yarn along: thinking big thinks

 

Dear readers, isn't that blue just luminous?!  It simply glows from within each strand.  The color is called "Well Water" and the yarn is what remains of a skein I bought several years ago.  I have used it in two projects already, as an accent color.  For my current project, seashell mitts, I'll be using it by itself.  I'm hoping I have enough yarn; the pattern says 40g is perfect, and I have 72g.  Maybe I'll have lots of extra for my sock yarn blanket? This skein is one that keeps on giving!  Once I figured out how to load my circular needle to make both mitts at once (it wasn't an elegant process!), the ribbed cuff went quickly.  That beautiful ripply lace is calling my name.  

I am reading and listening to That Hideous Strength, which Z has been recommending for the last couple of years.  It's her absolute favorite book, which means a lot when you know just how many books this girl likes and has read.  It is high up on my list, too, though it doesn't top the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy or Bleak House.  It seems especially relevant and creepy right now.  I was listening to it the other night before bed and had a terrible nightmare, so no more evening listening for me!  Occasionally I have had to revisit the more challenging parts by reading them in the book.  More than any other aspect of That Hideous Strength, I have been noticing the commentaries on married life and female and male perspectives.  

There are many parallels between The Intellectual Life and what I've read within Charlotte Mason's volumes and, by extension then, between what Thomas Aquinas and Charlotte Mason thought about the development of the mind and its education.  Here's a little snippet of what I read this morning.  Sertillanges writes about how to train oneself in three virtues necessary for intellectual work, constancy, perseverance, and patience, by forcing oneself to overcome the difficulties in one's path (minor distractions, writer's block, weariness) with a change to other fruitful activity (prayer, reading a favorite author, physical exertion).  

One difficulty overcome shows you how to overcome others; one effort spares you three or four; a minute's courage carries you through a day and the hard work ends by being fruitful and joyous.

In your life as a whole this tenacity will help to make your activity easier and easier.  One acquires facility in thinking just as one acquires facility in playing the piano, in riding, or painting: St. Thomas used to dictate in his sleep.  The mind gets into the way of doing what is often demanded of it.  Even if you have no memory, you acquire memory for the subject always before your mind; if you are inclined to be scatterbrained, you attain the degree of attention of a professional; if you have little aptitude for distinguishing ideas, your judgment grows keener and surer by persevering contact with great thinkers.  In every subject-matter, after a certain number of efforts to start, your motor warms up, and the road flies past.  

                                                            -The Intellectual Life, p. 221

What a comfort to someone who tends toward intellectual laziness, scattered attention, and small aptitude!  And again, I need to read Thomas Aquinas!  A friend recently recommended a little, Roman Catholic volume that does a nice job of explaining? summarizing? translating? Thomas Aquinas for the layperson.  I simply have to remember the title and then I can order it...