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By Marie MacPherson

Created: February 18, 2025

• Motherhood
• Home Economics
• LFL/LAMBS
• Pro-Life

On January 21, 2025, Marie had the opportunity to share a live Zoom presentation with supporters of Lutherans for Life. Entitled, "Kids, Culture, and Christ: Illuminating LIFE in Contemporary Times," this presentation delves into the Biblical paradigm of children as blessings, dives into reasons why many of today’s millennials avoid procreation, and finally suggests some solutions for Christians and the Church in overcoming the these hesitations, pointing others back to Scripture’s truth that children are blessings. Marie's presentation can be viewed by following the link, or read in the blogpost below.

View Marie's Presentation Here.

Thank you, Pastor Salemink, and Lutherans for Life, for having me as a speaker this evening. Lutherans for Life has been an important part of my life as a mother, educator, and pregnancy center volunteer for over a decade now, and it is a great privilege to join you all in Life Week 2025.

I’ve entitled my presentation Kids, Culture, and Christ: Illuminating LIFE in Contemporary Times, and this is based on the prompt I received, namely “Life Shines in Children.” At first, this might sound like a mistake. “Doesn’t she mean ‘Light shines in children?’ But, this isn’t a mere slip of the tongue: in fact, Holy Scripture blends the concepts of light and life, particularly in Christ Jesus, as seen in LFL’s theme verse this year, from John 1: “In [Christ the Word] was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”¹

This very verse was on my mind not long ago. I had driven up a hill at night and looked out over the city of Casper, Wyoming. People from large cities might not think much of the twinkling lights of little Casper, population 60,000. But it is actually one of the largest cities in Wyoming! Most of Wyoming is a vast uninhabited wilderness, a wilderness to which I am still nervously adjusting after having moved here last year. But that night, as I looked out over the city lights, I felt safety and comfort—here, indeed, is civilization! These businesses and homes all represented life. Beyond those lights, the prairie, horizon, and sky, all was darkness, emptiness, loneliness. But, here? Here, I see lights, and where there is light, there is beauty, hope, and life.

The same is true about children. Our contemporary culture devalues children. When was the last time you heard a positive news story about a large family? In fact, when was the last time you even saw several children playing together outside, besides at a fenced-in public school playground? If you do happen to come upon children outside their home or school, how often are they staring at a screen, rather than interacting with others? You are probably more likely to find a dog than a child in the shopping cart at the local store.

More than merely hidden away from normal adult routines in daycares and schools, or “babysat” by electronic devices when at home, America’s children are actually becoming less and less common. The Centers for Disease Control reports that, “The general fertility rate in the United States decreased by 3% from 2022, reaching a historic low.”² According to statistics from the United Nations, the fertility rate in the U.S. has consistently been below the replacement level of 2.1 live births per woman since 1971, with exceptions only in the years two thousand six and seven.³

The world may disdain and deride children, but Christ’s Church does not. In this presentation, I’d like to first spend some time speaking about the Biblical paradigm of children as blessings, then dive into reasons why many of today’s millennials avoid procreation, and finally suggest some solutions for Christians and the Church in overcoming the these hesitations, pointing others back to Scripture’s truth that children are blessings.

The best foundation for thinking about children as a gift from God is, of course, to study the Bible. Let’s begin with a jaunt through the Old Testament, jump to the New Testament, and then tie those lessons together with some general takeaways.

Aside from the narrative arc of the promised Savior given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, the general Old Testament attitude toward children considers them riches. As Moses established God’s covenant with Israel before entering the promised land, he describes not only the agricultural growth that would come from obedience, but also the “blessings of the breast and womb” that God would bestow on these families.⁴ Later, Solomon extolled the blessing of children in Psalm 127: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!”⁵ In the very next Psalm, the imagery of the blessing of children shifts from a well-equipped warrior, to a bountiful garden: “[Y]our children will be like olive shoots around your table. … May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children's children!”⁶ Note that seeing one’s grandchildren was considered prosperity.

Continuing in the Old Testament, I find Proverbs 30:15-16 particularly fascinating: “...Three things are never satisfied, four never say, ‘Enough.’ Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, ‘Enough.’” The natural condition that God has built into a woman is a wholesome desire for children, and whether she perceives that desire or not, when it is thwarted (whether by her own will or God’s), she will be as dissatisfied as the hungry grave, the thirsty drought, and the destructive wildfire.

A resurrection motif is found in the Old Testament, and it trickles into the New. The Scriptures only record a handful of resurrections, and about half of those are of children. In the Old Testament, there is the raising of the son of the Widow of Zarephath by Elijah⁷ and the raising of the son of the Shuna-mmite Woman by Elisha.⁸ In the New Testament, Jesus raises to life the young son of the widow of Nain,⁹ as well as Jairus’ daughter,¹⁰ and Paul raises Eutychus back to life¹¹ after his literally mortifying fall. From Genesis, through Judges, and into the Psalms and Proverbs, we see God’s great love and compassion for children.

And then, there are even more examples in the New Testament! The Old is fulfilled in the New with the Christ-child. We confess summaries of Luke One and Two in our Creeds, that Jesus Christ was made incarnate through conception by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus was the promised Christ, the very seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3. The Only Begotten Son of the Father, by Whom all things were made, deigned to take humanity into His divinity by becoming a child to save us. And this began not when He was born in Bethlehem, but nine months before, while He dwelt inside of the womb of Mary, multiplying cell by cell, floating in amniotic fluid, and putting aside His miraculous power, all out of love for you, for me. His conception and life in the womb gives dignity and value to each and every life, old or young.

Jesus affirms life’s value into His ministry as an adult. The touching account of Jesus blessing the little children from Mark 10, read during the Rite of Holy Baptism, is emblematic of children as treasures. But the same Savior who so gently and tenderly blesses those babies also issues a stern and sobering warning in the prior chapter. Mark 9 reads, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”¹² Jesus is dead serious about protecting children.

However, Jesus’ warning has a beautiful flip-side that can comfort even adults. Even adults are truly God’s children. God has created hedges of protection in the relationships He has set up for us on earth. Think of concentric circles: pre-born babies in wombs are protected by the bodies of their mothers; those very mothers are meant to be protected by husbands (and fathers); newborn babies are meant to be born into loving and caring families; babies, parents, and families all are meant to be surrounded by the body of Christ in His Church, the Bride who cares for her members. Children and adults, women and men, are all God’s children, protected by the Heavenly Father, and there are grave consequences for the unrepentant who tempt or hurt or harm us. What love the Father lavishes on us! How safe and protected we all can feel in His Church.

Beyond being gifts, children also illustrate spiritual things. Jesus had a lot to say about them! We must become like little children to enter His kingdom. Those humbled like little children are great. And, He gives His angels charge over children.¹³ We’re all guilty of seeing children as burdens at times, not through the lens of the angels who perceive them as beautiful gifts. Yet, Christ Himself forgives, pouring Himself into His Sacrament and deigning to be present with us sinners. We thank and praise God for the gift of His presence in our midst, for the gift of children, and for His mighty angels watching over us and our children!

