Tuesday Teatime: Marian Titles

Hi friends! Here's a video that's a bit rushed (but not actually two or three minutes long like I feared it would be). I touch on a very personal and sensitive subject, and I know that everyone has different views, beliefs, histories, and feelings on this subject. So please don't be offended if we don't see eye-to-eye here; I certainly won't be offended if you approach the subject differently than I do.

Tuesday Teatime: Favorite Gospel

Hello everyone! Today we have a guest star....

"It was now early spring--"

I just finished reading Far From the Madding Crowd this weekend and absolutely loved it. Apart from all the wonderful ways in which Gabriel Oak embodies Christ as the Good Shepherd of the story--which I could write on and on about so will save for another post--Hardy's command of language was remarkable.

This particular passage has really stuck with me all week:

"It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid up for mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come abruptly--almost without a beginning. It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be walking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts" (Hardy 95).

Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. 1874. Ware: Wordsworth, 1993.

Tuesday Teatime: Which class would you retake?

Hi everyone! Today's question is if you could go back to your schooldays, which class would you retake?

Four Reasons Why I Blog

Salisbury, England in early spring  (I hope you don't mind that my photos often don't directly relate to my post--I just have so many I've taken here that I don't want to forget about!)

I feel I ought to give you some sort of explanation as to why I went from blogging once a month to four or five times a week. You may notice that I started blogging far more frequently in April, and that is because I had three weeks off from school and my Easter plans fell through. (Perhaps more on that later because it is kind of an interesting story.) But why did I turn to blogging those three weeks? Here's why:

1. In the absence of a strong Catholic community here in London, I decided to tap into a community to which I do  have access. I had been reading many of your blogs for a couple of years and had drawn great inspiration and comfort from them. In October, I took the leap and finally created a blog. But it wasn't until Easter, when I was missing Catholic community more than ever, that I decided to post regularly.
   
2. I'm in London for just a year, and as hard as it is to believe, that year will be winding up in a couple of months. With that realization came a determination to be even better about documenting my sightseeing adventures here.
   
3. I never intended for the almost daily blogging to become a thing. But I discovered over those Easter holidays that there was something wonderful about sitting in my sunny kitchen early in the morning over a cup of tea and doing a little quiet Bible reading, responding to friends' and family members' messages, reading your beautiful blogs, and sharing my thoughts on mine. By the end of the three weeks, it was a habit I didn't want to give up, even though it means waking up half an hour to an hour earlier than I used to for work.
   
4. Finally, as some of you may remember from a Tuesday Teatime video I posted a couple of weeks ago, my job has changed, and I am spending vast amounts of time at work right now proofreading and editing. Reading other people's writing for hours a day made me itch to write a bit myself--even if it's very informal writing on a blog.

So there you go! It looks like this frequent blogging habit is here to stay for the time being. Why do you blog? I'm curious to know!

Happy Monday, friends :)

Pictures that got lost in the shuffle!

Some of these are months old. But in an effort to document my adventures here, I want to make sure that the important ones make it onto the blog one way or another...even if some are two months late.

Above: Having tea in a beautiful room at the Victoria and Albert Museum


Left: THE MAGNA CARTA!!!



Below: Salisbury Cathedral

Because we should never forget where we come from... (Also, I was freezing, so please excuse my scary paleness.)

Also freezing and not entirely happy with the wind. But I can check Stonehenge off my list!

Looking up into the rigging of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich

The gorgeous Painted Hall, also in Greenwich

One foot in the East, one foot in the West

Above: My new favorite tea room!

Left: Statue of Queen Victoria outside Kensington Palace

Below: The Royal Albert Hall

The Prince Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens

Liberty London, a department store in a very cool old building

S

My favorite painting at the Tate Britain. It's huge and very impressive in person. (Queen Elizabeth I)

I FINALLY had real afternoon tea with all the trimmings. (Well, not ALL the trimmings because that would include champagne.) But until last week, I had always opted for cream tea: a pot of tea and a scone with cream and jam. I had such a wonderful time drinking tea and sampling finger sandwiches with a good friend at the Orangery.

Things I Love About Teaching

Short lesson outline notes to remind me what I'm doing. I think I'm old-fashioned in that I like to write them out by hand, but doing so really helps me organize everything in my mind!

One nice thing about teaching much less is that when I do teach, I appreciate it SO much more. I taught a grammar/spelling lesson yesterday morning, and I was floating on a cloud of happiness the rest of the day. These are some of the little things that my students do that make me smile:

• Groan about a grammar lesson until I tell them something they didn't know and always wondered about, at which point they become intensely silent and focused. 
• Likewise, groan about a grammar/spelling bee until we actually begin. By the end, they're cheering for their team members, smiling, and laughing. 
• Never give up the fight to persuade me not to assign homework. They're still presenting arguments against the usefulness of homework as I shoo them out the door.
• Send up a mass complaint if I'm erasing the board and leave a spot un-erased. (I get it. That used to bug me as a student too.)
• A student asks if this spelling rule only works in English or if it can be applied to Spanish as well. One snarky student replies, 'Well, this is an English lesson.'
• I write the outline of the lecture on the board so they know how to organize their notes. They copy it down but forget to leave room to actually take notes as I'm teaching. (Oh, children.)

