Vinegar Boy and The Jesus Garden

For Lent we read two books ”Vinegar Boy” and “The Jesus Garden”. With the first book we made a black cross out of tissue paper. Then around this cross we chose different coloured tissue to reflect the characters in the book. For example Mary was blue tissue paper. Next we found an image for each main character in the story. I typed quotes from each character and these were placed beside their image. Then reading the book”….” We drew and coloured flowers as they were described in the story. I didn’t tell the boys why we were doing this so on Easter Sunday they were surprised to find the drab black cross was covered with flowers. It looked as one of them put it like a stained glass window that had come to life!

 

Crimson and purple, grey and gold, violet and blue, yellow and green. The colours of the day. He tried to sort them out. Violet for Mary’s eyes; scarlet for the centurion’s cloak; golden for the young thief’s hair; purple for the stripes on Barabbas; green for the silk of Procula’s gown. Blue? Sea-blue for the eyes of John of course.

 

“The sword will pierce me too. Oh Emmanuel, my little One. They will pierce thee today, and I shall die.”

 

“He looked at my Baby and he knew He was the promised Child. The shepherds knew it too, for they brought me word that angels had sent them to us in the stable at Bethlehem. There was no other place for Him that night; no place but a manger for the Son of God.”

 

“I warned you. Oh Pilate my husband, I warned you. If only this once you had been strong enough to stand up to them. This was a religious quarrel, and you had no right to interfere. My dream came, and my message was sent to save you from this infamy.”

ONE SUNDAY EVENING

For those that couldn’t make it ! here are the Northern Lights .

We went on the last night of their showing; a “ warm balmy night”, just before we returned to our Lenten focus in Holy Week.

Do you recognise any buildings?

Check this out !

There is an interesting new blog on blogger. I really liked her bucket list: check it out!

http://mezza-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/

THE RAIN THAT WOULDN'T RAIN

Once there was some rain in the sky.
But it couldn’t rain.
The rain wouldn’t let itself rain.

Adelaide smashes heatwave record
The national capital city record for the longest number of days reaching 35 degrees Celsius has been broken in Adelaide. (ABC News)
Adelaide set an unenviable national record today when it recorded the longest-lasting heatwave - 11 days - of any Australian capital city.
The record for the longest number of days reaching 35 degrees Celsius was broken when the city's temperature reached 35.1C at 10:30am CDT.
Mika Peace from the weather bureau says Adelaide has now had 11 straight days of sweltering conditions.
"The record previously was held by Perth where there were 10 days over 35 degrees back in February 1988," she said.
"Today we've had 11th day over 35 degrees in Adelaide and we are forecasting at this stage for temperatures to stay over 35 until Tuesday next week, which in total would give us 16 days in a row."

This is what we need:

Then along came a big wind
and it had some hard rain in it
And the hard rain hit
the rain that couldn’t rain and
made it rain

and then it rained
and it rained
and it rained
Happy Everafter.
Ruth Krauss

Numbers of things

“You can’t really want to do these ghastly sounding sums,” said Hal.
“They’re not ghastly when you understand them.”
“But can you?”Hal asked it doubtfully. It did not seem to her that anybody could.
“I could if they were explained to me.I have to. They’re…they’re my language,” said Una.
“The Peacock Spring” by Rumer Godden

I am one of those who see the study of Mathematics as just that; a foreign language. However I have a daughter who just as Una said “speaks” in Mathematics(and probably dreams in it too) Years ago when we were new to this homeschooling business I worked my oldest two children at the same level and pace in Maths. My oldest plodded away at it(when his mind wasn’t drifting away to a ‘national Geographic article he’d “successfully” hidden behind the text). He couldn’t do much more though, because like me, it wasn’t his language. His sister only sixteen months younger probably cut her teeth on numbers! She tells me now how there was never enough Maths in our schoolwork. Still it took a work of fiction to make my language orientated brain understand this!

SEASONS

Recently a friend reminded me that it has been a while since I’ve updated this blog. Don’t know why exactly,things happen life gets busy,…. but last year/ month had the same amount of business, so I’m not sure why; seasons?
This Lent has been a time to come back to a more regular prayer time. I have been using the Divine Office and thanks to ds leaving the books behind have begun by praying the morning and evening prayers and the office of readings.
Have loved finding connections in this too. No surprise that our school readings from “The Young Josephus” match often my Lenten readings in the morning.
Also I have been revisiting this blog http://holyexperience.blogspot.com/ and through it I read a recommendation for a book ” The Contemplative Mom” by Ann Krocker. I am really enjoying this book. It is not that it offers anything new but more that it’s the right time to be reading it, seasons again?

Today: simply being with God; experiencing God by simply being His child is really freeing. Living conscious God is there always. Going about my day practicing the meditation”I am a child of God” , picturing Him holding my hand, walking beside me.Repeating,”my Father in heaven cares what happens to me His child” He is the parent I am His child; a perfect parent-perfect in caring, love and wisdom;always available. Rest in the moment. Not rocket science, not earth shattering or going to change the world but where I am now this season.