There are certainly many more Scriptures regarding the value of children, but we’ve now reviewed a few key passages and can make applications. What are some of those blessings children bestow? Aside from their inherent value, children’s very vulnerability and helplessness reminds us adults of our spiritual state before God. In your baptism, you could do nothing. It was entirely God Who rescued you from the depths of sin and put His name upon you, making you an heir of His kingdom. Kids also help us adults to daily see our own frailties and failures as we parent them. We see their temper-tantrums, and we are reminded of our own stubbornness before God. But more importantly, as we care for children, we see clearly our own inadequacies. We are confronted with the need to repent, cling to forgiveness, and pray for God’s mercy as He calls us to parent these beloved children, or rise up and support the parents in our congregations.

Another Scriptural lesson regarding children is that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways.¹⁴ God declares that children born in one’s youth are blessings, not burdens. What other blessings would we ask God to avoid giving us now, but maybe later we’ll want? It is truth that God’s blessing of children might exist amid sufferings like health struggles or poverty, but it ought not follow that these are reasons to forego God’s gift of children.

So, why not have children? What are the barriers that today’s young men and women experience that keep them from embracing God’s gift of children? As I’ve pondered this question in preparation for this presentation, three major reasons come to mind. The first is physical incapability. The second is selfishness. And the third comes from godly, but misguided concerns.

Let’s take a look at that first reason. There’s something strange going on in America. Are fertility issues due to micro-plastics affecting sperm counts, hormones in foods and medications, something else? I certainly don’t have all of the answers. But those falling fertility statistics I mentioned earlier are not all due to people using contraceptives or having abortions. Some couples desperately desire children, but aren’t given them. The CDC reports that 26% of women* have difficulty getting pregnant, and 19% are infertile.¹⁵ That’s an incredible 1 in 4 women struggling with fertility! Back when I was newly married, I think it was only about 1 in 10 women. In addition, an estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage.¹⁶ There are many hurting couples out there.

If you, or someone you love, is experiencing fertility concerns, please know that you are loved by God and needed in the Body of Christ. A precious child is a joy beyond description, and God’s withholding that gift is a near-unbearable sorrow. Yet, with or without a child, God gives you countless opportunities to love and care for your neighbors in your congregation and communities. God has given me a bounty of children, but I myself have no mother here on earth to encourage me spiritually in this marathon, nor to support me physically with meals or babysitting. My husband and I might look like we have it all together when you see us in the pew on Sunday morning, but you don’t know the many tears of loneliness I shed for no mother to call when my little guy loses a tooth, my baby girl takes her first steps, or when my teenager begins to talk to me about marriage. Parents, and congregation members of all ages, find themselves lonely or stressed for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you in your longing are the one whom God intends to comfort and sustain others.

Children are a gift, but gifts ought to be received, not gotten or grabbed through any possible means. God does not give us all possible means to become parents, but rather only moral means. I say this, preaching also to myself. I’ve given birth to nine children, seven of whom still live with me on earth. Although I have been so richly blessed, I still struggle with contentment, my womb crying, “Never enough.” At 41 years of age, I desperately desire one last child from the Lord before He closes my womb and this stage of my life that has given me so much joy, hope, and fulfillment. So while desiring the blessing of a child is good, I must also be careful not to create an idol out of that desire. The Bible warns us of this in the lives of many of the saints. Abraham and Sarah began to worship their own timeline of fertility and committed adultery by bringing Hagar into their relationship. And in Genesis 30, we find Laban’s daughter reprimanded by her husband’s stinging, but true, rebuke: “[Rachel] said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die!’ Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?’”¹⁷ Do not fall prey to the temptation that your plans for your life are better than God’s plans for your life. Certainly, we can attempt to restore our bodies to alignment with God’s design when they fail, but we must never bring to life only to kill, as is so often the case with many infertility treatments. I commend the writings of Mrs. Katie Schuermann to anyone suffering from the desire for an ungranted child.¹⁸ Her books He Remembers the Barren and He Restores My Soul share Biblical wisdom and insight.

I have just barely touched upon the first reason many do not have children, namely infertility. It is a serious and weighty topic. But I want to transition to a second reason, and that is selfishness. Certainly, Christians fall into the sin of selfishness, but in this discussion, I’m going to focus on non-Christians, delving into some of the cultural reasons young people today often avoid family formation.

How many of you have seen the 1968 hit movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” starring Dick Van Dyke? In it, a family travels in a flying car to the fictional country of Vulgaria. The “child-snatcher” is commanded by the child-hating queen to dispose of all children. Vulgaria is practically absent of children, and although some still exist, they must be hidden away from society. Of course, Dick Van Dyke saves the day, setting free the children locked in the catacombs under the castle, and they soon get their revenge on the royal family by making mischief of all sorts. All ends scrumptiously in this fictional tale, but not so in America, which resembles Vulgaria in many ways. I once went into a grocery store on vacation with an infant in a front pack, and a fellow shopper noticed him and exclaimed, “It’s a baby!” as if real children were as rarely seen. Fast forward a decade later, and COVID hid children away from schools, stores, and even playgrounds, supposedly for their own good. America’s growing invisibility of children was reinforced when I recently paged through an issue of Better Homes and Gardens and found only two ads that pictured children. Exactly 50% of those ads featured a dirty child with hands covered in disease-spreading germs!

The truth is, we can all admit the fact that having children keeps you from doing what you want. But, this can be a good thing, helping us develop virtue. Yet many of today’s non-Christian young people wear selfishness as a badge of honor. Idolizing oneself is actually trendy in American “spirituality.”¹⁹ I mean, just Google celebrity quotations on childlessness. Actually, don’t. It’s very depressing. And angering. And, of course, abortion “rights” play strongly into the “choice” to never have a child, all the while these women participate freely in child-conceiving fornication. There’s even the emerging “4B” movement,²⁰ spreading to America from South Korea by liberal feminists in the aftermath of Trump’s election last November. The “B” is slang for “no” in Korean, and in order to punish the patriarchy, these women swear off dating, marriage, sex, and children. While aiming to exercise control over their lives, they will sadly just end up hurting themselves, dying lonely and alone. Many empowered women think America has advanced from ancient times, but considering that there have been over 63 million abortions since 1973,²¹ I’m not sure we’re really doing better than the pagans who practiced child sacrifice to appease their idols.

The truth is selfishness leads death, and to a dearth of virtues needed to parent. But there’s also a cuddly distraction from parenthood that Satan is exploiting to deflect attention from the joys of children. I’m going to get on my soapbox here, and risk offending many of you with this rant. What is this ominous thing? One word. Ready? Pets. You might think I’m joking, but I’m actually kinda serious! You know that Better Homes and Gardens magazine that only had two ads featuring a child? Well, it also had 5 different ads appealing to pet owners! I’m willing to grant that dogs and children can co-exist, and many pet owners have the right attitude about children. However, more and more often, pets are taking the place of children, (shallowly) filling the hearts of young couples.

"Did you know there are currently more households with pets than with children?”²² "As of 2024, 66% of U.S. households own a pet. … In fact, 97% of pet owners consider their pets to be a part of their family. … In Wyoming, 41.0% of dog owners spend more money on their dog's health and grooming than they do on their own."²³ I see this trend in my every day life: the local bank now offers not just suckers for children, but also doggie treats. Animals even seem to be treated like celebrities by their owners, who in some cases, don’t even require polite behavior like “Sit!” or “Stay!” Can you imagine the reaction if I let loose my toddler in public, and she randomly jumped on strangers and sniffed their crotches?! And yet, that seems commonplace for dogs! Owners smile and say, “Don’t worry. She’s friendly!” as their German Shepherd knocks down my 6-year-old human. Is it any wonder he is afraid of dogs!

