An Invitation

Enjoy listening or read the script the below

Welcome to the very first episode of Timeless Books.

As we get started, I want to let you in on what this podcast is all about.

My observation is this- many parents, myself included, haven't ever read great books, and we’re not prepared to engage with our kids who are being classically educated. Not only are we unprepared, but we’re also quite intimidated when our kids are reading works with names we can barely pronounce- Gilgamesh, Odysseus, and Boethius. We’ve been told that these stories are all part of the great conversation- but many of us aren’t even entirely sure what that means!

And so we pay tuition and drop our kids off each day, grateful that they’re receiving something that we never did, trusting that it will produce fruit in their lives. Or perhaps, we’re enchanted by this idea of classical Christian education, and so we homeschool, trusting that the resources available are enough to guide us on a path we’ve never been down ourselves.

Either way, we’re left with this gap between our own experience and that of our children. And that gap is what this podcast is all about. How do we bridge that? How can we stay connected with our kids as they learn and grow and change in ways that are amazing and beautiful, but truthfully, quite unfamiliar to us.

It can be easy to just entrust the school to do this work, but I think there’s an opportunity for us to engage as well. While its not feasible for us to go back and get a re-do on our k-12 schooling experience, there are ways for us to be strategic about keeping up with our kids and staying connected to them in their journey.

I mentioned this concept of the Great Conversation earlier, and I think its worth unpacking a bit. The idea is this- for as long as people have been around, they’ve been in conversation about what it means to be human. We see these questions emerge in the Bible- who are we? Where did we come from? How ought we live? And, not surprisingly, the earliest pagan civilizations were asking similar questions. Over the centuries, these questions and answers have grown and evolved. Ideas that began with Socrates, resurfaced with Aristotle, and were visited by the church fathers, debated by philosophers, explored by authors, imagined by artists, and so on and so forth. In essence, everyone is welcome to conversation. Some  questions and answers are certainly better than others, but navigating this conversation is what classical Christian education is all about.

For my son's birthday one year, we visited this quaint little bookshop in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He picked out a book and we sat down in the cafe and ordered tea. It arrived in a fancy English teapot with honey, lemons, cream, and sugar cubes- it was quite the treat.

After about a half an hour, my son looked up from the book that he had picked out, which happened to be a kid's version of Frankenstein, and he said, mom, wait, I'm confused. Who's the monster? Is it his creation or is it actually Frankenstein himself? It was this profound moment to consider what makes one human. Is it simply being born or is it connected to our beliefs and behavior? Is it possible for us to be more or less human, or humane? This whole conversation was made all the sweeter by doing this very physical thing of sitting together in a beautiful space, drinking delicious tea.

We talk about classical Christian education as this integrated, holistic way of learning. And I have to tell you, that was one of my favorite moments in his childhood so far. By reading a story, he started asking bigger philosophical and theological questions, even though he was only ten at the time.

But before you dismiss this whole idea because I have a kid who likes to drink tea, I should also tell you about another one of my kids- the one who despises tea. A few days ago we were driving to the gym, and I asked him what he thought about the book he was reading in his literature class. He rolled his eyes while expressing his utter boredom with the main character. I knew the conversation was doomed, so I asked him to compare this character to another character he really likes. Without skipping a beat, he began talking about Edmund, from Narnia. He posited that Edmund is the main character or protagonist, because he’s the one that changes the most. And he likes Edmund, because he’s relatable. He’s always doing the wrong thing, and there’s something comforting in knowing people who mess up a lot can still be great. These were my son’s words, not mine. And it’s a lesson I need as much as he does.

These are the kinds of moments that I want to help you to learn how to create and capture in the life of your family.

You might be thinking that this sounds great- for someone who has read all the books. But I’m not making this podcast for those people. I’m making it for people like me. Those of us who have not read all the books and do not have time to read everything our kids are reading. Despite this obstacle, I’m convinced that there's still a lot that we can do.

These great books, the ones that have stood the test of time and still have something to teach us, aren’t easily digested. We don't just read them and put them back on the shelf, never to touch them again. We think about them deeply. We talk about them. We come back to them.

Even in a classical Christian school, your child's not going to master everything about this book by sitting in a lecture with his teacher, participating in a Socratic discussion, or sitting around a Harkness table. Those things are all wonderful, but these books are so much bigger than that. And continuing the conversation at home, well, there's a lot of value in that.

So that's where this podcast comes in. The idea is that each episode will be 15 minutes or less, providing a summary, key themes and insights, and some dinner table discussion starters. Even if you haven't read the book, I hope to equip you with tools to engage with your children in what they are reading. You can ask questions and discuss those big ideas, all the while learning for yourself and hopefully being inspired to pick some of these books up. In addition to these book talks, I'm also going to drop some ‘Crash Course’ episodes that will help you learn how to ask good questions and how to engage with these deeper ideas.

So if this sounds at all intriguing to you, stick around. There's lots more to come.

Thanks for joining me, til next time, I’d like to leave you with a quote for your commonplace. This is from C.S. Lewis in his essay An Experiment in Criticism-

“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”