What Can Happen When You Sing Hymns

by Wendi Capehart

My eldest daughter and her husband have been singing with their kids forever.  Okay, not literally forever, as her kids are not very old- 5, 4, 3, and 1.  However, from the childrens' perspective it is forever, because she was singing hymns to them when they were still in the womb.  I have a vivid memory of her singing to her firstborn while he was being resuscitated after being born gray, limp, and unresponsive. I am positive he stayed with us to hear more of his mother's songs.

   Very recently this busy family has been working specifically on the hymn Trust and Obey. This mainly means they make sure to sing it every day in a more focused, intentional way. I could tell Trust and Obey was their current hymn because while the grandchildren were visiting me recently, they gathered themselves and their baby cousins together on my stairs and sang most of the hymn together, and my grandma heart was warmed to the core. Imagine the joy of hearing your small grandchildren spontaneously singing hymns together just for fun, because they want to.

A couple of days ago, the four year old unfortunately did not obey, and this resulted in an unplanned trip to the emergency room where she had to have a blood draw to determine just how dangerous her disobedience had been.  To be honest, it  was a pretty rough experience for them all, and perhaps especially for our small grand-daughter..

Her brother was born with a medical condition requiring regular blood draws, so she knows more about it than most four year old children.  When she saw the white-coated staff coming toward her, she knew what to expect, and she was upset. Her mama offered to sing to her to help her think about something else, and asked what song she would like Mommy to sing. 

She was still thinking about what song she wanted when the process began. It wasn't their fault- the ER room was swamped, and other patients were waiting.  The staff was as kind as possible, but they were forced to rush.  They began with back to back. simultaneous and brutal sticks- again, not their fault. She is not an easy stick.  It was at the moment this torture began that my grand-daughter  blurted out her answer to her mama's question- she sobbed out "Trust & Obey!" as the hymn she needed her mommy to sing.

Paul and Silas sang hymns in prison, and they were able to do that because they already knew hymns and were used to singing them.  She was able to come up with that hymn when she needed it because she already knew it.  It's a recent part of her family stock of songs. She endured while Mommy sang. But more was yet to come.  They took the finished blood draws and dashed out of the room so they could quickly get it to the lab and move on to other patients.  Not much later a nurse returned, saying, "Bad news. one of them clotted before they could analyze it. I'm afraid we need another draw."

Can you imagine how my little grand-daughter must have felt when she heard this?  What do you suppose she was thinking when  someone else came in and chatted gently with her while looking for another vein to jab in this petite morsel of a four year old?  

Would you believe that she was thinking of another hymn to sing and even choosing the order (she is a bit of a control freak at times)?

 While the nurse was searching for her vein, my nervous and fearful grand-daughter asked her Mama, "Can you sing Jesus Loves me & Trust & Obey? Sing Jesus Loves Me until she puts the needle in and then sing Trust and Obey."   She then started chatting with the nurse about this song her family listens to on the computer and then sing together at home, and how it goes... and she sang a good chunk of Trust and Obey on her own to the nurse.  My daughter tells me the nurse listened for a while and then said, "I just think it's so special that you sing with them like this! 

We are all very encouraged and inspired by this story, although the irony is not lost upon us that she had this opportunity to share this 'testimony' with the nurse precisely because she had not obeyed.  She is not a holier than thou, priggish miss who never does anything she shouldn't.  She is much more like the little girl in the Longfellow poem, the one with the curl in the middle of her forehead ('when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid!')

There are many children, and adults, too, who might find deep comfort and sustenance in singing these old hymns in times of trial (or in expressing joy).  But they cannot, because they have never learned these hymns.  Some Christians don't really even see the point in learning hymns. It smacks of rote religion, I suppose, or perhaps it brings a faint whiff of fusty, musty, dead faith. I do not know why- I grew up in a family where a hymnal was a standard part of our 'things to do in the car' on trips and we sang hymns while doing dishes as naturally and easily as we argued over whose turn it was to do the dishes.  It may be something 'not done' any more, but that doesn't mean it's outdated and old fashioned.  It means we are cut off from our roots.