In a blogpost about pets, three professionals were asked, “Is it wrong to treat your pet like a child?” The unanimous answer was a resounding, “No. There is absolutely nothing wrong with treating your four-legged baby like your regular baby.”²⁴ Except that it’s not a baby! The BBC asks, “What is a woman to do when she prefers to live a childless life but feels the yearnings of motherhood? Get ... a furbaby, and mother it.”²⁵

Can a pet bring joy and happy hormones to its owner? Certainly! But, is it as valuable as a child? I won’t even condescend to answer that. It should go without saying that even as a blessing, animals do not have the inherent value or offer the fulfillment that children do. Okay. My pet-rant is over.

But I do want to encourage serious consideration that whatever internal yearning people have directing them to the keeping of critters might instead be directed toward caring for our human neighbors in godly ways. The selfish avoidance of children and the substitution of pets for parenting, while primarily cultural, can quickly and creepily sneak into Christian hearts and minds, especially through peer-pressure and social media.

In that same BBC pet interview, a woman admits real concerns about being a real mother. She says, “Being able to give a [human] child all of what it needs – I really feel like I can’t do that.” This brings me to a third reason some Christians avoid bearing children: It is a great responsibility. We have not only the physical concerns that the world shares, but also the spiritual concerns of raising a child in the fear of the Lord. Christians rightly think parenthood is too big of a job to handle on their own. But, thanks be to Christ, we aren’t on our own; we have God and His Church to support us on the journey.

I’ve had dozens of conversations in person and online with Christian women about fertility over the past few decades. Many say Christian couples should be good stewards of their fertility. You’ve probably heard it yourself. The “good stewardship” argument is often invoked by people who want to rationalize their choice to limit their family size. But, could good stewardship ever mean doing nothing? In the case of fertility, I believe it can. This may seem counter-intuitive, but stewardship of fertility does not necessitate that a couple should choose if or when to bring children into the world. God has already programmed the natural stewardship of fertility into the human body with cycles and seasons of fertility. God commanded Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Be fruitful and increase in number,”²⁶ and He built into them the general ability to do so. It’s the “pro-choice” culture, not Christianity, that makes children into choices—how many to have? when to have them? whether to have any at all? It is simply dehumanizing.

While financial and physical struggles may be pressing for a couple, in the Bible, there are numerous passages about God’s providence—how the children of Israel were told to have children, even as slaves in captivity, how God will open His floodgates and pour out on us abundantly.²⁷ Luther lists food, clothing, and shelter together with spouse and children under his definition of “daily bread” in the Fourth Petition. I recently saw an interview on TV with a woman from a poor third-world country, trying to explain to a British reporter that people in her country did not want the contraceptives sent by first-world countries, because they saw children as true riches among the squalor of their poverty-stricken lives. The book Ladylike points out, “When a child is brought to His font of rebirth, the Lord and Giver of life … sees not another college tuition or carbon footprint but another saint bought with Christ’s holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”

As part of this conversation on stewardship, sometimes people argue that newlyweds need time to build a strong marriage before children. My husband and I were counseled as such in premarital classes! But truly, there’s nothing like children to bond a couple together! If a couple is seriously not ready for a child, they should consider postponing their wedding date. After all, God designed intimacy to lead to babies: A married couple should never really be “surprised” to be pregnant. Many couples who avoid a honeymoon baby later long for elusive babies. Fertility is precious. Life is precious. Babies are precious, no matter when they are conceived. Don’t take them for granted.

Certainly, Christians desire to be good stewards of every aspect of their lives, but that in no way necessitates that they must “plan” their family or make use of contraceptives. I encourage Christian couples who do have legitimate worries to speak with their pastors about their circumstances. Sometimes there are exceptions to the concerns I’ve raised. But exceptions are not the rule. It ought to be the norm for young married couples to eagerly expect children.

A second argument I’ve often heard for foregoing a family is that having children (or not) is completely in the realm of Christian freedom for a married couple. But, many Christians are unaware that hormonal contraceptives can cause physical harm, which suddenly places birth control out of the realm of Christian freedom, and into 5th Commandment territory. Hormonal contraception works through a number of mechanisms, including making the womb hostile to a newly conceived baby if ovulation and conception occur, forcing an abortion prior to the mother knowing she had conceived; the package inserts admit as much. Some doctors deny this, but will admit that the definition of pregnancy has now shifted to beginning at implantation, not conception. Further, oral contraceptives are carcinogenic, like tobacco and asbestos, yet they remain the most frequently prescribed medication in our culture for 50 years running.

Christians ought to have a healthy skepticism regarding even non-hormonal methods of contraception. Even when a contraceptive method doesn’t risk breaking the 5th Commandment, it may break the 1st and/or 6th Commandments. Sterilization is correlated with several health concerns, but even more sobering is that the surgery is performed in order to damage the body that God has created well, not to repair something in the body gone awry. Barrier methods place a physical blockade between a husband and a wife during the very activity in which they would otherwise demonstrate their one-flesh union, as if they need protection from one another! Temporary abstinence methods can be especially frustrating for a woman during the time in her cycle which would otherwise be the most satisfying. Because every method of birth control has physical or emotional side effects, it shouldn’t be surprising that the divorce rate for those using birth control is nearly 50% versus merely 5% for those who don’t.²⁸

Imagine if the Jewish families in the line of Christ would have used these so-called “godly” excuses to prevent pregnancy. Rahab and Salmon maybe needed to save up for a down-payment of a house before having kids? Perhaps Ruth and Boaz wanted more time to get to know each other before starting a family. By God’s goodness, He provided a Savior through their line, regardless of human selfishness. And, out of thanksgiving to Him, we can generously welcome children into our families and churches.

We’ve spent some time this evening considering reasons why many young people are not starting families: Many more than we might expect are experiencing infertility. Our culture is selfish, and sometimes that rhetoric permeates even into the church. Some Christians are misled that foregoing children is good stewardship, or at the very least, neutral in God’s eyes. But, how can the Church, how can you, help shift those perceptions? Let’s talk about some concrete ways you can do just that.

Of course, this topic could be a presentation in itself. But there are three things I’d like to touch on tonight: encouragement, education, and support. Before delving into these topics, however, I want to reiterate that as we consider family formation in our own congregations and extended families, we shouldn’t presume to know a person’s reasons for not having children. Even those who offer an excuse for not yet having children might be bluffing all the while they suffer the heartbreak of infertility. So, as you encourage, educate, and support those around you, do so with humility and Christ-like love.

God uses fertility not only to grow individual families, but also to grow the Church. There are many easy, practical ideas to accommodate families in church. Creating relationships in your congregations will better help identify ways to encourage families around you. But, the following may be some simple, yet impactful ways individuals and congregations can support and encourage Biblical attitudes toward children. Consider your evening service times and if they are conducive to families. Are whole families welcome in activities, rather than only age-segregated groups? Are members tolerant and appreciative of childish noises to be expected in worship? During corporate worship, is there a way to assist parents? Ask and see. Sometimes well-meaning items like a kids’ bulletin, a bag of toys, or a sugar-laden treat can be a distraction rather than a help. As the Church universal, we are literal family members in the body of Christ, and we need each other, especially with so many extended families today spread across the nation.

