So in her comment on my last Wednesdays with Words post, Dawn expressed a interest in reading more quotes from Life Under Compulsion, to which I reply: “As you wish.” đŸ˜‰ I have thirteen pages of quotes in my commonplace, with more to enter, so it was hard to choose! But the following quotes stood out to me as relevant in light of Dawn’s post on wonder.
The recurring theme throughout Esolen’s book is the contrast between what our current culture touts as freedom, which is really bondage; and the true freedom we find only in living for God and others. In the chapter on history, he shows how the modern focus on “social studies” and current events enslaves us to thinking that history is only progression, that newer is better. But a correct understanding of history and our place in it is actually freeing.
History, by its very ambiguity, sets our judgment free.
I can see this in our history studies this year. I mentioned Joan of Arc in an earlier post as an “ambiguous” historical character who’s story has challenged my thinking. This week, my 7-year-old and I read about Richard III in Our Island Story. Marshall’s version of the story was rather jarring to me after listening to The Daughter of Time earlier this year. But on the other hand, no one really knows exactly what happened to those princes in the Tower of London. I didn’t want to confuse Mr. E with too much ambiguity at his age, but we did talk a bit about how the Tudor kings may have made Richard out to be worse than he was. I am thankful for the different and sometimes contradicting viewpoints that Ambleside includes in their curriculum!
Here is one final quote from Esolen on the experience of wonder while studying history and literature:
Your leave the same old same old news, and you pick up what is truly new to you because it is so old. The new is dead on arrival; the old is rich and strange. You experience that richness and strangeness in the company of a teacher who does the same; current events fade for a while into their well-deserved insignificance; and the experience of beauty does what partisan politics can never do, uniting the soul of the teacher and the soul of the student in the love of something beyond their capacity to bring into being, but not beyond their capacity to admire.
Wednesdays with Words is hosted by ladydusk.
