As a child C. S. Lewis attended a number of schools (which he hated), but in 1914 he moved to Bookham at Surrey to study privately with his father’s former tutor, William T. Kirkpatrick. Lewis homeschooled under Kirkpatrick for the next two years before receiving a scholarship to Oxford in December of 1916. In a letter dated October 12, 1915, Lewis described his typical day of schooling to a friend. (Lewis was 16 years old at the time, soon to turn 17.)

Typical Schedule:

• Breakfast and a short walk
• Thucydides and Homer
• 15-minute break
• Tacitus
• Lunch at 1:00
• Free time until tea
• Tea at 4:30
• Plato and Horace
• Supper at 7:30
• German and French until 9:00 p.m.
• Free time until bed (usually about 10:20 p.m.)

As soon as my bed room door is shut I get into my dressing gown, draw up a chair to my table and produce, like Louis Moore, note book and pencil. Here I write up my diary for the day, and then turning to the other end of the book devote myself to poetry, either new stuff or polishing the old. If I am not in the mood for that I draw faces and hands and feet etc for practice. This is the best part of the day of course, and I am usually in a very happy frame of mind by the time I slip into bed.

(Source: They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, edited by Walter Hooper, p. 84)

So, any homeschoolers out there who follow the same schedule? Anyone who wants to?

HT: The Scriptorium

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Related posts:
    • Click here for more Narnia related posts.
    • Click here for Countdown to Caspian roundup.
    • Click here for Narnia sermon series.

I know, more politics. But if not now, when? Charmaine Yoest in the Wall Street Journal provides a clear and succint explanation of why the health bill in its present form will lead to federal funding of abortions and how the White House can easily prevent this from happening.

It’s now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Last September, the president promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The White House knows how to turn Mr. Obama’s September commitment into legislative action … Only adding a so-called Hyde Amendment to the health-care reform bills would fulfill the president’s promise to protect Americans from subsidizing abortion … Similar amendments have been added to health-care bills ever since [1976]. Without specific language prohibiting the practice, history has shown that the courts or administrative agencies end up directing government dollars to pay for abortions …

Over the past year, language similar to the Hyde Amendment was crafted by Reps. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R., Pa.) and inserted into the health-care bill that passed the House. When asked about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in November, Mr. Obama talked around the issue. He said that “there is a balance to be achieved that is consistent with the Hyde Amendment.” When asked if Stupak-Pitts struck this “balance,” the president replied “not yet.” That’s an odd reply. The question of abortion funding doesn’t have any Zen to it: The funding is either prohibited or it’s not …

The president’s latest proposal mirrors legislation that has passed the Senate, which doesn’t include a Hyde Amendment, and would inevitably establish abortion as a fundamental health-care service … The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on “community health centers,” which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.

With one simple step the White House can keep its promise to keep federal funding of abortions out of the health bill. So why won’t the White House take that step? (HT: Denny Burk and Vitamin Z)

Related posts:
    • The Sanctity of Human Life in the Womb (Sermon from Psalm 139)
    • Barack Obama on Health Care Then and Now

Click here for more posts on the subject of abortion.

From the Christian Post:

“I have a theory why so many pastors burn out: They start out walking with Jesus but they end up working for Jesus.”

(Pete Briscoe of Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrolton, Texas, recalled hearing from someone at a time when he was depressed)

Update: I found a similar saying in Oswald Chambers’ devotional My Utmost for His Highest:

“From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more” (John 6:66 ). They turned back from walking with Jesus; not into sin, but away from Him. Many people today are pouring their lives out and working for Jesus Christ, but are not really walking with Him. (Chambers; Devotional for March 9)

Okay, this is just too cool.

Homemade Flying Hovercraft (Video length: 1:15)

New Zealander Rudy Heeman has been showing off his latest garage invention — a hovercraft which takes off at 70 km/h. Heeman hopes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.

HT: Neatorama

Related posts:
    • Get Ready for Flying Cars?
    • Jet Pack in Flight

I have stayed pretty quiet about politics on this blog for the past year, but in light of the White House’s current initiative to push Health Care Reform through the Senate with only 50-plus-one votes, I thought it worthwhile to revisit President Obama’s words on health care in the past.

Barack Obama on health care in 2004:

My understanding of the Senate is is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward [emphasis mine], not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?

Barack Obama on health care in 2005:

A change in the Senate rules that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever … And what I worry about would be that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the Founders intended.

Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes. In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning: A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked.

Barack Obama on health care in 2006:

Those big-ticket items, fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives, and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion, is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw ‘em red meat, we get a 50-plus-one victory. See, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizeable majority.

Barack Obama on health care in 2007:

[Health care reform] is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority….

You gotta break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory with 50-plus-one but you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One and a lot of nice perks as president but you can’t deliver on health, we’re not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy.

So, how does one reconcile (no pun intended) these past statements with the administration’s current plan to push health care through the Senate with a simple fifty-plus-one majority vote?

Related posts:
    • Abortion and The Health Bill
    • Congratulations Senator Barack Obama!
    • The Obama Burger

Note: If you have never read Voyage of the Dawn Treader, be aware that this post reveals some plot details from the book.

Walden Media and Twentieth Century Fox hosted a special Narnia Summit in Los Angeles for Christian leaders the weekend of February 16-18. The event included panel discussions plus footage from the upcoming Dawn Treader film directed by Michael Apted. Tirian from NarniaWeb attended and reports back:

Michael Apted … shared that this is a very character-driven film and that it is not going to be a film that has special effects without any real content. He said this movie is about temptation and learning how to overcome it, wrapped in an adventure story. Michael then took us through a 20-minute presentation with concept art and a few still frames to give us the basic outline of the movie. He described the five islands, where we’ll see them, and what will happen on each one. He also pointed out how each island will have a different and unique look to it …

Without giving away too much, I will mention a few things about the footage we saw. There were shots of the transition into Narnia and some shots onboard the Dawn Treader with Eustace (quite funny). We saw some interaction between Lucy and Gael and quite a lot of shots of Lucy in the magician’s house. There were a few finished shots of Reepicheep, several “beauty shots” of the Dawn Treader sailing, and some incredible shots of the entrance to Aslan’s Country from the end of the film. Liam Neeson’s lines have been recorded so we heard Aslan several times throughout the footage.

Christianity Today also spoke with several who attended the summit. Philip Yancey shared:

They’re clearly making an effort to say that they respect and understand the spiritual focus of the book in a way that perhaps [Prince Caspian] did not. They don’t seem to be cutting any corners; they’re throwing the whole ball of wax at this, and that’s a good thing. If they can capture the universal love for these books, it’ll be great.

Kathy Keller (wife of pastor/author Tim Keller) was especially concerned “that they get Aslan right” in the movie.

“I’m glad the final interaction between Aslan and Lucy was there in its unadulterated entirety, because I consider that the pinnacle of the entire seven books.” (Near the end of book, Lucy is sad that Aslan is sending her back to her world, and sobs, “How can we live, never meeting you?” Aslan assures Lucy that he’s very much in her world, where he has “another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”)

Jerry Root, a Lewis expert and a professor at Wheaton College, agrees with Keller, saying if they don’t get that scene right, “they might as well close up the shop and produce no more films, for they will not be Lewis’ stories any more.”

Attendees also report that the movie includes the extremely important scene of Aslan “un-dragoning” Eustace. All in all, I find these reports very encouraging! Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of my favorite books, and I am really looking forward to this movie.

Click here for Narnia products at Amazon.

Related posts:
    • Click here for more Narnia related posts.
    • Click here for The Finished Dawn Treader Ship.
    • Click here for Countdown to Caspian roundup.
    • Click here for Narnia sermon series.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (CDC/Centers for Disease Control) just released a new study on marriage and cohabitation in the United States. The study defines cohabitation as “a man and woman living together in a sexual relationship without being married.” The findings confirm what earlier studies have reported — that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce. As The New York Times reports:

Couples who live together before they get married are less likely to stay married, a new study has found. But their chances improve if they were already engaged when they began living together. The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first, the study found …

The survey found that about 28 percent of men and women had cohabitated before their first marriage and that about 7 percent lived together and never married. About 23 percent of women and 18 percent of men married without having lived together. Women who were not living with both of their biological or adoptive parents when they were 14 years old were less likely to be married and more likely to be cohabiting than those who grew up with both parents.

For more information on the effects of living together before marriage, I encourage you to visit my series on the topic. Click on the following links to access the series:

Living Together Before Marriage Series:
    ● Statistics on Living Together Before Marriage
    ● Scriptures on Living Together Before Marriage
    ● Living Together Without Sex
    ● What If We Already Lived Together Before Marriage?