Another way to encourage is through your words. Sometimes, unBiblical impressions can be given through casual phrases, such as “oops babies,” congratulating someone when they are “done” having children, or comments teasing if a couple “knows what causes that” when they announce that they are pregnant. Certainly, we each have the responsibility to be gracious with comments like these, but be aware that these sorts of things don’t fully speak God’s truth. Want a sure-fire positive conversational phrase? “Children are a blessing from the Lord” is always a great one! Going further, find something you can praise the family about: “Wow! Your little man is so enthusiastic about singing!” or “Look how darling she is in that frilly dress!” Families want to feel welcome in church, especially when it was a hard service for them to get through.

Also, be willing to invest time and energy in young couples or families as you are able. One of the easiest ways is to consider your own passions, and offer to engage others with it. Good with a camera? Offer individual and family photos. Love to bake? Bring them some muffins! Love to go for hikes? Offer to bring a few of the children along with you.

You or your congregation might also consider how to help encourage young families financially. Consider holding baby showers for your members or for the local pro-life clinic. Perhaps the congregation could help support homeschooling families or music lessons for future church musicians.

Educating the next pro-life generation is another way to demonstrate the life that shines in children. Encourage opportunities for continuing education in your church. Lutherans for Life makes this so easy with the many resources they have, including Youth 4 Life resources. Continuing ed could be as simple as taking a few moments to discuss a Lutherans for Life brochure or video at the end of a Bible class. Does your church subscribe to the free Life Date magazine and Life News bulletin inserts? Members can also receive free Life News weekly email updates. The more resources you have, the better informed you will be, and the more naturally God’s truth can flow in conversations.

Pastors needn’t be afraid to preach about children being blessings from the pulpit, as well as teaching the dangers of contraceptives in Bible class, all the while relishing their special privilege of sharing Christ’s abundant and forgiving love! Catechize the children and young adults of your congregation, as well as their parents, to desire children, knowing that the world will instead tempt them toward the culture of death. Pastors should also be aware of immodest and unBiblical sex-ed curricula taught at public schools (and even some private schools), and instead help train parents to have tough, but fruitful, pro-life conversations with their children. These are all great opportunities to engage in the battle for life against the spiritual forces of the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh.

Certainly, a single church cannot provide all of the encouragement or educational ideas I listed above, much less a single individual. But, each and every one of you can pray. You can support the pro-life cause with your humble prayers, and with financial gifts to charities such as LFL or your local pro-life pregnancy center as you are able. You can pray for the children and couples and young families in your congregation and encourage them with a smile on Sunday morning, and help in little ways. With God’s blessing on our prayers, educating, and encouragement, the children and families of our churches are in good hands.

Whether your own family is big or small, each of us has at one time or another despised God’s gift of children in thought, word, or deed. But, we find comfort and forgiveness in our Savior, God’s Son, the Baby Jesus, Who lived a perfect life on our behalf and died an innocent death and rose from the dead. Heaven is yours! This is a very hopeful time in the Lutheran church. There are abundant resources for young families, including Lutheran books available from CPH and Kloria Publishing, teaching tools from LFL as mentioned earlier, as well as a growing number of resources my husband and I have written, such as devotional books for mothers, homeschool curricula, and LFL’s Teaching Children Chastity for Life. As individuals and congregations, we desire not only to teach these things to the next generation, but also to equip the next generation to teach the next generation the beauty and gift of children. The church points to the words and promises of Christ, looking ahead to that day when “the generation to come might know [God’s wonders], [t]he children who would be born, [t]hat they may arise and declare them to their children.”²⁹

As I wrote this presentation, the sun was setting out my window, and I saw some of those twinkling lights of Casper emerging, full of life and hope, like a world full of children. I was reminded of my little son whom I caught staring out the window into the darkness not so long ago. I asked, “Are you waiting for Daddy to come home?” Without raising his eyes from the dark window, he immediately lisped in all seriousness, “No, I’m watching for Jethuth to come back!” No matter how darkly our culture derides, or even hides, children, let us as Christians eagerly watch for, wait, and expect Christ, and in the meantime revel deeply in the gift of bright life shining in children, for Christ is their light, and His light shines the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.³⁰

Notes:

1 John 1:1-5

2 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240525.htm

3 https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/highcharts/data/dubina-chart3.stm

4 Deuteronomy 28:4

5 Psalm 127:3-5

6 Excerpts from Psalm 128

7 1 Kings 17:17-24

8 2 Kings 4:18-37

9 Luke 7:11–17

10 Luke 8:49–56

11 Acts 20:7–12

12 Mark 9:42

13 Matthew 18:10

14 Isaiah 55:9

15https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/infertility.htm (married women ages 15-49 who have never given birth)

16 https://www.sciencealert.com/meta-analysis-finds-majority-of-human-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage-biorxiv

17 Genesis 30:1-2

18 https://katieschuermann.com/books/

19 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23918114

20 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/no-sex-no-dating-no-marriage-no-children-interest-grows-in-4b-movement-to-swear-off-men

21 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abortions-since-roe-v-wade

22 https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/a-stunning-stat-there-are-more-american-households-with-pets-than-children

23 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/pet-insurance/pet-ownership-statistics/

24 https://www.purewow.com/family/wrong-to-treat-dog-like-child

25 https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190826-the-child-free-couples-who-treat-their-pets-like-children

26 Genesis 1:28

27 Malachi 2:15a

28 http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Feb/17/short-condensation-does-birth-control-pill-cause-a/

29 Psalm 78:6, NKJV

30 John 1:5

Marie K. MacPherson is a wife, mother, and baptized child of God. She is a CCLE certified educator, writer of curriculum, and author. Marie has published Meditations on the Vocation of Motherhood, Volumes 1 (2018) and 2 (2023), Mothering Many (2016), and Lutherans for Life/Concordia Publishing House booklets The Story of Baby Shalom and Teaching Children Chastity for Life. Her Bachelor’s Degree is in Elementary Education, with a specialty in Communication Arts and Literature and Synod Certification, from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN. A life-long learner, Marie enjoys graduate courses from Memoria College’s Great Books program, and coaching speech team students in the progymnasmata and rhetorical devices. Her husband Ryan teaches at the collegiate level and also is the president of The Hausvater Project. Together, they home school their seven children. Visit their website at www.intoyourhandsllc.com

Details

By Marie MacPherson

Created: August 1, 2024

• Homeschooling
• Classical Educaiton

This presentation was given at Session 12 of the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education Conference (XXIV) in Seward NE on July 25, 2024. The accompanying resource document can be found here.

“Like her sisters Truth and Goodness, Beauty has also been mistreated and shunned by this materialistic, secular age. With few exceptions, artists openly defy her while architects no longer strive to pleasure her. Others strive for fame and originality while openly embracing ugliness and nihilism. But even though society tries to turn away from Beauty as it plunges deeper and deeper into barbarism, ordinary people still thirst for her: the world’s greatest cathedrals are filled with tourists, massive crowds flock to art museums filled with religious painting, and there is perpetual demand for the music of Bach and Beethoven. It seems that as our age becomes uglier, so that Beauty is more openly marginalized, she becomes more important, more necessary than ever.”

