Our "Pilgrim's Progress"

I actually don't know why I am posting about this book--it was really hard for me to read and I'm not sure how much I got out of it.  My friend and I decided to read it because the story and lessons were such a big part of the March girls' lives in Little Women and we wanted to see what the big deal was. 

The story is written in two parts.  In the first part we meet Christian and watch him as he makes his journey to the Celestial City.  The second part is the story of his wife, Christiana, and their children making the same journey. 

Along the way they meet people who help them and people who hinder them.  They have many adventures and learn a lot.  I compared their journeys to our lives as we go from birth to death.  Some of us have a plan and some of us are living blindly.  Some of us have a great support system and some of us are struggling along on our own.  Some of us have trials while others appear to be living free of them.  Some of us understand the atonement of our Savior and some of us are still waiting to learn. 

I think there were several reasons that Christian and his wife were successful on their journeys.

1.  They both had a goal of where they wanted to go (the Celestial City).  If we know and understand Christ's plan of salvation then we, too, can know our ending goal.

2.  They both had helpers--Christian first had Evangelist to guide him in the right direction and then other friends/helpers on the way.  Christiana had Christian's success to persuade her to make the journey and she also had many friends and helpers.  I see our helpers as our family, friends, church members, missionaries, mentors, and prophets. 

3.  They both had endurance.  Even though Christian and Christiana struggled and had trials on their journeys, they remembered the joys they experienced and their future goal.  I think that if we focus on the good we will be better able to endure. 

4.  They had an understanding of the Atonement.  When Christian first reaches the cross and tomb, his burden is lifted and he is able to continue more easily on his journey.  If we truly understand and apply the redeeming power of Christ's Atonement, we will also continue more easily on our path.

Even though I couldn't keep the characters straight or remember all the adventures or understand all the analogies, I did understand the joy Christian and Christiana had when they arrived at the Celestial City and I hope that one day I can feel that joy. 

From Bad Comes Good

Have you ever read Heidi by Johanna Spyri?  I just did for the first time and wondered why it has taken me so long.  Actually, I tried reading it aloud to the kids several years ago, but was unsuccessful and was hesitant to pick it up again.  I'm glad that I did.  It was a sweet book.  It reminded me a lot of Pollyanna--innocence and happiness. 

Heidi is a young girl who goes to live with her Grandfather on the Alm in Switzerland after her mother and father die.  She falls in love with the beauty of the mountains, the simple life and the people she befriends.  Sadly, after a short time, her aunt takes her away from the mountains to Frankfurt to be a companion for a crippled girl, Klara.  Heidi tries to make the best of the situation, but is heart broken.     

Heidi lives with this family for a couple of years.  She become friends with Klara, learns how to read and about the power of prayer from Klara's grandmamma, and gains the trust of Klara's father and the doctor.  Even with these good things happening, Heidi is homesick for the Alm.  She begins to loose weight and starts sleepwalking.  Finally the doctor realizes what is happening and encourages the father to send Heidi home. 

Heidi is so excited to return to the mountains.  On her return journey she remembers every detail.  I fear that it won't be as she remembers and she'll be disappointed, but my fear is unfounded, for all is the same. 

Shortly after her return, good things start to happen; all as a result of Heidi's time in Frankfurt.  The people from the local village start to see the Grandfather in a new light due to Heidi's return.  Heidi is able to read to and comfort the grandmother (a neighbor on the Alm).  She is also able to teach Peter the goatherd how to read.  Good things continue to happen.  Heidi's friends from Frankfurt visit and help the grandmother and Peter the goatherd with money and food and a new bed.  The fresh mountain air and goat's milk are a miracle cure for Klara and she regains the ability to walk. Heidi realizes that all these good things are happening becuase of her time in Frankfurt and the people that she knew there. 

How many times to we go through trials (bad things) and recieve blessings (good things) as a result?  It reminds me of the scripture found in Ether 12:27: "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."  Often, but not always, the bad things that happen in our lives are becuase of our weaknesses, but, through faith and humility, they can be turned into blessings.  A weakness of mine is that I like to take the easy way out.  If something is too hard, I won't do it or I'll do it as simply as possible.  Recently I've had to step out of that comfort box and force myself to do hard things.  I have yet to see the full blessings from this, but I'm begining to see small changes in myself and in my family.  It's something I need to say everyday--"I CAN DO HARD THINGS!"

Making Changes

The kids and I just finished reading Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl for our homeschool book club.  It wasn't one of my favorite reads, but we certainly learned a lot about what it was like being stuck in a small apartment with another family for 2 years. 

The story (obviously) is told by Anne in journal format.  It begins with her 13th birthday and ends a little over 2 years later.  For most of  the book, Anne, her family and another family are hiding from the Germans in a small annex above an office building.  Throughout the two years, the reader sees a lot of growth in Anne.  Anne starts out as a vain teenager who is only interested in boys, friends, movie stars, and clothing.  By the end of the book, Anne shares deeper feelings of  love, true friendship and hope. 

