Notes by Candlelight #5

Relaxed Eastertide joy, my favorite used bookstores, and my latest commonplace quotes

Dear friends,

Aaron and I just returned from a few days, sans children, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our time was simple, just as we needed it to be. We browsed used bookstores, second hand stores of all sizes, cruised along the parkway, and enjoyed a matinee and dinner uninterrupted. The peace of the mountains and expansive horizons were the perfect backdrop for our trip.

As normal life resumes, please enjoy this quick list of delights.

The view from our AirBnb’s front stoop. If you squint you can seek the Blue Ridge Parkway in the distance.

If you’re unfamiliar with this series, welcome! Here you’ll find a few things drawing my attention towards curiosity and joy. It’s become a quarterly practice at this point. You can find the previous posts here.

Notes by Candlelight #5

1. To avoid duplicates I made list of living (homeschool) books to thrift, mostly from AO’s Year 0-3 booklists, the Alveary, and few Waldorf classics. I found a good portion on our trip, but there’s plenty more I’m always hunting for. If you’re in Virginia, I recommend McKay’s in Manassas or Too Many Books in Roanoke. If you’re in Connecticut, don’t miss The Book Barn in Niantic. And if you’re really headed north, I’ve found some real gold at Green Mountain Books in Lyndonville, Vermont. Maybe one of these days I’ll remember to stop in at Riverbend Press in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

2. No one in our house eats boiled eggs all that much so instead of dying Easter eggs this year I opted to decoupage wooden ones with William Morris inspired napkins. I hung them, along with a few felt eggs, on a few branches for a lovely Easter egg tree. I’ll leave it up until Pentecost, which is a fun way for my littles to kinda-sorta understand how long this liturgical season is. (Here are the other things I’ve put on our Eastertide bucket list, and in our family’s liturgical binder.)

3. The TheoCompass survey has been making its rounds. It’s hard to believe a quiz on the internet can accurately pin point something as nuanced as faith, but the prompts are a useful tool if you want to reflect on where you might stand on a variety of theological topics. Have you taken it?

4. Thanks to many of you, my list of seasonal children’s books has grown!¹ If you love Gerda Mueller’s work or the stories of Brambly Hedge, you may discover new favorites on that list. If you ever come across out-of-print Robert Maass’ picture books for winter, spring, summer, and autumn snatch them up!

5. Two songs that have romanticized the ordinary endeavors (and the extraordinary daffodils blooming in the garden!!) in my life recently: Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 and The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The latter is one of my all time favorites, especially in spring.

My used book haul. Several Y2-3 free reads not pictured.

Keeping Sacred Time: Spring

• April 25, St. Mark, Evangelist

• May 1, St. Phillip and St. James, Apostles; May Day

• May 14, Ascension Day

• May 24, Pentecost or Whitsunday

• May 31, Trinity Sunday

• June 1, Visitation of the Blessed Virgin (transferred)

• June 11, St. Barnabas, Apostle

• June 21, Summer solstice or Midsummer

• June 24, Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Reading

I’m reading (very slowly) through a couple different books right now. I’m almost halfway through A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason for the second time. (The audiobook on YT is helpful, too.) I also have a bookmark in Practice of the Presence translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. (I mention a few other lovely reads in my last post here.)

Quoting

If you keep a commonplace book, how often do you make entries? I tend to take pictures of text and then go back and write them down in batches. Here’s a couple quotes I put in mine recently:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
Hath had elsewhere it’s setting, 
And cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 

-- William Wordsworth, an excerpt from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

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“We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.”

— Simone Weil (via Plough)

If you’ve read or heard something that’s moved you lately — a quote, poem, podcast, or something else here on Substack — feel free to share in the comments. I’d love to read along with you!

Until next time,

Elizabeth

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Related Resources:

• Reflect on the season of spring through a guided prayer of Examen.

• If you’re looking for book to tuck into your bag or add to your nightstand, here are more than a few suggestions. (Purchasing books from this affiliate link helps me stock my own shelves, so thanks!)

• I put all my Rule of Life resources in one place. Find it here!

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1. Most links to Bookshop around here are an affiliate link because I love to support independent bookstores and I enjoy having a little extra room in my book budget, at no extra cost to you, of course. Thanks again, bookworms!