Rachel Woodham

True confession: I hate to memorize. It isn’t a lack of desire or appreciation or value or effort. I try to memorize, and I fail: repeating and repeating and repeating a poem or monologue or passage of Scripture seems to flatten it. With each dull repetition, beauty seeps out. Am I attempting to embrace my […]

In light of the catastrophic flooding in North Carolina and Tennessee, I have realized that the mention of rain in the following article requires a note of explanation. When I wrote this, Hurricane Helene still churned in the warm waters of the Gulf. I had already cleared my writing desk; I placed my most necessary

It was slow going as we set off on a new trail, traversing downhill across damp rocks and roots. My daypack was heavier than I had expected; I had double the water that I needed and various odds and ends from previous adventures – fourteen Band-Aids, a beautiful rock, an ankle compression sleeve from an

From the second I set foot in the classroom a dozen years ago I began wrestling with the puzzle of learning differences. I found that charity and attentiveness went a long way. For example, I noticed the connection between outbursts from a child with ASD and the use of the overhead projector. This was an

It was Sunday afternoon and when I saw the caller ID, I knew something was wrong; my friends all know of my unwavering commitment to unplug on the Sabbath. With a shaking voice, my dear friend asked if I was in a place where I could hear something hard. The evening before a married couple

When I pulled into my driveway the weather app on my phone, still set to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, showed a balmy 79°.  As I opened the car door, a wall of 99° moist air engulfed me. My week of idyllic reading community had officially ended. I had driven home from the Close Reads retreat

Animal Farm was unexpectedly one of our all-time favorite schoolbooks. “Four legs good! Two legs baaaaaad!” my daughter began chanting through the house. She loves animals, and my boys are of an age that delights in finding hypocrisy in others. And I, unexpectedly, was chastened by Boxer the workhorse. As the pig Napoleon, leader of

I first encountered the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas through Josef Pieper in Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Pieper’s book had a profound impact on me; through it, I realized that I was missing the heart of classical education and because of it I decided to attend graduate school. In Pieper’s essay, Aquinas’s ideas stood

How am I supposed to practice resurrection? I didn’t know what else to do, so we went fishing. Lake Lafayette was swollen from a flash flood in the early morning hours. My son showed me the rock he stood on the afternoon before—it was at least six inches underwater. It was a rare April day—the

As I entered the kitchen to begin dinner, I noticed a dim glow emanating from the dusk-cloaked dining room. Unaware that I was quietly watching, my daughter continued to play. In one hand she held a wooden figurine of Mary atop a donkey and a flashlight in the other, wreathing Mary in light. The shadow

I first encountered Kristin Lavransdatter the summer my daughter was born. It was my final pregnancy; my age got the better of me, resulting in a painful and frustrating third trimester. I began Book 2, The Wife, during the final weeks of pregnancy between bouts of prodromal labor. I would pace the floor, contractions increasing

Beauty is at the forefront of my mind every Lent. When I began the path to order my life around the Christian year, I struggled with Lent. I did not have a problem with fasting—I had a problem with flowers. In North Florida, spring begins early, and as Lent begins every growing thing has exploded