Keeping Busy
Keeping Busy
One of the first duties in life is balance, that happy ability to give each area of life its due time and consideration. My own coping (or not) with the difficulties of achieving balance is not always commendable. It certainly helps, though, to have kind and sensible people living with you!
What has really helped is having the guest bedroom for my private study quarters. Before I didn’t have a place to spread out my things, and they ended by being spread everywhere. During one of my, hmm, emotional collapses (when everything that has bothered me—for months—is all tangled up together) Mama discerned that I needed a separate (quiet!) place to go for studying. Now everyone isn’t driven distracted by my “piles,” and I am not driven distracted by having to retrieve and rearrange all of my papers and thoughts every time I find an odd moment to study.
My studies in herbal medicine, by the way, continue to be challenging and fascinating, a fortunate combination. I am going a bit slowly, because there is so much great information, intensive assignments, and also opportunities for further research and reading. I’ve decided that I am satisfied with going a bit slower than the recommended pace, if that’s what it takes to get the information firmly imbedded in my mind. I want all of it to stay with me, not vaporize after the final test!
The first few lessons focus on nutrition, which is the foundation of true, vibrant health. These are a few of the books I have been using to prepare menus that are deliciously and beautifully healthy. Three menus were assigned: an anti-inflammatory menu, a menu with emphasis on minerals and vitamins, and a pregnancy menu.
Preparing delicious menu plans goads me to do better in the kitchen. A recent culinary experiment was an Ecuadorian quinoa dish. Quinoa is a staple in the Andes mountains, prized for it superior nutritional qualities. It is high in protein, iron, calcium, and amino acids. Mothers eat it liberally for its powerful milk-stimulating property.
After soaking, much of the quinoa had already sprouted—stretching forth slender white threads and multiplying nutrients.
Prepared with olive oil, annatto seeds, green onions, garlic, chicken stock, and cilantro, its proved a flavorful dish. Sally Fallon describes it in Nourishing Traditions as an “authentic recipe from a chipper centenarian living in Ecuador.” Maybe sometime I’ll have time to prepare a nutritional tutorial for this recipe.
The berries have been peerless this winter: full, juicy, and sweet. Next Sister surprised us one afternoon with this special treat: fresh raspberries with vanilla pastry cream.
Carefully protected from cat-astrophes, the garden is prospering. (I steeled myself by memorizing Habakkuk 3:17-19, but God has blessed my labor thus far. ☺) It’s a real pleasure to go out to the garden house to water, weed, taste the lettuce, or just rest the eyes on some living green.
The frequent rainstorms pressed down the soil, exposing the magenta shoulders of these French breakfast radishes. Behind them is a luxuriant mass of Black-seeded Simpson lettuce and Dark Lollo Rosa. In the foreground are feathery young carrots in four colors (orange, yellow, red, and purple).
The herbs adore the wet weather, and flourish accordingly. Littlest Sister is kept busy harvesting the tender leaves for drying. Her drying baskets are perpetually filled with bouquets of lacy cilantro and deeply-textured spearmint. Below, the aromatic peppermint basks in clear sunset light. I love the warm color of the terra-cotta pots.
When not raining, the weather is gloriously crisp and clear. The cotton tree has flowered, raising red trumpets to the cerulean sky. The “cotton” inside the succeeding fruits is actually used as a substitute for true cotton. If Lily the shih-tzu doesn’t eat all of it, I will see if I can gather some together and find a use for it.
My two Bible scholars were so proud to complete Leading Little Ones to God, the lessons I used each morning to teach basic doctrinal truths. They requested that we next go through the entire Bible in order, so we are reading The Children’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos. In addition, they are progressing in the Children’s Catechism, their memorization of Psalm 23, and the lusty singing of several hymns.
It is humbling and challenging to watch these two little people wrestle big Truths with joy, interest, and the final assurance that God knows everything. Every morning (it seems) they bring up the infinity of God or the trinity of God. These are the two popular topics, delightful because endlessly mind-boggling. We remember and discuss what the Bible says about each, but end by admitting that even grown-ups can’t know everything about God. Having had this conversation several times, Third Brother anticipates me with the final declaration: “God is too big and wonderful for our tiny minds to understand! If he was small enough to be understood, he would not be God.”
The existence and immortality of man’s soul is the newly popular topic. They have learned, as C. S. Lewis phrased it: “You don’t have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body.”
“You should always be ready to die,” Littlest Brother declares, not at all morbid. “You don’t have to be afraid if you love and obey God because you will go to heaven which is even better.” “Yes,” chimes his brother. “You will take off your body like old clothes and go to heaven.”
You must not imagine that they are always so sober, however.
The other day, Mama playfully sat on Littlest Brother.
“Get up, Mama, get up! You’re sitting on me!” came the muffled giggle.
“Oh, no!” she declared. “I’m going to stay sitting here forever!”
“You can’t, Mama! You’ll have to get up to eat,” observed Littlest Brother, always practicality.
“When I get hungry I will eat you!”
He met this new threat with alacrity. “That’s alright, Mama. If you eat me, you will go to bed with a tummy-ache, but I will go to heaven.”
Littlest Brother is studying money math. After he has completed his schoolwork, I give him some coins to “buy” his midmorning snack. Each item sports a price-tag, and Littlest Brother learns how to combine nickels and pennies in order to give the “cashier” the correct amount with the fewest coins possible. Sometimes he is not given enough money to buy everything; then he must learn to decide what he wants most, and to make selections based on his available funds.
I try to incorporate, with the addition and subtraction and counting by fives, discussion on Biblical principles for spending, saving, investing, tithing, borrowing, and lending. Even little boys can learn the value of using money wisely, not by lengthy lectures, but by simple observations with which they can relate.
What sorts of things have been keeping you busy?
Friday, February 19, 2010