Is any among you happy?  .... merry? .... sing praises.... (James 5:13)

I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. (1 Corinthians 14:15)

...sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord. Ephesians 5:19

About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.  Acts 16:25

Matthew 26:30 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

 Regular singing, both personal and congregational, of Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs has been part of the Christian tradition from the dawn of Christianity. It is the birthright of every child from a believing family. But we, like Esau, have squandered our heritage for a mess of pottage, very much like Esau, in fact. Esau didn't want to bother to prepare or fetch his own food, and we don't think we need to sing our own songs any longer.  In fact, we think we can't because we don't sound like trained musicians and we don't have dub-step at home, so we might, at best, listen to somebody perform these songs once in a while.  Listening to a performance may lift our spirits, but Christianity is not a spectator sport. It's personal. It's intimate. It's relationship.  

We think the hymns that sustained the believers who went before us are  too hard, too old fashioned, out of date, irrelevant, especially to little children.   My grand-daughter is, of course, quite advanced for her years.  She is bright beyond her chronology.  Nevertheless, she is still only four years old.   She was near panic in a very frightening and painful situation, and yet, even in that traumatized state, she was encouraged, strengthened, and comforted by a hymn over 100 years old. In fact, it is the hymn that came to mind first for her.  This happened because she knew the hymn, because her parents did not decide for her that she could not relate to it or understand it.  

In a CM education we build relationships, develop good habits and nurture affinities to complex ideas and practices such as singing hymns, personally engaging in observation for nature study, poetry, art, and great books.  We do these things when the children are young so that these connections are already there for the children to draw on when they need them.   While God can, of course, work miracles, most often, he works with us where we are. Just the right hymn coming to mind when and where we need it is more likely to happen when those hymns are already a natural, integrated, whole part of our lives. 

Please. Sing with your children.

P.S. Grand-daughter's bloodwork all came back fine, and she left the ER saying to her mum, "I guess next time I should.... obey."

Thank-you to my oldest daughter for many things- permission to share this story and edit your words for an AO publication and for being the mother you are to those precious children, and for choosing the good man you did to father those darlings.  A big thank-you to all the mothers of my grandchildren, because you all sing hymns with your children regularly and you all have married good men, so a story like this could have come from any of you.

Some Christmas Thoughts from Charlotte Mason

Excerpted from Parents and Children, abridged and edited by Karen Glass

It takes the presence of children to help us to realise the idea of the Eternal Child. The Dayspring is with the children, and we think their thoughts and are glad in their joy; and every mother knows out of her own heart's fulness what the Birth at Bethlehem means. Those of us who have not children catch echoes. We hear the wondrous story read in church, the church-bells echo it, and our hearts are meek and mild, glad and gay, loving and tender, as those of little children; but, alas, only for the little while occupied by the passing thought. Too soon the dreariness of daily living settles down upon us again, and we become a little impatient, do we not, of the Christmas demand of joyousness.

But it is not so where there are children. The old, old story has all its first freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen to it ourselves with their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh to us as it is to them. What a mystery it is! Does not every mother who holds a babe in her arms feel with tremulous awe that, that deep saying is true for her also, 'The same is my mother'? [Matt 12:50; Mark 3:35]

In [the little child] is the light and life of Christ; and every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real secret of the world's progress––that every babe comes into the world with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents' hearts. That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children, is the message that the newborn child never fails to bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. The note of childhood is, before all things, humility. An old and saintly writer has a luminous thought on this subject of humility.

'There never was nor ever will be, but one humility in the whole world, and that is the humility of Christ, which never any man, since the fall of Adam has the least degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same sense and truth that Christ is one, the Mediator is one, Redemption is one . . . There are not two Lambs of God that take away the sins of the world. But if there was any humility besides that of Christ, there would be something else besides him that could take away the sins of the world.' [William Law.]

Our common notion of humility is inaccurate. We regard it as a relative quality. We humble ourselves to this one and that, bow to the prince and lord it over the peasant. This is why the grace of humility does not commend itself even to ourselves in our most sincere moods, but this misconception confuses our thought on an important subject. For humility is absolute, not relative. It is by no means a taking of our place among our fellows according to a given scale, some being above us by many grades and others as far below. There is no reference to above or below in the humble soul, which is equally humble before an infant, a primrose, a worm, a beggar, a prince.

Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life.

The Christian religion is, in its very nature, objective. It offers for our worship, reverence, service, adoration and delight, a Divine Person, the Desire of the world. Simplicity, happiness and expansion come from the outpouring of a human heart upon that which is altogether worthy. But we mistake our own needs, are occupied with our own falls and our own repentances, our manifold states of consciousness. Our religion is subjective first, and after that, so far as we are able, objective. The order should rather be objective first and after that, so far as we have any time or care to think about ourselves, subjective.

