Schole - Living Life Classically

It is 9 am Sunday morning. My husband and 3 of our children were up and out of the door early for a base church service. I am supposed to be herding the other 3 out of bed and out the door toward the service we usually attend --- yet I am sitting on our back patio, listening to birds sing, cicadas chirp, cars zipping down the road, and airplanes taking off.  My heart and soul are yearning for worship, for peace, for connection with Something bigger than myself - yet in ways very different from what I can find in any church here on our little island. The liturgies, hymns, choruses, creeds, scripture readings, preaching, and sacraments are all good and necessary - yet too often move too fast, cover too much, are ruled by the clock, and focused on personal application or lost in theological intricacies,  loosing what it truly means to Worship. They become the airplanes over powering the birds singing. What I need, is "schole" - contemplation, leisure. Worship that take the time to engage the heart, soul, mind, body, and relationships (both with God and others).  If I am honest, this is not just what I am missing in corporate worship - it is what I am missing in my life - my marriage, my teaching, my learning, my parenting, my daily chores.  What my soul needs is the hard work of slowing down, listening, searching, discussing, and contemplating Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

The last several months I've been digging into the intricacies of Classical Education - a quickly growing movement to re-learn and re-claim educational tools, pedagogies, and content from the ancient and middle ages that have been lost with the advent of modern progressive education. While I set out to read and study for professional and parenting reasons, it is leading me on a journey of self-discovery. As I've been tracing what has been lost and why, it has struck my core that what has been lost, and what is being learned within this renewal movement, is not just about formal education, but life and all that our modern world has lost in the pace of Progress. The principles of Classical Education cannot be effectively applied to a classroom, or homeschool, without being lived out in every aspect of life. While our modern world is focused on productivity, what can we do, how well can we do it, and how much can get done, the Classical world yearned for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

There is much irony that as modern peoples we have systems, technologies, and knowledge that leave us with more  "leisure" than any in the Classical world would have dreamed of; yet we run non-stop races to be more, make more, and have more in hope of that week on the beach or a weekend BBQ with friends.  Yet the Ancients, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, had none of our modern conveniences and scientific understanding, but lived daily lives of  true "leisure" and saw beauty that we can only yearn for. They lived in a "music of the spheres" that we can't fathom. We have lost "schole" - leisure at its most basic and fundamental definition.

I would like to invite you to join me on this journey of renewal. Not as an educator or parent, but as a human - as a created being designed to glorify its Creator and rest in Him. I want to explore what it means to apply the eight fundamental principles of Classical Pedagogy to life:

1- Festina Lente - Make haste slowly
2 - Multum non multa - Much not many
3 - Repitio mater memoriae - Repetition is the mother of memory
4 - Embodied Learning
5 - Songs and Chants
6 - Wonder and Curiosity
7 - Virtue
8 - Schole - Contemplation and Leisure

I want to begin with "schole", because I believe it is really the most fundamental. It is both the ends and the means of the other seven. It is doing the hard work of sitting at the feet of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and having the virtue to receive it.