12-year-olds. So moody. So temperamental. But so fun to teach :)

"May you find a moment"

This prayer popped up on my Pinterest feed. (Yes, you read that right. My Pinterest feed.) And while I don't agree with everything Susie Larson says and believes, this prayer was too beautiful not to share. I hope that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you have a wonderful night, secure in the knowledge that God has your back, even when it feels like He's far away.

May you find a moment of peace and quiet tonight to thank God for all that is right in your world. May you have the presence of mind to release your cares and worries to Him. May you have the gritty faith to grab a firmer grip on His promises to you. And may you wake up in the morning knowing that you've gained ground even during your sleeping hours because God is always moving on your behalf. As you entrust your whole self to Him today, He'll get you where you need to go tomorrow. Sleep well tonight.

~Susie Larson

Humility and Humiliation

I'm reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd before seeing the movie this weekend, and I was struck last night by how often Farmer Oak's humility is mentioned. Moreover, it's often mentioned as one of his most positive attributes. And as I'm a word nerd, I started thinking about all the words related to humility. I know that it is good to be humble. But then why does it feel so awful to be humiliated? 

I had a day a couple weeks ago. One of those days. It seemed like I couldn't do anything right and was just doing one embarrassing thing after another. 

First I couldn't open the door at my (new) doctor's office. (The fact that it was my first visit is my only saving grace here.) I followed someone else in, so that was fine. But on the way out, I completely missed the fact that there was a green button next to the door that I had to press to release the lock. So I stood there for almost two minutes fiddling with the door and unable to open it. Finally, someone else had to leave, so she pressed the button and we both left. But before she came along, there were two or three people standing there just watching me struggle; perhaps they didn't want to embarrass me further by assuming I wouldn't figure it out on my own, but I mean, come on. When someone is struggling, help them.

Then I went to the post office to mail some letters back home. The woman behind the counter handed me some stamps, and in vain, I tried to pull the backing off of them to stick them on the envelopes. Eventually, the lady said "Oh. Love. That won't work. You need to lick them." Oops.

Finally, to top it all off, I returned home to a less-than-happy note from my roommate. It had been my turn to buy the laundry detergent, and it seems that I somehow bought fabric conditioner instead of detergent. To make matters worse, I had used the conditioner to wash a load of tea towels that of course hadn't come clean.

Suffice it to say that I was feeling a bit humiliated at the end of the day, and it was not a pleasant feeling. But as I've been reflecting on it this morning, I'm realizing that humiliation is not inherently negative; I think it depends on our frame of mind. When we make a mistake, when we do something silly, we are made humble. We are reminded that we are not perfect. Humiliation is just that--it is a check to our pride, a reminder of our imperfection, and therefore a reminder of our humanity. We can only be upset by humiliation if we are expecting ourselves to be perfect. If we can instead laugh at our mistakes, humiliation is far less about shame and far more about the fact that we are human and fallible. And for the Christians among us, humiliation is a handy reminder that the only perfect being is God, and He has come to save us from our imperfections.

So I don't think I'll exactly welcome silly mistakes with open arms, but when I next have one of those days, at least I'll be able to put it all into perspective.

Tuesday Teatime: The Temperaments

Today we're talking about the four temperaments.  If you'd like to take the four temperaments quiz, click here.

Invisible People

The Rose Garden at Regent's Park

A couple of weekends ago, a friend and I went to see A Little Chaos with Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman. It was a bit of a disappointing film, I'm sad to admit. But I did take one thing away from it that I'd like to share with you all.

The film was about the men and women who designed the gardens at the Palace of Versailles in the late seventeenth century. Apart from making me yearn for a piece of land of my own to grow some flowers, the movie made me wonder for the first time ever who did design the gardens at Versailles. And since I've never actually been to Versailles, it made me wonder who designed and planted, and who maintains today, the many beautiful gardens I've visited here in London. I don't know about you, but I don't tend to think about the people behind the garden when I admire some blossoming flowers. Likewise, I don't tend to think about the people who designed and constructed the building in which I live. I don't tend to imagine the men who designed this neighborhood, who paved these streets, who planted the tree outside my window.

But the fact is that there are multitudes of men and women, both past and present, working "behind the scenes" as it were to create the world in which we live. There are so many people, whom I very rarely see, working to make my school run smoothly. So over the past couple of weeks, I have made a conscious effort to say hello and strike up a friendly conversation whenever our paths do happen to cross. A simple thank you to the lady who makes sure there is always tea and coffee in the staff room, to the lady who restocks the paper towels in the bathroom, and to the man who turns off the projectors at the end of the day has really transformed my working day. 

It is so easy to stay in my busy bubble, to focus on my own work, and to not give a second thought when I see that the tea is replenished or that the paper towels are restocked. But the people responsible for keeping everything running deserve some recognition. So will you join me this week as I continue my quest to thank the people with the thankless jobs--those whose work maintains the beautiful and smooth world in which we live and work?