Now, the tendency of children is to be altogether objective, not at all subjective, and perhaps that is why they are said to be first in the kingdom of heaven. This philosophic distinction is not one which we can put aside as having no bearing on everyday life. It strikes the keynote for the training of children. In proportion as our training tends to develop the subjective principle, it tends to place our children on a lower level of purpose, character, and usefulness throughout their lives; while so far as we develop the objective principle, with which the children are born, we make them capable of love, service, heroism, worship.

This kind cometh forth only by prayer, but it is well to clear our thoughts and know definitely what we desire for our children, because only so can we work intelligently towards the fulfilment of our desire.

During each coming festival of the Eternal Child, may parents ponder how best to keep their own children in the blessed child-estate, recollecting that the humility which Christ commends in the children is what may be described, philosophically, as the objective principle as opposed to the subjective, and that, in proportion as a child becomes self-regardful in any function of his being, he loses the grace of humility. This is the broad principle; the practical application will need constant watchfulness and constant efforts, especially in holiday seasons, to keep friends and visitors from showing their love for the children in any way that shall tend to develop self-consciousness.

This, of humility, is not only a counsel of perfection, but is, perhaps, the highest counsel of perfection and when we put it to parents, we offer it to those for whom no endeavour is too difficult, no aim too lofty; to those who are doing the most to advance the Kingdom of Christ.

(Read the unedited chapter here.)

Sunday Reading in the Parents' Union School

by Anne White

"The 'way' of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him, or read for him, that is, read bit by bit, and tell as you read, Hartwig's Tropical World, the same author's Polar World, Livingstone's missionary travels, Mrs. Bishop's  Unbeaten Tracks in Japan––in fact, any interesting, well-written book of travel." ~~ Charlotte Mason,  Home Education

Trivia question: who is possibly the most famous owner of Hartwig's The Polar and Tropical Worlds (a bindup of the two books)? Give up?  Charles Ingalls.  It is otherwise known as "Pa's Big Green Book," the only book that Laura and Mary were allowed to look at on Sundays.

When we're examining the P.U.S programmes,  it's easy to miss "For Sunday Reading" squeezed between the books and commentaries for formal Bible study and the devotional reading just after it..  After all, it is "optional."  "Optional," when you're squeezed for schedule space already, is taken as the equivalent of "skip this."

But that's what Sunday is for, isn't it? A "stop right there" on the seventh day?  A refresher?  Some of us are stricter about Sunday-keeping than others, and I'm sure that Charlotte Mason's students would also have come from a variety of religious backgrounds where "Sunday reading" and "Sunday occcupations" were or weren't enforced, encouraged, or permitted.  But here it is in the programme: an invitation to pause in the week's schoolwork; an offering of refreshment.

Aside from a few heavily Bible-oriented and church history titles that come up repeatedly, the "Sunday Reading" category has room for different sorts of biography, books on exploration (especially those relating to missionary work), and occasionally poetry and fiction (such as Uncle Tom's Cabin).  One choice book that I'd never heard of, included one term shortly after Miss Mason's death, was The Roll Call of Honour, a new book of golden deeds, by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, a book that refers to itself as not A Book of Golden Deeds but "a book of golden lives."  It includes chapters on Simon Bolivar, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Giuseppe Garibaldi, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, (Major-General) Gordon, and Father Damien.  Similarly, a book called Adventures in Science by Arthur Maile includes short biographies of Pasteur, Lister, Perkin, Edison, Rontgen, and Marconi.  So Sunday reading seemed to include anything relating to heroism, character, and principles, although the subjects were not always specifically Christian.

A good number of the books mentioned, though, were published by the Society to Promote Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) or the Religious Tract Society (R.T.S.); it was supposed to be Sunday reading, after all.

Here are some of the titles I've come across that were mentioned as Sunday reading for the different forms (grade levels).  Some are included in the Programmes currently on the Ambleside Online website, others came from the Charlotte Mason Digital Archives (some of those, as I mentioned, are books that were used throughout the 1920's after Miss Mason's death).

A small warning: I am including the publisher information because it does help to track down the right books online. Many of them are online; a search by title and author will bring up page images on sites such as archive.org  or Project Gutenberg.  However, and please take this seriously: not every book on this list will be a good choice for students' reading.  Some contain negative racial or other views that were typical of their time; others may not agree with your own religious beliefs.  Please preview before handing to children.

Form I (primary grades)

Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 8/-).
The Child's Book of Saints (Dent. 9/6)

When I was a Boy in Serbia (Harrap, 3/6)
Mrs. Gatty's Parables from Nature (Dent. 2/6)
When I was a Boy in Japan (Harrap, 3/6). 

