CMER 2024: Where are we from?
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CMER 2024: The Great Gatsby
We are looking forward to our book discussion as one of our evening activities. Please join us in a relaxed time of gathering to share our thoughts and discoveries together after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 20th century novel The Great Gatsby. The third novel of Fitzgerald’s career, The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. This is the story of Jay Gatsby, the incredibly wealthy and mysterious host of lavish and decadent parties in Long Island, New York. Returned from the Great War, he is ambitious to make his way in life and love. When he reunites with his old flame, Daisy Buchanan, he is certain that everything he hopes for will be fulfilled. Through the eyes of Gatsby’s neighbor, Nick Carraway, we see his story unfold amidst the trappings of wealth and social status in the early 1920s. In a time when hope is rising that all things are possible in America, no obstacle seems too large to overcome for Jay Gatsby.
As you read the novel, consider keeping a Commonplace book to record the passages and dialogue that spark your interest and enjoyment, raise questions, and invite reflection.
CMER 2024: Registration Open
Registration is now open for the 2024 Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat. Please, visit the CMER 2024 Website to see the speakers, sessions, schedule, and so much more. We hope you are able to join us.
CMER 2024
It is with great joy we announce the 2024 Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat.
WHO?
The CMER Team and our plenary speaker, Cindy Rollins
We are excited to announce the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat 2024 Plenary speaker!
Cindy Rollins homeschooled her nine children for over 30 years using Charlotte Mason’s timeless ideas. She is the author of Mere Motherhood: Morning Time, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey Toward Sanctification, The Mere Motherhood Newsletters, Hallelujah, Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah, and Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love. She co-hosts The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks and The New Mason Jar Podcast. She is also the owner of the Mere Motherhood Facebook group and runs an active moms’ discipleship group on patreon.com/cindyrollins. Her heart’s desire is to encourage moms in the Lord and Charlotte Mason and go to baseball games. She lives in her sometimes empty nest in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband Tim and dog Max.
You can find her at her website morningtimeformoms.com where she publishes her newsletter Over the Back Fence.
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/cindyordoamoris/
Mere Motherhood https://www.facebook.com/groups/meremotherhood/
Patreon Discipleship at Patreon.com/cindyrollins
WHEN?
Friday, February 2, to Sunday, February 4, 2024
WHERE?
Colorado Spring, CO
The Hideaway
INFORMATION
Registration for CMER 2024 will open in September. At that time, cost, a schedule, session descriptions, and policies will also be available.
Preparing for Lent
“Lent is a time of contemplation.
During these 40 days, we contemplate Jesus’s life here on earth. The precious three years of His active ministry in which He gave us His sacred words, His healing, as well as His beautiful example of love. He showed us how to live. We meditate on His life and His sacrifice, and we enter into self-reflection to discover what might be holding us back from living His way.
As with Advent, we already know what is coming. We enter this season, however, not anticipating a birth but rather waiting for a death. As Jesus did so long ago, we know that this story includes overwhelming grief. And pain. And blood. And as with His birth, His death was unexpected. A shock to those who had followed Him. Our Hallelujahs are silenced. Christ has died.
But though the story includes a death, it does not end there, and that is the miracle of Easter. That is the beauty of the Resurrection. Our grief gives way to overwhelming relief. To joy. To thankfulness. The Messiah has come. Christ is risen. Death has been defeated. A new way of living and a new freedom from the slavery of sin is His gift to us.
And though He has ascended into heaven again, we know that He will once again come back to us. That His Resurrection wasn’t His final appearance here. Our Hallelujahs return. Christ will come again.
Art can have a way of allowing us true contemplation. To notice details and immerse ourselves in a story. To let that example soak into our hearts and minds and stay with us. If you choose, from this guide and the accompanying prints, feel free to display an individual print during each week of Lent and present it with the readings provided. Or, feel at liberty to explore other ways to include the art in your Lenten traditions.
May these Lenten art devotions allow you to contemplate the time of Jesus’s ministry here on earth and immerse yourself in the beauty of His love for us.” (Rebecca, a humble place, used with permission)
If you are attending the retreat, Rebecca will have Lenten art devotions available for sale. If you are not able to join us this year, you are still able to order them through her site.
Comedy of Errors
A story of this kind depends on speed, on a plot that winds itself as tight as a top, spins hard on its own momentum and then comes to a sudden finish. The Comedy of Errors is really a farce rather than a comedy, and an excellent one of its kind.
Marchette Chute, Stories from Shakespeare, 1976
What ensues when not one but two sets of identical twins woo, wed, lend and borrow as the hourglass of a father’s life runs out? Will they straighten themselves out in time?
A chance to act out this fun play will be one of the optional evening activities at the 2023 Retreat.