Monarchs

It's that time of year - the great monarch migration! The monarch butterflies are flooding through our area right now as they head south to Mexico on their fall migration routes. I never even knew about this migration until I moved to the Great Plains several years ago. But now we look forward to it and check out various places around town where they hold monarch watches this time of year. This year my oldest is taking a great homeschool science class at our local nature center. Yesterday they went out on the prairie, caught a monarch and tagged it. He is so excited that someone in Mexico will probably find and read that tag and researchers will be able to do more work on tracking the migration patterns. They also made some cool folding paper monarch "airplanes" like these on this site. My youngest also gets excited about the monarchs because he learned all about the migration on this awesome Little Einstein DVD (which is also the reason that he shoots out "It's Beethoven!! whenever he hears Ode to Joy).

I love it hands-on science. I often wish I had learned science more like this as a child. Maybe then I wouldn't have disliked it so much!

Music in nature

I love this! It's going to make for a great music lesson tomorrow.

Grace, Humility and Hope for September 11

It has been 8 years since the that tragic day in America. I imagine I will always remember how many years it has been since the day planes destroyed the World Trade Center and the parts of the Pentagon. I'll remember because it will always be the same number of years as the age of my oldest son. I'll probably always remember nursing my infant as I watched the tragedy unfold on TV that morning. It was a scary way to begin motherhood.

But today, eight years have passed, that infant is a third grader and a big brother. And, for good or for bad, there was no mention of the World Trade Center over our family breakfast this morning. But there was mention of September 11. Why? Because it's the feast of St. Euphrosynos the Cook! We spent our breakfast reading this wonderful book, which my boys (especially my oldest) have grown to love over the years. I think they love the stories about St. Euphrosynos as a boy and his difficult but rewarding relationships with the other monks in his monastery. And I'm sure they love the gorgeous illustrations. But this morning as I read it, I thought about St. Euphrosynos' humility and his forgiveness. Euphrosynos was treated poorly by the others as a child, and by other monks as an adult. But he was patient, humble and forgiving. And that spirit of forgiveness seems a perfect model for today, the anniversary of a day when many people were wronged and violated. And I know it's a good model for me today, this week and this month as I continue to struggle with how to relate to those who wrong me, my children, my friends. Forgiveness is hard, hard, hard, but it's worth it, not only in eternity, but even in that very moment.

And then, several friends posted this lovely story today from the NPR archives. It's from the "This I Believe" series and is about forgiveness after a tragedy in Vietnam just a few years before I was born. It is certainly a perfect image for us today.

May we all learn to embrace forgiveness in our daily lives through the prayers of the humble young monk Euphrosynos!