So writes the Reverend Adam Carnehl in an article entitled “Toward a Lutheran Theology of Beauty” in Issue 11 of Christian Culture, a Magazine for Lutherans.

Carnehl touches on a vital point for educators today: Beauty is often overlooked in our homes and schools, whether intentionally or not. As classical educators, we are intentional about truth and goodness, but sometimes beauty gets pragmatically pushed aside. As Lutherans who understand that all true beauty is from our Lord, we have been given a precious stewardship to share beauty with our children and students. Sometimes teaching can feel like a nurse performing triage: you may feel overwhelmed with standards, whether they are from the state, the school, or yourself. There are never-ending lessons to plan, papers to grade, classrooms to clean. There’s religion, reading, literature, history, science, mathematics, and sometimes even Latin! But in the words of Sarah MacKenzie in Teaching from Rest, “What if, instead of trying to make the most of our time, we worked harder at saving it? What if we were more intentional and lavish with our time and more detached from our checklists?… [What if we viewed each child] not [as] a project to be managed, but a soul to be cultivated[? This] doesn’t mean we aren’t planning ahead, and if definitely doesn’t mean we are lazy. It means we are doing one thing at a time, and we do that thing with all our heart.”

The purpose of this session is to encourage each educator here to carve out time daily to reflect upon and receive the great works of Western art and music. We’ll discuss a brief philosophy of beauty, brainstorm specifics for building a “morning meeting” that will work for your students, and share practical resources for implementing that vision. Finally, before dismissing for Vespers, we’ll join in discussion to support one another in a daily dose of beauty.

First: a philosophy of beauty. We’ll discuss the thoughts of the ancients on beauty, marvel at how all beauty is from the Creator, and reflect upon the objectivity of true beauty. As an aside, when I refer to art in a general sense in this presentation, I mean “the arts” in the broad sense—music, visual art, poetry, etc.

Author Stratford Caldecott, a Roman Catholic, published a fascinating book several years back entitiled Beauty for Truth’s Sake. I’ll be sharing several quotations from this book throughout the hour. As a classical educator, Caldecott explains, “The key to [the ancient codification of the Seven Liberal Arts] was [the concept of] beauty as cosmic order, an order that is simultaneously aesthetic, harmonious, symbolic, mathematical, and sacramental” (132). He goes on, “At the heart of any culture worthy of the name is not work, but leisure, schole in Greek, a word that lies at the root of the English word “school.” At its highest, leisure is contemplation. It is an activity that is its own justification, the pure expression of what it is to be human. It is what we do. The ‘purpose’ of the quadrivium was to prepare us to contemplate God in an ordered fashion, to take delight in all truth, beauty, and goodness…” (90). We can see in these quotations that while beauty is a trifecta with goodness and truth, it is also closely related to both education and creation. In fact, the medieval mind considered art (in the broad sense) to be God’s grandchild: God created man, man created art—therefore art is the grandchild of God.

In his book Serpents in the Classroom, Dr. Thomas Korcok describes the relationship between classical education, beauty, and God:

“The ancient Greeks looked at the universe as a unified whole designed to draw one closer to God. By understanding the interconnectedness of all things, a person could begin to grasp the things of God. Medieval Christian teachers continued in this tradition. Truth, goodness, and beauty were worth learning because they were expressions of the oneness of God. Goodness described what God was like, but so did beauty and truth. There wasn’t a multiplicity of truths or goods or beauties any more than there was a multiplicity of gods. While they are distinct, the three were intertwined. Truth interpreted beauty and goodness, goodness gave insight into truth and beauty, and beauty informed truth and goodness. Each described one aspect of the whole. It was similar to the way the Athanasian Creed describes the Trinity…” (78).

As such, we can see that not only is beauty a gift from God, it is a reflection of God Himself, and cannot be separated from truth and goodness. The absorbing and reflecting on beauty fits naturally with a classical Lutheran education. Nor is beauty some postmodern concept that cannot be analyzed or understood. Instead, beauty is objective and teachable.

Aristotle posited that beauty was directly related to order, symmetry, and proportion, none of which is subjective. Different eras of art, architecture, and music have ordered their tools and media differently than one another, they have used symmetry and balance in different ways, but beauty is design, not accident. Stratford Caldecott describes a number of questions one might ask when deciding between two objects, to find which is more beautiful, including: which of these two objects would you rather present to God or possess for eternity? (32). He also argues, “Who will not admit that harmony is more beautiful than dissonance, health more beautiful than sickness, kindness more beautiful than cruelty? [If you push the postmodern relativist], you will almost certainly be able to get an admission that he would prefer to look up at a gorgeous sunset than down into the latrine” (31). When considered in that light, we find that perhaps beauty is not simply in the eye of the beholder, after all.

If we as parents and teachers are to gather the most objectively beautiful things that we have inherited from Western Civilization, what then would we proceed to do with them? We would want not only to share them with our children and students, but also to have them imitate those works in their youth, and later, invent based on what they have received. The Wiley Online Library describes,

“In Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, mimesis referred to how written and visual arts mimicked or imitated the world. The term, and its Latin equivalent imitatio (“imitation”) ... meant an author's conscious use of features and characteristics of earlier works to acknowledge indebtedness to past writers [and artists]. Imitation can be found in nearly all works by Greek and, especially, Roman authors. Ancient theoretical discussions of imitation agree that good imitation required more than simple copying. An imitator was expected to emulate many models, join imitated material seamlessly to his own, reshape and vary it for its new context, and improve upon it.”

Today’s modern government schools place too much emphasis on invention, not imitation. Placed into a context of classical learning, the grammar stage of imitation of beautiful art and music comes first—first the “copying” by learning music theory and artistic terminology and skills. Later in the dialectic and rhetoric stages—after the mastery of the basics, students are then ready for that true emulation of the greats, which takes what they have learned from the masters, and incorporates their own ideas and skills into it.

All this waxing eloquent about beauty begs the question...Is it ever acceptable to expose our children and students to bad art, art that is anything but beautiful? Human beings learn to be comfortable with, and eventually love, that which is familiar. Therefore, I want to surround my children with the good, the true, and the beautiful, so beautiful, true, and good things seem like "home" to them. I aim to listen to or look at something beautiful each day in order to specifically kindle an appreciation of beauty as an attribute of God, but also to normalize true beauty in general. Yet, there are situations in which it may be appropriate to expose older children to small doses of the bad, the false, and the ugly as they prepare to live in the world, but not of it.

It’s actually pretty easy in modern America to find bad art and awful music! Especially after your students have had a decade or so of normalizing the beautiful, finding and sharing negative examples of art in pop culture can be a helpful talking point. There are also two interesting movements, among others, in visual art history to explore with your children and students. One is called Memento Mori, and the other Vanitas. Those of you who know a little Latin perceive that Memento mori means "Remember you must die," often using skulls or skeletons to make its point. Vanitas is a genre of art using objects as symbols to demonstrate Solomon’s Ecclesiastics: the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The idea of vanitas may appeal to teen students, draw them in, and turn them toward the Light when we teach in Christian schools and homeschools. We are surrounded by a culture of death with abortion, transgenderism, and suicide running rampant. Knowing that the idea of death has been wrestled with by mankind since the beginning helps one feel not so alone in one’s pain. Looking to and examining memento mori art, I feel, can help us connect to students, so long as we are also able to present the Solution (with a capital S) to death, and continue to normalize that which is truly beautiful.

