Registration is now open for the 2025 Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat. Please, visit the CMER 2025 Website to see the speakers, sessions, schedule, and so much more. We hope you are able to join us.
You may learn more about Dawn on the CMER speaker page.
Each year, at the group reflection time that brings the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat to a close, we encourage everyone to choose one thing they will take with them: one thing to change, one thing to commit to, one thing to get accountability for. The group reflection time allows us to take the first hard step of publicly giving a name to that one thing.
My one thing is simple: cut back.
With the beautiful, life-giving ideas Cindy Rollins shared during the plenaries, I left the retreat prepared to cut back. Within 24 hours, two big asks came my way. They were good asks to do good things with good people for good reasons, but I knew they would not be good things for me to do at this time. To the praise of God, through the ideas sewn at the retreat, I courageously and confidently said no. Saying no to something new is not cutting back but a start and an important step.
In Georgia, we have sweetgum trees. They are considered weeds by many and produce the spikey sweetgum ball. The balls are all over our yard, are painful to step on, and can tear a duck’s foot. (We have many ducks.) Their seedlings pop up like dandelions, growing from the roots of mature trees. We mow them down with ease. This is like saying no. But removing the sixty-foot mature trees is another story. It is a lot of work and can be expensive. This is like cutting back.
A friend asked, “What is behind the cutting back? Overextended? Are you involved in things you shouldn’t be or whose season has passed?”
These are good questions to ponder as I get out the chainsaw to start working on the trees.
You may learn more about Dawn on the CMER speaker page.
This year we will be singing the hymn Lead, Kindly Light. Can anyone guess why?
As I was researching the hymn, I came across this blog. As I read it, I realized I simply wanted to link to the blog rather than try to create here what was done so well there. As I finished, to my joy and wonder I learned it was written by sweet, past CMER attendee Jenna Dilts. She gave me permission to use the art work she chose for her blog.
I hope you enjoy learning some of the history of this hymn. For those who would like to hear it ahead of time, here is a YouTube video and the music to the version we will be singing at the retreat. There are also links to two other versions in Jenna’s blog.
You may learn more about Dawn on the CMER speaker page.
Last year Advent caught me off guard. Unlike in 2020, this year my heart and my mind are better prepared for it, and I am looking forward to the beauty of the season. But with the season come new changes. This will be our first year of Advent with a son away at college, and I am thinking about how to keep him part of our time together in a way that will be a blessing to us all as he is entering a new phase of life. He will be here as we put up and decorate the tree this weekend and will return in the middle of December, so it is not quite a good-bye yet, but I know that time quickly approaches.
For many years (I don’t know when we actually began) our family’s Advent tradition has been to listen to Handel’s Messiah. We have been using Cindy Rollins’s 25 Days to Handel’s Messiah: An Advent Devotional Guide, and this year I bought Cindy’s book Hallelujah and look forward to incorporating ideas I find there.
Cindy gave me permission to share the guide I made for my family to help with reading the scripture and getting to the right spot in the video. We have chosen to use Youtube for our music, and our favorite version is Stephen Cleobury conducting King’s College, Cambridge Choir.
I hook my laptop up to the TV and use the links for the scripture and music. We begin by reading the opening scripture. Then, we listen to the listed pieces. Over the years, we have found it more challenging to come together as a family each night, so usually we are only listening a few times a week and covering several days.
This year I have also found the MP3 of the performance. Each year I see if I can find it and have not been successful in the past. Perhaps this has always been there, but I’m grateful to have found it.
I hope our family’s simple tradition is a blessing for you as you contemplate this advent season.
You may learn more about Dawn on the CMER speaker page.