be? And then a full vision of our Lord. He is the one who saves us. But that’s a very, I don’t want to say a small part because God doesn’t have parts but again, heresy alert. But I-

Pam:
It’s not His only part.

Brandy:
It’s not His only quality. I mean, I think if we recover the vision of Him-

Pam:
Because He had to save us because of The Fall.

Brandy:
Exactly. But there was-

Pam:
That wasn’t where it all began.

Brandy:
Right. So I guess really, then what we’re saying, is we go back. If the goal of education is something like what Milton said, “To restore the ruins of our first parents,” then what do we do? We go back before the ruins to see what was that all about. And what do we have? We have man in all his glory, who is obviously a poet and a gardener and all these things. And we have the Lord who is creator and sovereign over all, and from whom all of this goodness comes. And if we recover a vision of that, of God and man, and then we think of ourselves as trying to restore some tiny part of that, then I feel like that puts everything in its proper place. When scripture says that we can glorify God in everything that our hand finds to do, I think that’s what we’re talking about.

That we can learn to glorify God while we’re doing math, or we’re doing grammar…we’re doing whatever. We can learn to feel God’s pleasure because this is the world that God made. And just like He delights to make the daisy on the hill and no one sees, it’s the same thing. In Corinthians, we’re talked about working with your hands, and all these different things. Those things are important too. God made us normal people. And he says… So how do you be like a normal person? You learn to glorify God in what you’re doing all day. That you understand that there is a connection between you and the Lord no matter what you’re doing.

Brandy:
And so, for me, that’s like, how do we eliminate secularism in our own life? It’s not by eliminating subjects. It’s eliminating it in our heart, where we start to see the connection between God and daily life.

Pam:
Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. And then, we could just bring St. Benedict into this too, and that would just open a whole new can of worms.

Brandy:
Oh, yeah. It would. So many worms.

Pam:
So many worms there. We’re just going to… Rule of St. Benedict, ora et labora, you can go there if you want to. But this episode, it’s completely gotten out of hand. But it’s good because it’s a great conversation that gives so many things to think about. So Brandy, thank you so much for coming on today.

Brandy:
Thanks for having me. It was so fun. It really was.

Pam:
It was so fun.

Brandy:
I love coming here.

Pam:
Tell everybody where they can find you online.

Brandy:
Two top places would be, scholesisters.com, which is the webpage for the Scholé Sisters podcast. And then afterthoughtsblog.net, which is my own personal website.

Pam:
And there you have it. If you would like links to any of the resources that Brandy and I chatted about on today’s episode of the podcast, you can find them on the show notes for this episode. They’re at pambarnhill.com/ymb73. Also on the show notes are some downloads for you, including a complete transcript of this episode, some action items for you to take, looking at your own Morning Time and some timestamps to help you find different parts of the episode again. And those downloads are absolutely free along with our free Summer Reading program that you can also find on those show notes. So that’s at pambarnhill.com/ymb73.

Pam:
Now we’ll be back again in a couple of weeks with another great Morning Time interview, this time with my friend, Mary Wilson. We’ll be chatting all about celebrating books and how we can go about doing that in our homes. You won’t want to miss that episode. Until then, keep seeking truth, goodness and beauty in your homeschool day.

Links and Resources from Today’s Show

Traveling Through the Pages Summer Reading Adventure.PinTraveling Through the Pages Summer Reading Adventure.Start Here: A Journey Through Charlotte Mason's 20 PrinciplesPinStart Here: A Journey Through Charlotte Mason’s 20 PrinciplesThe Afterthinker’s Guide to Charlotte Mason’s Home Education: A Study GuidePinThe Afterthinker’s Guide to Charlotte Mason’s Home Education: A Study GuideThe Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the RingsPinThe Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the RingsPinThe Lord of the RingsOutlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam MiraclePinOutlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam MiracleOutlaws of Time #2: The Song of Glory and GhostPinOutlaws of Time #2: The Song of Glory and GhostOutlaws of Time #3: The Last of the Lost BoysPinOutlaws of Time #3: The Last of the Lost BoysHard Times by Charles DickensPinHard Times by Charles Dickens

 

Key Ideas about Finding Truth in Every Subject

  • One of the goals of Morning Time is to set aside a portion of our homeschool day to focus on the most important things: truth, beauty, and goodness. So what are the most important things? Some may say that the Bible and prayer are most important and that everything else is secondary.
  • While modern education has made an artificial divide between that which is considered sacred and that which is secular, this division is unnecessary and not helpful. Instead, we must recover a bigger vision for education where we recognize that God, who is the author of all things, can truly be found in every subject. And, by finding God in all subject areas, and honoring Him in all our educational efforts, we are able to live a fuller vision of humanity.

Find What you Want to Hear

  • 5:56 meet Brandy
  • 11:04 how Brandy started with Morning Time
  • 14:05 Morning Time and the most important things
  • 18:27 the purpose of education
  • 23:38 Charlotte Mason and her ‘Great Recognition’
  • 31:48 defining truth
  • 34:37 defining goodness and beauty
  • 38:32 finding truth, beauty and goodness in Morning Time
  • 42:39 a generous feast helps build discernment in our kids
  • 51:26 Brandy’s final thoughts on the topic
YMB #73 Finding Truth in Every Subject PinPin

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