“It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and incompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ….…Theologically this country is at present is in a state of utter chaos established in the name of religious toleration and rapidly degenerating into flight from reason and the death of hope.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos?
LUKE 11:33-36
33 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”
COLLECT FOR ADVENT
Blessed Lord, who has caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of the holy word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the Blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou Hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
ART APPRECIATION
There is a rocky Maine coastline in this painting. Above the coast, there is what looks like clouds. But these are actually waves from the Atlantic Ocean crashing into the coast.
1
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Though he was an average student, he always had an exceptional talent in art. His mother was a gifted watercolorist and was his first art teacher until he was an adult. Homer never had any formal art instruction because he claimed he wanted his style to be original, not a copy of other artists. His main job was as an illustrator for Harper’s Magazine where he drew mostly Boston life and other New England scenes. After opening a studio in New York City, he took a course in the basics of oil painting, but he taught himself in only one year’s time. Harper’s sent him to the front lines during the Civil War, where he painted the loneliness of the soldiers and the horrors of the war.
2
MUSIC APPRECIATION
“Rule of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre by Richard Wagner
This scene from the opera Die Walküre has become so popular a piece. It shows the Valkyries, eight sisters, making preparations to carry heroes to Valhalla, the equivalent of heaven in Norse mythology.
3
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Among his major works are The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), Parsifal (1882), and his great tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung (1869–76). 4
- Lange, Krista, and Leigh Lowe. First Grade Enrichment: Classical Core Curriculum. Teacher Guide. Memoria Press, 2017. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- “Music Appreciation I: Memoria Press – Classical Christian Curriculum.” Memoria Press: Classical Education, 12 Aug. 2024, http://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/art-and-music/music-appreciation-book/.
↩︎ - “Richard Wagner.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 22 Oct. 2024, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wagner-German-composer. ↩︎
Providence School of Tifton 