links! - trusting God, playing the violin, and much, much more

These Little Pieces is posting regularly to her blog again, and she's started with a bang. Check out this post on how to celebrate the Annunciation with your children (I love the idea of supporting a crisis pregnancy center in honor of the occasion) and also check out her giveaway from her Etsy shop!

Conversion Diary's post Trust School is excellent, and, for me at least, came right when I needed to hear the message it offers.

And on the funny/awesome side, I love, love, love my friend Katie's post about her New Trick. :D

Bethany writes about what keeps us from being happy, and about her need (and many of ours, I think) for time alone. This line especially makes me think: "Just because we need something doesn't mean that we demand it from others." Go read the whole thing here.

Jen left me a comment today on my post about how hard it is to find sympathy cards that are neither sticky-sweet nor theologically bad, pointing me towards these beautiful, serene, appropriate cards from Conciliar Press. I don't think I've ever seen anything better.

I always have trouble summarizing Anne Kennedy's posts, but read this one and you'll understand why I read her blog. Let's just say that she has read, marked, and inwardly digested everything that P. G. Wodehouse had to teach her.

I have not read much of this blog yet. I just found it. But it's called "Shrinking Violets: Marketing Promotions for Introverts". That's enough for me to keep the tab open for quite awhile.

Rachelle Gardner has a thorough, helpful post on what fiction editors are looking for when it comes to a novel's characters.

Smithical does a great job of collecting quotations pertinent to the big creation/evolution/homeschool conference kerfluffle.

"A Neutral Education?" by Susan Wise Bauer helped me find a missing piece in my continual ponderings about homeschooling and the nature of education. She writes:

The church of Christ, not textbook writers, should be responsible for providing the central Christian story that must inform all true education. When I wrote in Chapter Twenty of The Well-Trained Mind, “When you’re instructing your own child, you have two tasks with regard to religion: to teach your own convictions with honesty and diligence, and to study the ways in which other faiths have changed the human landscape. Only you and your religious community can do the first,” I was not attempting to maintain neutrality. Rather, I was asserting that a Christian education can only be provided by a Christian community — parents, in obedience to and in faithful relationship with their local church.

Now I am trying to figure out how that fits in with what has bothered me so frequently about Christian homeschooling organizations, i.e. that they frequently put character above academics when they are ostensibly academic organizations. I thought it bothered me because they were trying to make ordinary Christian parenting the end-all and be-all of education. But maybe part of it is that they are trying to take the place of the church? (Still just thinking out loud here, folks - not coming to any conclusions yet. Feel free to join in conversation in the comment section!)

Finally, what's a link post without some music? Probably most of you have heard this, but whether you have or not, it's still a nice evening treat. Enjoy!