The Story of Stanley (Nelson, 2/-)

Form II (grades 4-6 or 7)

Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 3/-).
English Church History for Children, Vol. II.  (Methuen, 5/-).  
Mackay of the Great Lake (Milford, 3/6)
The Children's Year (Church Seasons), by the Rev. G. R. Oakley (S.P.C.K., 8/6). 
St. George of England, by B. Hood (Harrap, 2/6). 
The Book of a Chinese Baby, by M. Entwhistle (U.C.M.E., 1/6).
How to Use the Prayer Book, by Mrs. Romanes (Longmans, 2/-). 
The Northumbrian Saints, by E. N. Grierson (Mowbray, 2/6). 
Lion-hearted (Bishop Hannington), by Canon Dawson (Seelay, 3/6).

Form III (grades 7-8)

Heroes and Writers of the Book of Common Prayer, by A. M. Forde (S.P.C.K., 8/6)
.Longfellow's Golden Legend (Oxford Press, 5/-).
Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Washington Irving
Africa and her Peoples (Walker) (not online)
The Roll Call of Honour, by A.T. Quiller Couch
James Gilmour of Mongolia (R. Lovett)
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Mrs Bishop)
The Last Secrets, by J. Buchan
Ethics of the Dust, by John Ruskin
 Longfellow's / Tennyson's Poems
The Romance of Excavation (Masters)
Saints and Heroes of the Western World (Davies)
Adventures in Science (Arthur Maile)
The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)
George Washington (A. Russell)
The Firebrand of the Indies (Xavier), by E.K. Seth-Smith
Henry Martyn, Confessor of the Faith, by C.E. Padwick
The Holy War / The Pilgrim's Progress
Fight the Good Fight, by W.E. Frost (not online)
The Faerie Queene Book I
The Land of the Incarnation (Gertrude Hollis) (not online)
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Canton)
Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain

Form IV (approx. grade 9)

Keble's Christian Year (Longmands, 10d.). 
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (Allen, 2/8, or Dent, 1/6). (f)
The Golden Legend, by Longfellow
The Quest of Nations, by T. R. W. Lunt (U.C.M.E., 2/6), pp.1-60. 
The Story of S. Paul's Life and Letters, by J. Paterson Smyth (Sampson Low, 5/-), pp. 1-75.  
The Fall of Constantinople, by J. H. Neale (Dant, 2/6).

Forms V and VI (senior high)

Stanley's The Eastern Church
Stanley's Sinai and Palestine (Murray, 4/-), pp. 304-364.

Moral and Religious Education, by Dr. S. Bryant

The Myths of Plato 
Browning's View of Life (with the poems referred to)

Westcott's Religious Thought in the West (Macmillan, 6/-): 
Benjamin Whichcote.
Sunday Collects, by Canon Masterman (S.P.C.K, 2/-).
John Inglesant (Macmillan, 4/6). 
George Herbert's Life and Poems (Oxford Press, 2/6).

Pastor Chuck Smith, 1927-2013

Many of you may not know who Chuck Smith is. But if you use Ambleside Online, even if you use only the artist or composer rotation, you have directly benefited from his ministry.

Although I am the only "Calvary Chapelite" of the AO Advisory, I have been influenced by the Calvary Chapel movement for my entire Christian life. AO has the same top-down leadership model, with the Advisory making decisions: we seek to be true to our vision, rather than appealing to the changing whims of a user base. I don't often like to pull out the "AO was my idea" card because, although the initial curriculum concept was mine, the creation of the booklist was mostly the work of the more well-read members of the Advisory. My fantastic brilliance is not in putting together a curriculum, but in putting together the right people and convincing them that the project wasn't such a crazy idea, and convincing them that it was something doable. Then I mostly stepped back and relegated myself to webmaster. But I'm pulling out that card now. AO was my idea. And perhaps my biggest contribution, aside from recognizing who needed to be involved, was the insistence from its inception that it needed to be something anybody could use for free. Nobody had to pay us, or me, to utilize AO. AO was (and is) run by volunteers who view the project as a ministry. That is also Pastor Chuck's influence, modeled after his emphasis on blessing others as a ministry, not a profit venture, even though we recognize the obvious marketing potential of AO.