In one of Anne's last entries, she writes: "I can't imagine how anyone can say: 'I'm weak', and then remain so.  After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character?"  I thought this was a great question.  Why do people not want to be better?  Why do they think it is OK to remain the same, to remain stagnant?  Anne goes on to write that most people say that it is easier to remain weak.  She disagrees.  She writes that "what appears easy and attractive will drag [one] down into the depths, depths where there is no comfort to be found, no friends and no beauty, depths from which it is almost impossible to raise oneself." 

This made me think of the changes Jonathan and I and several of our friends have made in how we homeschool.  We looked at what we were doing, realized that it was "weak" and have been doing hard work to make the right changes.  We have been pushing ourselves to get a better education, we have changed the learning environment of our home and how we view our kids' education, and we have constantly been striving to be better people.  Has it been easy?  No!  Has it been worth it?  Definitely!  I've already seen growth and I love it.  Thanks to characters like Anne Frank, Pollyanna, Jo March, Bilbo Baggins, Uncle Tom and many others we have learned good values and positive character traits that we try to implement in our own lives. 

Was he a Monster?

Hollywood has taken Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and turned him into a monster.  But is that what he really was?  I think that he was just a person looking for friendship; for someone to look past his physical appearance and see what he was like inside.  Instead he was scorned, and the “mildness of [his] nature had fled, and all with in [him] was turned to gall and bitterness.”

Dr. Frankenstein was fascinated with the “secret of life.”  After discovering this secret, he brings to life an 8 foot monster whom he despises the second it opens its eyes.  Frankenstein runs away and leaves his creation to fend for itself. 

Later in the story we learn from the monster how he, much like a baby, learned to see and distinguish between objects, how he gained knowledge through experience, and how he learned that the way he looked affected how people reacted to him.  He learned how to speak and read by secretly watching a family.  He hoped that he would be able to convince this family to care for him by his acts of service, his ability to communicate and by his admiration of their virtues. 

The monster says that he “was benevolent; [his] soul glowed with love and humanity.”  He enjoyed flowers and birds and summer.  He helped others.  All he wanted was those feelings of kindness to be returned towards him.  Unfortunately no one was able to look past his outside shell. 

The monster starts to have feelings of hatred and revenge and he doesn’t “strive to control them.”  He first takes his anger out on inanimate objects, but that changes after he rescues a young girl from drowning and is shot instead of thanked.  He is “inflamed with pain, [and vows] eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.”  He decides to take revenge on his creator and one by one kills all who are dear to Frankenstein. 

The monster’s situation makes me think of the unfortunate kids who are bullied all their lives and can take the pain no longer so they bring guns to school and shoot their classmates.  I also think about the black people during the Civil Rights Movement.  They were treated differently because of the way they looked.  Could these events have been prevented if people were more like Christ and looked on the heart instead of the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7)?

At the end of the book, Frankenstein lies dead after chasing his creation to the end of the earth so he could take his own revenge.  He is unsuccessful.  The monster is there and wonders if he is “to be thought the only criminal when all humankind sinned against [him].”  Why does no one hate the family that drove him from their home?  Why do they not loathe the one who sought to destroy his creation?  Instead he, “the miserable, the abandoned, [is] an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”  He suffered his whole life and thinks that his suffering is the best revenge that Frankenstein could have achieved. 

So, no, Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t really a monster.  He was simply a person who reacted to how others treated him. 

Money and The Roman Government

I've started reading Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and mentioned it to the kids.  They were interested in the title and I told them what I learned in the first chapter.  Then after reading the second chapter I asked if they wanted to learn more and they excitedly said yes.  So I attempted to explain what I had read.  I thought that I would try to write a summary every couple of chapters to help me with my explanations. 

Chapter 1
Money: Coins and Paper

The book is written in letter format; Uncle Eric writing to his 9th grade nephew, Chris.  Uncle Eric asks Chris to look at a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar and dollar bill.  The dime, quarter, and half-dollar all have grooves on the edges and are made of copper sandwiched between a nickel-zinc metal.  And they are all probably from later than 1965.  The coins are not really coins, but tokens because they contain no precious metals.

Chapter 2
Tanstaafl, the Romans and Us

Governments have public works projects like building roads and buildings.  They also have wars and welfare programs.  Back in the day of the Romans, the Roman government ran into a problem with all their projects.  It is called There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  They learned that nothing of value is free and they would have to pay for these projects.  The way governments typically fund these endeavours is through taxes.  But people will only take so much of being taxed so the Roman government had to find another way to get money.  They came up with counterfeiting as their solution. 

Because the printing press had not yet been invented and there was only coin money, the government decided that when the money came to the treasury after being collected they would clip it.  Clipping a coin means shaving off the edges.  They used these shavings to mint new coins.  Now they had the old, clipped coin and a new coin, too.  Pretty soon the Roman people realized that their coins were getting smaller and lighter and they refused to take clipped coins or they reduced the value of the clipped coin making people buy their product with 2 clipped coins instead of the usual 1. 

