This review is an excellent perspective on the pantheism rampant in movies and culture, versus the true meaning of nature and life God reveals in the scriptures

Lectures on CD or DVD from The Teaching Company. Understand and appreciate music history and fundamentals.

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Everyone should understand music. Not that everyone is called to be a musician, but understanding the basic structure of music and its place in history and society is crucial. By age 14-16, your students should understand enough history and culture to be able to appreciate the importance of music throughout the ages. Or, if you're a middle-aged adult like me, and were not exposed to historical music and shown its significance in your earlier years - it's never too late to learn!

Recently, I've discovered a wonderful author and lecturer on music - Jeremy Begbie. Dr. Begbie is a pastor, musician, scholar, and composer. He's written several helpful books and personally presents many of his ideas....[More]

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I've read several books by Dr. Peter Kreeft (Professor of Philosophy at Boston College), two of which are among my favorite books ever. I've had the privilege of hearing him in person on two occasions, at C.S. Lewis Conferences in Austin in 2002 and 2004. The theme of the 2002 Conference was "Rediscovering Evil". Here, Dr. Kreeft presented "10 Insights into Evil from Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'". I had not read the books at the time and had only seen the first movie. Years later, having seen all 3 movies and read the books as a family, I unearthed my audiotape of Dr. Kreeft's lecture.
Happily, I found a recording of the lecture online...

Here's a good interview with John Hollander, an accomplished poet and professor, for those interested in understanding and teaching the poets and poetry. Excerpt:

Q: In terms of educational practice, what ways can a teacher, perhaps an elementary school or high school teacher, make good poetry exciting and accessible?

John Hollander: First of all, the teacher has to know and feel what poetry is, and be able—and this is crucial—to read it aloud effectively. Then, he or she can have students memorize excellent short poems and passages from longer ones, starting with set pieces from Shakespeare; for example, a Shakespeare sonnet or two. When the student recites the poem aloud in class, the teacher should comment on the intonation pattern, and the way in which the student may or may not have spoken the language meaningfully. Introduce students even in elementary school to the close reading of short poems—and, indeed, of passages of great prose. Every good teacher has his or her own way of bringing students’ own limited but diverse experience of the world to bear on a text speaking of and from beyond it: but the rotten American educational system’s obsessions with methodology don’t acknowledge this, and tend among other things to stifle originality in teachers. The way good teachers can get a handful of students (there’ll probably not be any more than that) to possess themselves of something in poetry is in a way as creative and imaginative act as writing poems themselves.

Though Hollander is addressing teaching in a school setting, note his "lament" that only a handful will actually learn and appreciate poetry. The answer is that real learning for any sort of a perception based subject requires very small classes - mentoring, relationships, eye-to-eye contact between master and student. Again, the home is where real learning is apt to take place. A loving parent with his "handful" of precious students, where 100% "possess themselves of something in poetry". Hollander's article is good for the homeschool parent, but leads to frustration for the institutional teacher who is overwhelmed by the 20 or 30 students who cannot possibly interact together with the beauty of art.
Entire Interview

My daughter sings this lovely, haunting Irish song (is there any other type of Irish song?). For your St. Patrick's day....

Though Heretics by G.K. Chesterton is one of his best known works, I had not read it until a couple years ago. It is unspeakably brilliant and timelessly relevant to our current day. Here's an excerpt. I'll drop a few more from time to time:

"Reverence in the sad and delicate meaning of the term reverence is a thing only possible to infidels. That beautiful twilight you will find in Euripides, in Renan, in Matthew Arnold; but in men who believe you will not find it-- you will find only laughter and war. A man cannot pay that kind of reverence to truth solid as marble; they can only be reverent towards a beautiful lie."