Light Duties

First published August 2024 on the Australian Presbyterian website. For the full text, see the AP site or the Light Duties website. This article explores the disparity between the sentiments of the 2024-25 Women's Budget Statement and the Bible's vision of how children are raised. Instead of focusing on women's rights, I suggest we refocus by considering how our children are going with the biblical imperative that they obey their parents. Is it possible that the expectation that children can learn to obey has disappeared along with the means by which the Bible assumes it is learned?

Following the How to Fill the Time episode, I've received questions about what kinds of children's books to read. Here is a response, to help you filter out many of the options and point you to some good springs. 

I mentioned:

Biblioguides

Vigen Guroian, "Tending the Heart of Virtue" (No affiliate link; I used the website that had the cheapest prices as of the date the episode was released).

Hans Christian Anderson translated by Erik Haugaard.

Five in a Row

Sabbath Mood Homeschool

Charlotte Mason Study group at The Book House Patreon (NB it's 5% per month).

The Literary Life Podcast.

Jodie McIver is the Christian friend every expectant mum needs, especially in Australia. She understands the Bible, she understands midwifery and she understands the great variety of experiences faced by women who are becoming mothers. This is a review of her book, "Bringing Forth Life: God's Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth". 

When we’ve been invested in giving good and restraining harm for our kids, the situations that bring them low can be bitter to us. But we and our children need these pains, lest we miss the best of comfort, especially as they become independent.

Our work in mothering is not going to achieve all that we imagine. Why bother when we don't know which way the ball will bounce? This episode is about the comfort we can count on.

How can these maternal duties be called "light" when they are so weighty in importance and difficulty? 

A listener has asked, "What good things can I fill my time and the kids' time with before starting formal schooling?". This response was recorded while I was out and about (so it sounds a bit raw). It's a start in thinking about why we have trouble filling time with very young children (I propose that it is an oddity of our economic/social/historical context). I meander through some of the key elements to making time at home with preschoolers nourishing for them and you. Plenty more can be said, but one needs to stop recording somewhere!

I mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories" and George Macdonald's essay on the imagination from "A Dish of Orts". As usual, I reference Charlotte Mason (not nearly enough, since most of what I say is very much an application of her principles).

Perhaps we find motherhood difficult because we haven’t given much thought to building a house? The thing is, we're all building from ruins, salvaging and restoring what we can. We have ideals, but none of us are working with ideal materials. Our splintered posts have meaning.

In this think-aloud chat, we consider how our most basic form of treasure is our attention. And where our treasure is, there our heart will follow. Some thoughts on how we might come to love things we really don't like doing.

Sometimes God's generosity exhausts us. When the good gifts generate more work, we often treat them like a curse. This episode is about recognising the abundance we've had put in our hands so we can get busy doing something with it. It's about how to do a faithful job of handling the abundance (the abundance we often complain about). It's also about what pleases the Lord in those times when all the abundance has gone. At the end of this think-aloud chat are some thought for how churches might open up some options for the mothers who are on their last copper coins.

I mention Jeremiah Burrough's books, "The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment" and "How to Abound".