Now that we’ve developed a philosophy of beauty by looking to an ancient standard of objectivity which reflects the Trinity, I’d like to share some ideas for building a morning meeting in your home or school.

What is morning meeting? The irony of morning meeting is that it doesn’t even have to take place in the morning. It’s simply a planned meeting in your educational day in which you intentionally take time for wonder, awe, marvel, amazement, and contemplation. Sarah MacKenzie describes: “It’s simply a daily meeting incorporating subjects that are very important, but which often get shuffled out of the schedule for logistical reasons. Based firmly on the idea that the purpose of education is to teach our children [and students] to love that which is lovely, it is time set aside for contemplation and discussion that offers an opportunity for [parents/teachers] to connect children directly with beauty, art, poetry, and the ideas that feed and nourish the soul.” It’s meant to be a predictable liturgy of love and beauty in your home or classroom. MacKenzie continues, “It can be twenty minutes or two hours. … Read Scripture, recite poetry, read from a classic. Look at a piece of great art and talk about it, then choose another book, and read that. Drill your catechism. Discuss what you read together. Diagram a sentence together as a family. … The key is that it happens regularly and takes priority over everything else.”

Morning meeting, whether it’s in the morning or another time of day, is a time to observe, absorb, and take in beauty. Homeschool parents can do this as part of their curriculum, classical school teachers can incorporate this as a moment in the school day (perhaps in the afternoon after recess if you are blessed with daily morning chapel), and parents whose children attend school can also incorporate this into their daily routine at home, like personal care or family devotions. My objectives for morning meeting include a time for quiet contemplation, looking at something visually beautiful, examining primary sources, incorporating all ages who contribute in various age-appropriate ways, being exposed to the dates and eras of history, and incorporating what Stratford Caldecott describes as the basic skills of education and humanity: remembering, thinking, and speaking.

Now that I’ve shared some definitional ideas for Morning Meeting, let’s also consider what Morning Meeting is not. It is not specific content that must be covered, or a recipe that must be followed. It is not a time for drilling, covering content in depth, or for thorough instruction in a topic. It is not a replacement for religion class, hymnody, or memory work, though those can certainly be incorporated. It is not multum optimum—more is better, but rather multum non multa—much, not many. We don’t want to let our ideas get the best of us so that we explore so many areas of beauty on the surface, but not dive into any of them richly.

With these overarching ideas in mind, let’s explore some possibilities for a beautiful morning meeting.

I start with a theme for the year or a monthly theme, often keyed to the historical period we are studying. Often, I have had a composer of the month, and we listen to a CD of the composer’s “best hits” during Morning Meeting throughout the month, after first giving it a careful listen. You might instead consider organizing your school months with themes of the Seven Liberal Arts, the Nine Muses of Greek mythology, the Seven Cardinal and Theological Virtues, or a particular artist each month.

With an overarching theme in mind, as well as the needs of my children and students, I like to incorporate some sort of recitation into the beginning of Morning Meeting. Sometimes that has included prayer requests for the needs of others. Other times, we have recited timeline facts, periods of art or music history, math facts/skip counting, memory work or hymnody, or poetry recitation.

As recitation comes to a close, I transition into visual beauty each day. I used to look at a new piece of visual art daily, but have moved more into a philosophy incorporating about one new piece weekly, in order to facilitate deep observation rather than a quick surface glance at the art. In the past, I would choose pieces of fine art keyed to the time period we are studying in history. For instance, when we were studying the middle ages and the Reformation, each day we’d look at an art card of a piece of art featured in the Vatican. The year we focused on American history, our daily dose of visual art came from an American artist, such as John Copley, Currier and Ives, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, Frederic Remington, and Frank Lloyd Wright. I introduce the picture with as much information as I have in a compact way: name of the work, name of the artist, date of the work, and the name of the particular school or genre. We try to simply be quiet and look at the work. “Silence is rare,” Stratford Caldecott notes, and “entertainment is all-pervasive, the pressure to consume-and-discard is almost irresistible” (19). The practice of simply sitting quietly and observing serves as an antidote to a consume-and-discard society. After some time, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, I invite the children to share something they observed. I want to be clear that this is an invitation, not a requirement, and I leave the object of their observations open, rather than asking specific trivia-like questions about what happens to be in the picture. I find it refreshing to hear what the children have noticed—often it’s something I didn’t! As we have time, I might share something I notice about the composition, colors, or style of the picture. For cycles through ancient or medieval history, you could consider looking at pictures of different genres of architecture, famous cathedrals or buildings, or stained glass windows. A discussion of classical art and sculpture really wouldn’t be complete without some wrestling with the idea of nudity in art. The sets of art photography I have ordered over the years often include classical nudes. On the one hand, as an adult, I appreciate the beauty and order of the human form, and do not find myself tempted toward lust while viewing these classics. But I also want to follow the advice in Song of Solomon to not “awaken love before it desires” (8:4). I’d like to share a philosophy of nude art written by Mr. Kyle Janke, teacher at Highlands Latin School in Kentucky and creator of Memoria Press’s high school curriculum “Classical History of Art.”

“[S]tudents should live according to the fullness of their humanity, finding pleasure in what is truly beautiful, as defined by the created nature of man and not the fallen. The potency of classical art to inspire this has made it an object of adoration throughout the history of the West. ...Yet the adoption of pagan values has always posed a problem for Christian educators: An earnest study of classical art includes nudity. What are we to do with the nudity of Greek art? In addressing why the Greeks carved nudes, we should begin by asking why we are clothed. As Scripture makes clear (Genesis 2:25), we are not clothed according to our creation but according to our fall. Our garments signify our imperfection. Of course, we cannot go naked and deny our wrongs, yet we can deny no less our longing that those wrongs should be made right. This is the desire expressed in art—in all art, whether nude or otherwise—that we should be what we once were: naked and unashamed. And while Greek sculpture, being made of stone, cannot perfect the flesh, it can provide an illustrative image of our perfected state. ... [Modern art] emphasizes our material nature, rejecting classical assertions and stripping the human form of its divine image and its supremacy over the beasts. It reduces man to matter, which is nakedness indeed. Conversely, classical art...comes much closer to our true nature as image-bearers of our Creator. One who sees in such work only its literal nakedness fails to acknowledge its figurative sense and stumbles into the same rut that mires modernity. We were created to be naked, unashamed, and deathless. Nudity is immortality made visible. While Goodness and Truth lead us to life, it is Beauty that makes us follow. ... Some works degrade our humanity; others elevate it. Classical art is our powerful ally in teaching the greatest virtue, that of proper love.”

As I teach in my home, I strike a sort of compromise: I hold the nude art card quite a distance from them as I explain the history, the artist, and the background of the piece, and then pass the card around, allowing them the option not to examine this card in detail. (Almost always, the boys awkwardly and quickly pass it around the table!) When I am teaching at a church or public co-op, I first crop nude art and state that different families have different opinions, and I choose to be as conservative as possible so we can all appreciate the art together, but if children would like to see a fuller version of the work, they should talk with their parents at home. I hope this gives you some ideas as a springboard for a philosophy of nude art.