Later, people had notches cut into the edges of coins to prevent the clipping.  When this happened the goverenment had to come up with a new system of counterfieting.  This time when the coins were brought into the treasury they were melted down and some base-metal (non-prescious) was added in.  Now instead of being 94% silver the coins were 84% silver.  Eventually the coins were down to less that 1% silver.  Now more coins could be made and the government had enough money to do what it wanted. 

Gresham's Law (a law of economics) says that bad money drives good money out of circulation.  This is what happened in the time of the Roman's and it is what happened in 1965 here in America.  When the people realized that the coins were losing silver, they would save thier silver coins and spend only the low-silver soins. 

Becuase the governement had to pay for what it wanted, it started counterfeiting instead of raising taxes.  I can't wait to learn what the consequence of this action will mean.

An Acrostic Poem about Little Men

Loving mother

Inspiring father

Thinking about the future

Thoughtful consequences

Leading the way by example

Esteem building

Much understanding

Encouraging praise

Nurturing environment

Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott is a perfect title for this book.  Jo and Fritz Bhaer are the “mother” and “father” of the many boys (and a few girls) that live and learn at Plumfield. 

Mother Bhaer was the loving mother who always had time for her boys and tried to look for the best in them.  She understood them and looked for ways to help them be better.  She kept a conscience book where she wrote an account of how the boys got on through the week.  She shared this with them every Sunday.  If the account was bad she felt sorry and disappointed, but if it was good she was proud.  She wanted her boys know that she was there to help them.  Her love for these children showed in her every action. 

Father Bhaer was a wise teacher.  He inspired and understood what the boys needed to learn best.  He allowed the boys to study what they were passionate about.   He helped them create a museum, plant gardens, put on plays, love books and want to learn.  Plumfield had a learning environment--a home where learning occurred everywhere. 

Together the Bhaer’s planned for the boys’ future.  They had many talks and shared ideas.  They worked together to create a loving home.  Their example was inspiring to me.

Is There Such a Thing as a Good Lie?

Recently I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a loud to my kids to prepare for our homeschool kid book discussion.  There were a lot of things to talk about: how boys and girls relate to each other, superstition, friends, adventure, behaviors in kids, treasure and honesty.  I was particularly interested in the discussion about honesty.  There are several times when Tom tells a lie and the people affected forgive him saying it was a good lie.  I raised the question “Is there such a thing as a good lie?”  I was surprised at the responses and comments from the kids and later from the moms.

Let us go to the story and look at Tom’s lies.  The first is after he and 2 of his friends run away and are mistaken as dead.  A funeral is planned for the supposed dead boys.  Before the funeral Tom sneaks back into the town and observes his Aunt Polly and Mrs. Harper remembering all the good traits of the boys.  Later, after the funeral and the boys reveal themselves to be alive, Aunt Polly rebukes Tom saying it was “a pity [he] could be so hard-hearted as to let [her] suffer so.”  She thinks that he should have given her a hint that he had only run away.  Tom then proceeds to tell Aunt Polly about the time he snuck into town.  Only in his telling he lies and says it was a dream.  When Aunt Polly discovers the lie she says “it’s a blessed, blessed lie, there’s such a comfort come from it,” and later “it’s a good lie—it’s a good lie—I won’t let it grieve me.”  She is forgiving the lie because he believes Tom did it out of his love for her.  Is lying to protect someone’s feelings OK? 

Another lie of Tom’s happened later in the story at school.  Tom’s girlfriend, Becky Thatcher, had ripped a picture of the teacher’s and Tom was the only witness.  He knew that Becky would get punished when the teacher found out she had done it; so when the teacher started asking the students if they had committed this misdeed, Tom jumped up and confessed that it was he and took the punishment.  Becky believed Tom to be “noble” and bragged about his actions to her father.  Judge Thatcher said that it was “a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie—a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with George Washington’s lauded Truth about the hatchet!”  In this case Tom lied to physically protect someone he cared for.  Is this type of lie OK?

Now, back to the discussion.  When I posed the question “Is there really such a thing as a good lie?” most of the kids responded with yeses.  They sided with Aunt Polly and Judge Thatcher.  In a later discussion with the moms several moms brought up how people lied to save the lives of Jews during World War II.  It seems that the opinion of most is that a lie that protects someone else is a good lie. 

I struggled with this idea.  I’m not saying that I’ve never told a lie, but I tend to lean toward the letter of the law than the spirit of the law in this case.  The law found in D&C 42:21 says “thou shalt not lie; he that lieth and will not repent shall be cast out.”  Two of the Ten Commandments also deal with honesty: “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”  We are commanded to be honest in all our doings.  Does that mean that we shouldn’t lie to help or protect someone?  I think so.  What do you think?  Is there such a thing as a good lie?