Rachel Woodham

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

 I have vivid memories of kindergarten—wriggling on the carpet during naptime, bored, or swinging high on the swing set, hoping the swing would one day carry me to Narnia. It was also in kindergarten that one auspicious afternoon we gathered in the adjoining classroom where I first saw Star Wars: A New Hope. In hindsight,

This school year has been…suboptimal. It was an inauspicious beginning when the school year began on “demo day.” Last spring, water damage in our home led to an unplanned remodeling project that encountered constant delays despite my best efforts. The time allocated to prepare for the year was chiseled away by communicating with contractors and

Soon after moving to western Ukraine at age 19, I began language training in earnest, eventually studying under two extraordinarily different teachers. My first teacher, Tanya, spoke English. She was the consummate teacher, who turned everything into a lesson. She set out to introduce me to the beauty of the Ukrainian people and culture; she

  “It’s party time!” Jason shouted, pumping his fists in the air. It was the first day of my first year in a classical school. My new students had just entered their fourth-grade classroom immediately following chapel. “You better nip that in the bud,” a colleague reproached me sternly. Fourth grade was not (I hope) abject