This is a more personal post, about my own history and my own life, which has been largely influenced and inspired by Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel. I became a Christian in 1983 while in the military in Okinawa. The group of young Christians I fell in with talked in glowing terms about this church called Calvary Chapel back in California that welcomed young people and taught straight out of the Bible. So when I ended up stationed in Oceanside, I naturally looked them up. The first time I walked into a Calvary Chapel (I think it was a mid-week Bible study), there was a guy with an acoustic guitar and a girl sitting on a stool up in front singing and leading worship. It seemed natural, no hype, and very real. It felt like coming home. The teaching was plain, no yelling, no theatrics, just a guy talking,  explaining the Bible in a way I could understand, and that was refreshing.

During the three years between military and marriage, I was a part of the congregation of Calvary Chapel Oceanside (at the time, they were meeting at the local YMCA and the pastor was Bob Dietz and we would hear YMCA announcements from the concession stand over the PA during church service: "Number 4, your pizza is ready!"). Every chance I got, I would go with friends to "Big Calvary" in Costa Mesa, about an hour away. Often that was their Friday night Christian concerts. We were also going to Thursday night Bible studies at Calvary Chapel Dana Point, where Chuck Smith Jr. was teaching, and I went to a women's study at Calvary Chapel Vista taught by Cheryl Broderson, Chuck Smith's daughter. Being young and single and a brand new Christian, I spent a lot of my spare time listening to sermons on cassette - mostly Chuck Smith. And when Calvary Chapel started a radio station - KWVE - I listened to a lot of Calvary Chapel teaching - Greg Laurie, Raul Ries, Jon Courson, Don Johnson. Thus, much of my understanding of what it means to live as a Christian was learned from Calvary Chapel -- either directly from Pastor Chuck, or indirectly from one of his students who had gone on to plant a church somewhere else.

During that time, I met a recently divorced guy at work who was interested in Christianity, so I directed him to the one Christian I knew at work, who was involved in a spin-off Calvary Chapel church called Horizon Christian Fellowship, pastored by Mike Macintosh. The guy ended up becoming a Christian and a year or so later, I married him and we went to his church, Horizon, and Maranatha Chapel, another Calvary Chapel spin-off where Ray Bentley was the pastor. Horizon was meeting in an old school the county was no longer using. When they needed a larger facility for Sunday morning services, they built a gymnasium at the church's expense on the school grounds that they could leave as a gift to the county when the county needed the school back. While the church was using the school grounds, they would allow kids from the neighborhood to use the gym when church services weren't going on. That act of generosity impressed me and modeled the ideal for me of how Christians should act towards their neighbors.

When we started our family a year later, we decided we'd like our children to grow up in a more rural area where they could have a more normal childhood, away from gang violence which was increasing in San Diego. We drove from San Diego to Tennessee with a 4yo and a 2yo. During the very long drive we listened to Praise Band music from Maranatha Music. We were confident we'd have no problem finding a church -- after all, we were going to be living in the Bible Belt. But it wasn't as easy as we had expected. There were plenty of churches, but nothing with the kind of Bible teaching we had grown accustomed to. We even found a church that was sort of a copy of California mega-churches. I think it would be considered a "seeker church" and they had rules they made new members read before joining about what wasn't allowed (no hand-lifting, for example) because "it might make new people uncomfortable." And, although anyone could walk in from the street and feel at home, the Bible teaching was not what we hoped for. We thought our hopes of finally finding a church would be realized, but we were only there for two weeks.

One morning during our search for a church family, I woke up and it hit me -- the natural, reverent, Spirit-seeking, Bible teaching kind of church that I had taken for granted for the past ten years was something I had left back in California and I would never experience that again. It was gone forever. At that point we began praying that a Calvary Chapel would be planted in our area, although the chances of that happening seemed remote. Eventually, though, it did happen after we met another family who had also moved from California and were praying for the same thing. We started our own little home Bible study, and that was the seed of the church we have been involved in for the last 17 years.

Calvary Chapel isn't the perfect church. In fact, I've had my own issues with a few things, mostly when homeschooling has changed me. As I learned about attachment parenting (Dr. Sears used to do a call-in radio show on KVWE, so even that resulted from Calvary Chapel's influence), I wished they were more family-inclusive, instead of segregating church, Bible studies and church activities into age groups. As I homeschooled (after hearing James Dobson talk about it, also on KWVE) and I read more because I was homeschooling, I noticed a slight anti-intellectual bias. It's not an official church-sanctioned attitude, but a church whose focus is on saving souls via street evangelism, and recovery of drug addicts, and group leaders and even pastors come from that background, is likely to have that side effect. So, the church is not perfect, but no church is, and I've found that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

So we've been involved in our local little Calvary Chapel, and made that our church home. But any time I had to miss church because of a sick child, I'd tune in to Calvary Chapel's live service and listen to Pastor Chuck. In fact, the last time I was home with a sick child and tuned in, that was the morning Pastor Chuck made the announcement that he had cancer. Maybe it wasn't just coincidence that I happened to stay home that morning, of all mornings -- maybe I needed to prepare for the inevitable. That was awhile ago, a year or two.