Although most of my years doing Morning Meeting incorporated traditional art and painting, this year, my definition has expanded. We looked at pictures of various breeds of birds instead, and studied God's artistry in creating birds. I think expanding visual art into the realm of what we might consider that nature and science have some great potential: think of looking at different types of trees, gemstones, cloud formations, or flowers for an entire quarter or semester, keying the visual arts with integration with science, not just history. We can spend time reflecting quietly directly on God’s creation, as an option for morning meeting, too. After all, Stratford Caldecott reminds us, “The animals, plants, and minerals, the stars and elements, were universally thought to “praise” their maker, either simply by their very existence, or when called upon to do so by man (who gives them a voice they do not possess in themselves)” (107).

Although you may have already shared the joy of singing during morning meeting during the recitation portion, there are a number of different options for incorporating music into your daily routine. Younger children might easily absorb music theory with clapping rhythmic patterns, or learning to recognize a pitch of the week on a staff. Nearly all children enjoy participating in rhythm instrument exercises, or learning to read notes with elementary handbells. You could study different composers, if you haven’t already done so as an overarching theme for Morning Meeting. However you might incorporate it, music brings so much joy and beauty into daily life.

I like to incorporate recitation, visual art, and music each and every day into Morning Meeting, and I generally tack on one other subject at the end each day of the week. Perhaps on Mondays, we study a poem in depth, again, usually keyed to our historical period. Perhaps on Tuesday we study and draw a world landmark or geographical phenomena in our notebook. On Wednesday, we might diagram a sentence from the Bible together. Perhaps on Thursday, we work on copywork, practicing our best handwriting on a beautiful piece of paper to share with someone who would enjoy it. Copywork has myriad venues for beauty—the content of the verse or quotation can incorporate beauty as well as the writing and paper aesthetics, as we practice mimesis of that which is beautiful. Generally on Fridays, we complete an art theory lesson, as well as a project, often aiming to imitate a beautiful, well-known work of art. Other ideas for a once-a-week inclusion in Morning Meeting might include the study of Greek or Latin root words, biographies of famous people—especially the artist or composer of the month, or even mathematical concepts. Although the idea of incorporating mathematical concepts to Morning Meeting is quite new to me, I’m convinced of the idea after reading Beauty for Truth’s Sake. The author writes, “Since the Logos is love, and since all things are created through Him and for Him and are held together in Him, we should expect the logic, the rationality, the intelligibility of the world to usher in the delight that beauty bestows. … The beautiful meaningfulness of a numberly world is most evident in the perception of harmony, whether in music, architecture, or physics…” (7-8). Whether you bring in the symbolic associations of natural numbers, symmetry, mathematical formulae, or concepts like Fibonacci’s Sequence, ideas that introduce math as beauty to our children are … countless… :)

The Morning Meeting topics that rotate by day of the week seem to change each year as I reflect on what is important to me, what my children and students would benefit from exposure to, and what I have time for. Time, both for planning and executing Morning Meeting, is finite. Whether your schedule allows a lot of time, or only a little, we can, as Sarah MacKenzie writes, “recognize all the small moments throughout our day for what they are—the makings of a cathedral of timeless beauty, the planting of seeds that will bear fruit in their season.” When incorporating a Morning Meeting into your day, not only do you have however long that session lasts to dwell upon beauty, you can also look forward to next week, next month, next year, and the rest of eternity to delve into God’s beauty each and every day.

To the end of giving you some concrete ideas for how morning meeting has worked for my family in the past, here are some sample schedules. Although I give times for the various activities, these are approximations and one activity flows into the next naturally, rather than according to the clock.

2020-2021: American History Morning Meeting—8:00-8:45 a.m.

• 8:00—Prayers; Recitation of Memory Work; Poem of the Week Recitation
• 8:05—Learn a Greek or Latin root word; review
• 8:10—Pass Around Art Card by the American Artist of the Week; Ask for Observations
• 8:15—Play the CD of the Composer of the Month (Paine, Ives, Stravinsky, Copland, Sousa, Joplin, Rodgers, Shore)
  • Monday: Read an artist or musician biography while children color a picture of the composer from the internet.
  • Tuesday: Study the week’s poem in depth, including analyzing meter and rhyme scheme
  • Wednesday: Sketch out the continent of the month
  • Thursday: Diagram some Bible passages together
  • Friday: Art History and Skills, concluding with a project based on the artist of the week

2022-2023: Ancient History Morning Meeting—10:00-10:45 a.m.

• 10:00—Prayers; Recitation of Memory Work
• 10:05—Pass Around Art Card featuring Architecture; Ask for Observations
• 10:10—Listen to the Bach Cantata for the week of the church year
• 10:15—Featured Weekly Activity:
  • Monday: Read Weedon’s Celebrating the Saints and do a saint-related activity
  • Tuesday: Complete a landscape painting project
  • (Wednesday: Activities outside the home)
  • Thursday: Read about a world landmark; draw and write in our landmark notebooks
  • Friday: Read and analyze our poem for the week

We’ve just discussed a variety of good ways to build your own Morning Meeting. Next, let’s identify some practical resources for implementing your vision. I’ve created a webpage you can visit with direct links to many of these resources. Hopefully these resources whet your idea appetite as you consider a morning meeting!

Today, we’ve discussed a philosophy of beauty, brainstormed ways of implementing a beautiful morning meeting in your home or school, and looked at some resources for doing so. I hope and pray you have come across some inspiring ideas you will consider implementing after listening to this presentation. If instead you feel inadequate or overwhelmed, shift your attention away from the burden of YOU creating beauty in your home and classroom, and instead onto the One who has created you, and calls you beautiful. More beautiful than anything we can implement in our homes and classrooms, is that of the Heavenly Wedding. As I began, I will now finish, with a quotation from Rev. Carnehl in his Christian Culture article.

 “In our Lutheran churches today (and I would add our homes and schools, as well), we have a unique opportunity to re-anchor beauty in God in a three-fold sense (which corresponds to our Creed). The first is that we must remember that beauty is objective in the sense that all truly beautiful things participate in God’s beauty. So things are only beautiful insofar as they reflect the splendor of God’s truth and goodness. … The second thing to remember is that beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder, but that we are in the eyes of the Beholder: He who sees all things also makes them beautiful in their time. God looks upon us as his beautiful bride, though we deserve nothing at all. Finally… the Holy Spirit makes all our vocational works beautiful, though they are often ugly in the eyes of the world. … As we contemplate the beauty of God’s creation and embrace the beauty that God gives to us, we also bear the beauty of the Lord in our works and duties. [You] are precious in His eyes, and He makes [you] into a crown of beauty, a royal diadem before all nations.”

