This presentation was given at Session 12 of the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education Conference (XXIV) in Seward NE on July 25, 2024. The accompanying resource document can be found here.
“Like her sisters Truth and Goodness, Beauty has also been mistreated and shunned by this materialistic, secular age. With few exceptions, artists openly defy her while architects no longer strive to pleasure her. Others strive for fame and originality while openly embracing ugliness and nihilism. But even though society tries to turn away from Beauty as it plunges deeper and deeper into barbarism, ordinary people still thirst for her: the world’s greatest cathedrals are filled with tourists, massive crowds flock to art museums filled with religious painting, and there is perpetual demand for the music of Bach and Beethoven. It seems that as our age becomes uglier, so that Beauty is more openly marginalized, she becomes more important, more necessary than ever.”
So writes the Reverend Adam Carnehl in an article entitled “Toward a Lutheran Theology of Beauty” in Issue 11 of Christian Culture, a Magazine for Lutherans.
Carnehl touches on a vital point for educators today: Beauty is often overlooked in our homes and schools, whether intentionally or not. As classical educators, we are intentional about truth and goodness, but sometimes beauty gets pragmatically pushed aside. As Lutherans who understand that all true beauty is from our Lord, we have been given a precious stewardship to share beauty with our children and students. Sometimes teaching can feel like a nurse performing triage: you may feel overwhelmed with standards, whether they are from the state, the school, or yourself. There are never-ending lessons to plan, papers to grade, classrooms to clean. There’s religion, reading, literature, history, science, mathematics, and sometimes even Latin! But in the words of Sarah MacKenzie in Teaching from Rest, “What if, instead of trying to make the most of our time, we worked harder at saving it? What if we were more intentional and lavish with our time and more detached from our checklists?… [What if we viewed each child] not [as] a project to be managed, but a soul to be cultivated[? This] doesn’t mean we aren’t planning ahead, and if definitely doesn’t mean we are lazy. It means we are doing one thing at a time, and we do that thing with all our heart.”
The purpose of this session is to encourage each educator here to carve out time daily to reflect upon and receive the great works of Western art and music. We’ll discuss a brief philosophy of beauty, brainstorm specifics for building a “morning meeting” that will work for your students, and share practical resources for implementing that vision. Finally, before dismissing for Vespers, we’ll join in discussion to support one another in a daily dose of beauty.
First: a philosophy of beauty. We’ll discuss the thoughts of the ancients on beauty, marvel at how all beauty is from the Creator, and reflect upon the objectivity of true beauty. As an aside, when I refer to art in a general sense in this presentation, I mean “the arts” in the broad sense—music, visual art, poetry, etc.
Author Stratford Caldecott, a Roman Catholic, published a fascinating book several years back entitiled Beauty for Truth’s Sake. I’ll be sharing several quotations from this book throughout the hour. As a classical educator, Caldecott explains, “The key to [the ancient codification of the Seven Liberal Arts] was [the concept of] beauty as cosmic order, an order that is simultaneously aesthetic, harmonious, symbolic, mathematical, and sacramental” (132). He goes on, “At the heart of any culture worthy of the name is not work, but leisure, schole in Greek, a word that lies at the root of the English word “school.” At its highest, leisure is contemplation. It is an activity that is its own justification, the pure expression of what it is to be human. It is what we do. The ‘purpose’ of the quadrivium was to prepare us to contemplate God in an ordered fashion, to take delight in all truth, beauty, and goodness…” (90). We can see in these quotations that while beauty is a trifecta with goodness and truth, it is also closely related to both education and creation. In fact, the medieval mind considered art (in the broad sense) to be God’s grandchild: God created man, man created art—therefore art is the grandchild of God.
In his book Serpents in the Classroom, Dr. Thomas Korcok describes the relationship between classical education, beauty, and God:
“The ancient Greeks looked at the universe as a unified whole designed to draw one closer to God. By understanding the interconnectedness of all things, a person could begin to grasp the things of God. Medieval Christian teachers continued in this tradition. Truth, goodness, and beauty were worth learning because they were expressions of the oneness of God. Goodness described what God was like, but so did beauty and truth. There wasn’t a multiplicity of truths or goods or beauties any more than there was a multiplicity of gods. While they are distinct, the three were intertwined. Truth interpreted beauty and goodness, goodness gave insight into truth and beauty, and beauty informed truth and goodness. Each described one aspect of the whole. It was similar to the way the Athanasian Creed describes the Trinity…” (78).
As such, we can see that not only is beauty a gift from God, it is a reflection of God Himself, and cannot be separated from truth and goodness. The absorbing and reflecting on beauty fits naturally with a classical Lutheran education. Nor is beauty some postmodern concept that cannot be analyzed or understood. Instead, beauty is objective and teachable.