This past Wednesday evening we had a real treat -- Terry Clark, a musician we had known of from Horizon Christian fellowship in San Diego, gave a concert. At OUR little church in Tennessee! It was wonderful, like a taste of home. During the music, I had the inkling that there was a reason for the magical feeling of the worship -- almost like a last victory celebration, or a farewell. And I found out the very next morning that Pastor Chuck had died during the night, just a few hours after that concert.

Are you wondering what the point was in posting my life story? This actually does have an AO aspect. As I've mulled over Pastor Chuck's death and my own years as a Christian that have been entirely under his shadow, I've realized how much of Pastor Chuck's teaching has influenced my own actions, and I've also been struck by a couple of parallels. In the last few months, for the only time in the history of AO, I've seriously considered walking away a couple of times. AO has had its (small) share of critics over the years, as any organization does. Recently we've been alarmed to see our project re-posted, re-named, even sold, so we've had to be more responsible about protecting the work. As a result, I've heard AO come under some pretty severe attack -- mostly variations of AO being accused of being stingy because, even though we allow people to use it for free, we can't allow it to be copied, re-named, re-posted, or sold. During those times that I was tempted to defend AO, I would hear Pastor Chuck's voice in the back of my mind answering a question once asked in an interview about how he responded to those who criticized him or his ministry (and you know that a person in the limelight as much as he was probably had all kinds of things said about him). He said he refused to defend himself, that it was his job to continue doing what God had told him to do, and it was God's job to defend him if that was necessary. (And, as far as me walking away from AO, I've had the verses about "not being weary in doing good" pop up at uncanny times frequently enough over the past few months to convince me that I'm supposed to continue what I'm doing, so me walking away from AO is now off the table. That's no longer an option I'm entertaining.)

The other parallel is about the realities of all organizations. At the time we were praying for a Calvary Chapel to start in our rural area, we were told that the process of starting a Calvary Chapel wasn't as easy as the days I remembered, when anyone could rent a storefront and hang a Calvary Chapel sign on the door. There had been a lot of problems with spin-off churches bearing the Calvary Chapel name but being doctrinally off, so "Big Calvary" had started to require that Calvary Chapels be under the official organization and meet certain doctrinal standards. When I see AO going through some of the same growing pains, it's encouraging to know that even an organization as spirit-filled and well-intentioned as Calvary Chapel has had similar growing pains, though on a much larger scale, and they felt justified in protecting their vision and upholding standards of those who wanted to join them.

Calvary Chapel has lost the one who drove, inspired and directed it, and I'm curious to know what that will mean for them. Similarly, in 1923, Charlotte Mason died, leaving her project without the one who drove, inspired and directed it. Mrs. Steinthal, Mrs. Franklin, and all those others whose names I know from Parents' Review articles carried on the work for her successfully. Yet it wasn't the same. Without her wise but warm presence, listening and guiding with a smile but never any word that "left a sting," it couldn't be the same. Times were changing, the needs of the school system were putting pressure on the PNEU to make changes. Without Charlotte Mason there to hold firmly to the original vision, I'm sure there were things that were done that she would never have wanted, compromises made to meet the demands of modern educational board requirements. AO tries to model what a CM education would look like if CM was alive today, but we can't know for sure what concessions she might have made to accommodate today's society. Would she ban the use of computers for her students? Would she encourage BBC productions of Pride and Prejudice and Wives and Daughters? Even if one of the Steinthals or Franklins or others of her students were here to ask, they aren't her and they'd only be making an educated guess.

I tuned in to the live broadcast of this morning's service at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, and I've been listening as I've been typing. His son told a few anecdotes about him, and said that Pastor Chuck loved nature and knew the names of the birds and trees in his local area. Maybe he and Charlotte Mason will be taking nature walks in heaven. There's a thought!

I'll end with Numbers 6:24-26. Pastor Chuck ended all of his services with this; there's an audio of him singing it on YouTube.

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee;
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,
And be gracious unto thee
And be gracious unto thee
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee,
And give thee peace.