Marie K. MacPherson is a wife, mother, and baptized child of God. She is a CCLE certified educator, writer of curriculum, and author. Marie has published Meditations on the Vocation of Motherhood, Volumes 1 (2018) and 2 (2023), Mothering Many (2016), and Lutherans for Life/Concordia Publishing House booklets The Story of Baby Shalom and Teaching Children Chastity for Life. Her Bachelor’s Degree is in Elementary Education, with a specialty in Communication Arts and Literature and Synod Certification, from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN. A life-long learner, Marie enjoys graduate courses from Memoria College’s Great Books program, and coaching speech team students in the progymnasmata and rhetorical devices. Her husband Ryan teaches at the collegiate level and also is the president of The Hausvater Project. Together, they home school their seven children. Visit their website at www.intoyourhandsllc.com

Details

By Marie MacPherson

Created: June 28, 2024

• Education
• Lesson Plans
• Classical Educaiton

Based on the model of Bloom’s Taxonomy, here are some ideas for questions to ask students
when studying paintings (particularly with landscapes in mind). I don’t recommend trying to ask all of
these questions in a single sitting; rather, they offer ideas to cycle through, especially with multiple
views of the same painting.

• The Lake, Petworth Sunset, Fighting Bucks, 1829 - J.M.W. Turner

   

Memory/Knowledge

1. What colors do you see? Which color is strongest? Is the palette warm or cool?
2. Which objects or geographical features do you notice in the picture? Do you recognize any particular flora?
3. What basic shapes stand out?

Understanding/Comprehending

4. What media does the artist use? Why might the artist have chosen this?
5. What is the weather like in this picture? In what environment or ecosystem is the landscape set?

Application

6. Which art movement or genre might this work be classified as?

Analysis

7. What is the artist hoping to communicate in this work?
8. Where is the light source? How does this contribute to the mood of the work?

Evaluate (Research may be necessary.)

9. What do you suppose is the purpose or end for this work?
10. When in the artist’s career or development was this work created? How might knowledge of this contribute to the viewer’s appreciation of the work?
11. Describe the provenance and history of this piece of art.

Creation/ Synthesis

12. Think of a poem, story, or work of music which melds well with the overall aesthetic of this piece of art. Share your reasons for this.
13. Make a piece of art including some aspect of this work. Be prepared to share with others the inspiration from this work that you included in your own.

You might also like "Resources for a Beautiful Morning Meeting"

Marie K. MacPherson is a wife, mother, and baptized child of God. She is a CCLE certified educator, writer of curriculum, and author. Marie has published Meditations on the Vocation of Motherhood, Volumes 1 (2018) and 2 (2023), Mothering Many (2016), and Lutherans for Life/Concordia Publishing House booklets The Story of Baby Shalom and Teaching Children Chastity for Life. Her Bachelor’s Degree is in Elementary Education, with a specialty in Communication Arts and Literature and Synod Certification, from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN. A life-long learner, Marie enjoys graduate courses from Memoria College’s Great Books program, and coaching speech team students in the progymnasmata and rhetorical devices. Her husband Ryan teaches at the collegiate level and also is the president of The Hausvater Project. Together, they home school their seven children. Visit their website at www.intoyourhandsllc.com

Details

By Marie MacPherson

Created: June 28, 2024

• Lesson Plans
• Classical Educaiton
• Seminar
• Speaker
• Lutheran Heritage

This is an outline for a presentation to be given by Marie at the CCLE Conference XXIV, in Seward, Nebraska on July 24. Abstract: When an excerpt of Dante’s Divine Comedy is presented to students, it is often from Inferno. This presentation will detail why Lutheran teachers might prefer Purgatorio instead. In light of scholarship positing that Dante’s purgatory is a metaphor for a Christian’s life on earth and specifically The Divine Service, there is a redeeming quality to an otherwise heretical teaching. Purgatorio delves into some beautiful Biblical teachings, including repentance, inspiration, angels, the two kingdoms, and more, that propel thoughtful class discussion. In comparison to Inferno’s grueling biographies, base humor, and vengeful punishments, if nothing else, the songs of the liturgy featured throughout Purgatorio make this classic worthwhile.

I. Introduction

A. Lutherans Reading about Purgatory?!

B. Definitions: Purgatory vs. Purgatorio

C. Humility

D. Augustine: Truth belongs to its Master

II. In Defense of Purgatorio

A. Purgatorio’s Narrative Allegory: The Divine Service?! The Christian Life?!

B. A Historical Introduction to Purgatory

C. Evidence from Dante’s Correspondence

D. Evidence from the Text of Purgatorio

1. The Second Kingdom

2. Cleansing

3. Songs of the Liturgy

4. The Location of Purgatory? Earth!

III. Background Information

A. Dante’s Life

B. Language and Translations

C. The Comedy’s Literary Form

1. A “Cathedral”

2. Three Canticae; 100 Cantos

3. Terza Rima

D. Inferno and Purgatorio Compared

1. Music

2. Autobiographies

3. Art

4. What about Paradiso?

IV. A Climb Up Mt. Purgatory

A. Its Context after Inferno

B. Discussion Points (Canto.Lines)

1. Bodily Resurrection (I.72) and Repentence (III.121ff)

2. Can Pagans be Saved? (VII.7-8ff)

3. Humility and Prayers to the Saints (Cantos XI-XIII)

4. Mercy and Free Will (Cantos XV-XVI)

5. The Two Kingdoms, and Dante as Proto-Reformer? (XVI.127ff)

a. Professor Scott Warns Against This!

b. Magdeburg Confession

c. Augsburg Confession

6. Love (Canto XVII, and the Middle of the Poem)

7. Temptation and Christ: Avarice’s Opposite (Canto XIX)

8. How is One Saved? Through The Aeneid, or The Holy Ghost? (Canto XXI)

9. The Terrace of Lust, And a Really Bizarre Aristotelian Tangent (Canto XXV)

10. Through Fire to Earthly Paradise (Canto XXIXff)

a. The Procession of the Church Triumphant

b. Beatrice’s Holy Eyes: Something More? (Canto XXXI)

V. Conclusion

VI. Questions and Comments?

Resources:

Note: Please use wisdom and discretion when accessing these resources. Not all websites have been perused thoroughly.

• Internet Archive of Gustave Dore’s Illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy
• One Hundred Days of Dante
• The World of Dante

Works Cited:

• “The Augsburg Confession.” Book of Concord. https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/#ac-preface-0002 Accessed 05 October 2023.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Jason Baxter. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018.
• Dante's Purgatorio. Translated by Robert and Jean Hollander. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
• “The Magdeburg Interpretation of Romans 13: A Lutheran Justification for Political Resistance.” The Hausvater Project. https://www.hausvater.org/articles/336 Accessed 01 Oct. 2023.
• Understanding Dante. John A. Scott. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.

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Marie K. MacPherson is a wife, mother, and baptized child of God. She is a CCLE certified educator, curriculum developer, and author. Marie has published Meditations on the Vocation of Motherhood, Volumes 1 (2018) and 2 (2023), Mothering Many (2016), and Lutherans for Life/Concordia Publishing House booklets The Story of Baby Shalom and Teaching Children Chastity for Life. Her Bachelor’s Degree is in Elementary Education, with a specialty in Communication Arts and Literature and Synod Certification, from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN. A life-long learner, Marie enjoys graduate courses from Memoria College’s Great Books program. Her husband Ryan is Academic Dean at Luther Classical College and also is the president of The Hausvater Project. Together, they home school their seven children in collaboration with Mount Hope Lutheran School. Visit their website at www.intoyourhandsllc.com