Aristotle posited that beauty was directly related to order, symmetry, and proportion, none of which is subjective. Different eras of art, architecture, and music have ordered their tools and media differently than one another, they have used symmetry and balance in different ways, but beauty is design, not accident. Stratford Caldecott describes a number of questions one might ask when deciding between two objects, to find which is more beautiful, including: which of these two objects would you rather present to God or possess for eternity? (32). He also argues, “Who will not admit that harmony is more beautiful than dissonance, health more beautiful than sickness, kindness more beautiful than cruelty? [If you push the postmodern relativist], you will almost certainly be able to get an admission that he would prefer to look up at a gorgeous sunset than down into the latrine” (31). When considered in that light, we find that perhaps beauty is not simply in the eye of the beholder, after all.
If we as parents and teachers are to gather the most objectively beautiful things that we have inherited from Western Civilization, what then would we proceed to do with them? We would want not only to share them with our children and students, but also to have them imitate those works in their youth, and later, invent based on what they have received. The Wiley Online Library describes,
“In Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, mimesis referred to how written and visual arts mimicked or imitated the world. The term, and its Latin equivalent imitatio (“imitation”) ... meant an author's conscious use of features and characteristics of earlier works to acknowledge indebtedness to past writers [and artists]. Imitation can be found in nearly all works by Greek and, especially, Roman authors. Ancient theoretical discussions of imitation agree that good imitation required more than simple copying. An imitator was expected to emulate many models, join imitated material seamlessly to his own, reshape and vary it for its new context, and improve upon it.”
Today’s modern government schools place too much emphasis on invention, not imitation. Placed into a context of classical learning, the grammar stage of imitation of beautiful art and music comes first—first the “copying” by learning music theory and artistic terminology and skills. Later in the dialectic and rhetoric stages—after the mastery of the basics, students are then ready for that true emulation of the greats, which takes what they have learned from the masters, and incorporates their own ideas and skills into it.
All this waxing eloquent about beauty begs the question...Is it ever acceptable to expose our children and students to bad art, art that is anything but beautiful? Human beings learn to be comfortable with, and eventually love, that which is familiar. Therefore, I want to surround my children with the good, the true, and the beautiful, so beautiful, true, and good things seem like "home" to them. I aim to listen to or look at something beautiful each day in order to specifically kindle an appreciation of beauty as an attribute of God, but also to normalize true beauty in general. Yet, there are situations in which it may be appropriate to expose older children to small doses of the bad, the false, and the ugly as they prepare to live in the world, but not of it.
It’s actually pretty easy in modern America to find bad art and awful music! Especially after your students have had a decade or so of normalizing the beautiful, finding and sharing negative examples of art in pop culture can be a helpful talking point. There are also two interesting movements, among others, in visual art history to explore with your children and students. One is called Memento Mori, and the other Vanitas. Those of you who know a little Latin perceive that Memento mori means "Remember you must die," often using skulls or skeletons to make its point. Vanitas is a genre of art using objects as symbols to demonstrate Solomon’s Ecclesiastics: the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The idea of vanitas may appeal to teen students, draw them in, and turn them toward the Light when we teach in Christian schools and homeschools. We are surrounded by a culture of death with abortion, transgenderism, and suicide running rampant. Knowing that the idea of death has been wrestled with by mankind since the beginning helps one feel not so alone in one’s pain. Looking to and examining memento mori art, I feel, can help us connect to students, so long as we are also able to present the Solution (with a capital S) to death, and continue to normalize that which is truly beautiful.
Now that we’ve developed a philosophy of beauty by looking to an ancient standard of objectivity which reflects the Trinity, I’d like to share some ideas for building a morning meeting in your home or school.
What is morning meeting? The irony of morning meeting is that it doesn’t even have to take place in the morning. It’s simply a planned meeting in your educational day in which you intentionally take time for wonder, awe, marvel, amazement, and contemplation. Sarah MacKenzie describes: “It’s simply a daily meeting incorporating subjects that are very important, but which often get shuffled out of the schedule for logistical reasons. Based firmly on the idea that the purpose of education is to teach our children [and students] to love that which is lovely, it is time set aside for contemplation and discussion that offers an opportunity for [parents/teachers] to connect children directly with beauty, art, poetry, and the ideas that feed and nourish the soul.” It’s meant to be a predictable liturgy of love and beauty in your home or classroom. MacKenzie continues, “It can be twenty minutes or two hours. … Read Scripture, recite poetry, read from a classic. Look at a piece of great art and talk about it, then choose another book, and read that. Drill your catechism. Discuss what you read together. Diagram a sentence together as a family. … The key is that it happens regularly and takes priority over everything else.”
Morning meeting, whether it’s in the morning or another time of day, is a time to observe, absorb, and take in beauty. Homeschool parents can do this as part of their curriculum, classical school teachers can incorporate this as a moment in the school day (perhaps in the afternoon after recess if you are blessed with daily morning chapel), and parents whose children attend school can also incorporate this into their daily routine at home, like personal care or family devotions. My objectives for morning meeting include a time for quiet contemplation, looking at something visually beautiful, examining primary sources, incorporating all ages who contribute in various age-appropriate ways, being exposed to the dates and eras of history, and incorporating what Stratford Caldecott describes as the basic skills of education and humanity: remembering, thinking, and speaking.
