Saturday, February 11, 2012

Notes from Writing Conference

My husband and I really enjoyed seeing Andrew Pudewa from the Institute of Excellence in Writing and Andrew Kern from the CiRCE Institute today. I love that we live in a place that has the option to go to these various conventions and programs.

Here are some notes from today. I hope they help. I'm so inspired and uplifted

and would love to pass some of that on to you too.

Notes from Andrew Kern's Lectures:

*Small improvements are the way to move on your path.
*Husband means to nurture and bless what is in your care.
*Israel means to wrestle with God. We gather strength from what we wrestle with.
*If you want to understand language better, read Tolkien.
*All of your life is determined by the questions you ask.
*The quality of teaching is determined by the questions you ask.
*Children learn by the questions they absorb.
*Training depends on the questions you ask.
*Everything begins with a question.

*Engage the will to seek answers to questions:

1 Attentive Perception {the father of learning}
Pay attention
When you give something your attention it shows that you care. It's fidelity.
It is being faithful to what it is. It is the 1st act of love.

2 Recollection {re-collection} {the mother of learning}
Go back and recall it
Memory
Memory makes you smarter and its been removed from public/private curriculum.
We are making fools of ourselves by not using memory.

*A child is a soul that contemplates as it receives.
*Recollection is faithfulness

3 Contemplation
Recalling and comparing
Comparing is a gift from God.
It is: acceptance, adoration, a gazing

4 Conceptualization
The fruit of contemplation
Our souls are then changes
Formation transforms us from within.
When truth enters our souls we are transformed.

5 Represent {re-present}
When truth is formed this can happen.

*Train these five faculties to become good at anything.
*We love memory. We feed on these things. This is what learning is.
*Blessed learning begets enchantment.

Reading Great Books {Notes}

*A great book has a form/analogies that embody truth.
*Every culture has great folktales and myths.
*Avoid the formless and the void.
~Creation is making forms and filling them. Avoid informal, non-imaginative, and relevant books.
*Read aloud, narrations, copy, memorize, and discuss.
*Read attentively
*By reading great books you are ordering the mind to think.

*Image from Google Images