The Hovel

river running through mountains

Just Another Reason I Homeschool: A Meditation on Jayber Crow

In award-winning author Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow, twice-orphaned Jonah searches for answers to the eternal questions: What is the nature of God? What is prayer? Is life a random series of disconnected events, or a linear, purposeful, meaningful path? These universal questions all converge upon Jonah’s more personal questions of identity: Who am I? Am I what I do? Do I, in fact, choose my profession, thus bearing the immense responsibility of making myself? Or am I born to a calling? Crow describes this undetected pressure to create an identity for oneself as a kind of subtle bondage… 

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sparkler

Happy New Year from a Happy New CenterForLit!

Thanks for stopping by! I am thrilled to welcome you to our online community for Lit Lovers. Every nook and cranny of the CenterForLit website has been redesigned and expanded to serve you better. Inside, you’ll find a dozen ways to participate in the Great Conversation – a conversation about books and ideas, about homeschooling and parenting, about sin and grace and redemption. And don’t worry: we still offer all the curriculum materials and classes you depend on. In fact, we’re making more all the time…

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books sitting on table

Matters of Conscience – Reactions to Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman”

I ordered Go Set a Watchman for myself back in February, as excited by the reported “discovery” of Harper Lee’s prequel as the rest of the nation seemed to be. To Kill a Mockingbird stands a beacon of American literature and a guardian of the American Southern identity which it helped to forge. The shadowy figure of Harper Lee, so evocative of her mysterious character Boo Radley, continues to stir the imagination of the public. Is it any wonder that the possibility of another Lee masterpiece stirred the blood of readers who cut their teeth on her original work? We desired the new manuscript like candy… 

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teacher reading to child

Making One Lesson Count

What if you only have time to read one book with your student this year? Should you throw your hands up in despair and enroll him in the local government school? Well, it’s up to you, but you might be missing a great opportunity. You would be surprised at how powerful just one lesson can be. In fact, a well-designed discussion of a single book can dramatically affect the way your student reads all other books for the rest of his life…

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Preparing Students to Think about Modern Literature

I sing of dirty dishes and the man…Today, June 16, marks the 24 hours that Leopold Bloom wanders around Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joycean geeks commonly refer to it as “Bloomsday.” If you have heard of Ulysses before, the context was most likely negative. Perhaps you categorize it with other “modernist nonsense” or “perverse drivel.”…

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narrow path in garden maze

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Don’t look now, but summer is just around the corner. It’s almost time to engage in that most ridiculous of all homeschooling rituals: planning next year’s curriculum while simultaneously trying to finish last year’s curriculum. It’s totally unrealistic and invariably overwhelming, but most of us do it anyway – or at least feel guilty for putting it off…

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Trinity College library

Freedom from the Law of the Booklist

It was spring of my oldest son’s eighth grade year, and I, like homeschool moms all over the country, was planning for the fall. Except this time, my son would be starting high school. This time, it would “count.” Panic replaced my usual plenary excitement as I wondered what colleges would be looking for on high school transcripts and how I was going to prepare my homeschooler to convince them that he had mastered everything. I flew through reams of paper creating a plethora of booklists, each one longer and more ambitious than the previous, and frankly wore myself out with worry in the process…

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Elderly hand hold hand of a baby

The Balm of Gilead

I recently read Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead. Robinson’s first person narrator, a character by the name of John Ames, relates the story of his family, three generations of pastor-fathers. In a lengthy letter that reads like a journal, Ames shares this history with his son. Seventy-year-old Ames’s voice reflects his age, at times wandering, at times repeating himself, but always striving to make sense of the troubling dysfunction and beautiful theology bequeathed to him by his forefathers. As I read, I was struck not only by the believability of Ames’s voice, nor the author’s elegant use of imagery and language, but most particularly by the universality of the struggle Robinson depicts between loving fathers and respectful sons…

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child looking anxious

Plagued With Doubts

We discussed Great Expectations the other night in our online class. Great stuff! The kids had a million comments – in fact, they waited online for an hour after class to read their favorite parts out loud, just to laugh at Dickens’ crazy characters. I even got a call or two from pleased moms, saying their kids really enjoyed it. Still, this morning I am plagued with doubts. I was teaching without Missy for the first time in a while, and I left the class feeling pretty insecure…

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