Now that I’ve shared some definitional ideas for Morning Meeting, let’s also consider what Morning Meeting is not. It is not specific content that must be covered, or a recipe that must be followed. It is not a time for drilling, covering content in depth, or for thorough instruction in a topic. It is not a replacement for religion class, hymnody, or memory work, though those can certainly be incorporated. It is not multum optimum—more is better, but rather multum non multa—much, not many. We don’t want to let our ideas get the best of us so that we explore so many areas of beauty on the surface, but not dive into any of them richly.
With these overarching ideas in mind, let’s explore some possibilities for a beautiful morning meeting.
I start with a theme for the year or a monthly theme, often keyed to the historical period we are studying. Often, I have had a composer of the month, and we listen to a CD of the composer’s “best hits” during Morning Meeting throughout the month, after first giving it a careful listen. You might instead consider organizing your school months with themes of the Seven Liberal Arts, the Nine Muses of Greek mythology, the Seven Cardinal and Theological Virtues, or a particular artist each month.
With an overarching theme in mind, as well as the needs of my children and students, I like to incorporate some sort of recitation into the beginning of Morning Meeting. Sometimes that has included prayer requests for the needs of others. Other times, we have recited timeline facts, periods of art or music history, math facts/skip counting, memory work or hymnody, or poetry recitation.
As recitation comes to a close, I transition into visual beauty each day. I used to look at a new piece of visual art daily, but have moved more into a philosophy incorporating about one new piece weekly, in order to facilitate deep observation rather than a quick surface glance at the art. In the past, I would choose pieces of fine art keyed to the time period we are studying in history. For instance, when we were studying the middle ages and the Reformation, each day we’d look at an art card of a piece of art featured in the Vatican. The year we focused on American history, our daily dose of visual art came from an American artist, such as John Copley, Currier and Ives, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, Frederic Remington, and Frank Lloyd Wright. I introduce the picture with as much information as I have in a compact way: name of the work, name of the artist, date of the work, and the name of the particular school or genre. We try to simply be quiet and look at the work. “Silence is rare,” Stratford Caldecott notes, and “entertainment is all-pervasive, the pressure to consume-and-discard is almost irresistible” (19). The practice of simply sitting quietly and observing serves as an antidote to a consume-and-discard society. After some time, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, I invite the children to share something they observed. I want to be clear that this is an invitation, not a requirement, and I leave the object of their observations open, rather than asking specific trivia-like questions about what happens to be in the picture. I find it refreshing to hear what the children have noticed—often it’s something I didn’t! As we have time, I might share something I notice about the composition, colors, or style of the picture. For cycles through ancient or medieval history, you could consider looking at pictures of different genres of architecture, famous cathedrals or buildings, or stained glass windows. A discussion of classical art and sculpture really wouldn’t be complete without some wrestling with the idea of nudity in art. The sets of art photography I have ordered over the years often include classical nudes. On the one hand, as an adult, I appreciate the beauty and order of the human form, and do not find myself tempted toward lust while viewing these classics. But I also want to follow the advice in Song of Solomon to not “awaken love before it desires” (8:4). I’d like to share a philosophy of nude art written by Mr. Kyle Janke, teacher at Highlands Latin School in Kentucky and creator of Memoria Press’s high school curriculum “Classical History of Art.”
“[S]tudents should live according to the fullness of their humanity, finding pleasure in what is truly beautiful, as defined by the created nature of man and not the fallen. The potency of classical art to inspire this has made it an object of adoration throughout the history of the West. ...Yet the adoption of pagan values has always posed a problem for Christian educators: An earnest study of classical art includes nudity. What are we to do with the nudity of Greek art? In addressing why the Greeks carved nudes, we should begin by asking why we are clothed. As Scripture makes clear (Genesis 2:25), we are not clothed according to our creation but according to our fall. Our garments signify our imperfection. Of course, we cannot go naked and deny our wrongs, yet we can deny no less our longing that those wrongs should be made right. This is the desire expressed in art—in all art, whether nude or otherwise—that we should be what we once were: naked and unashamed. And while Greek sculpture, being made of stone, cannot perfect the flesh, it can provide an illustrative image of our perfected state. ... [Modern art] emphasizes our material nature, rejecting classical assertions and stripping the human form of its divine image and its supremacy over the beasts. It reduces man to matter, which is nakedness indeed. Conversely, classical art...comes much closer to our true nature as image-bearers of our Creator. One who sees in such work only its literal nakedness fails to acknowledge its figurative sense and stumbles into the same rut that mires modernity. We were created to be naked, unashamed, and deathless. Nudity is immortality made visible. While Goodness and Truth lead us to life, it is Beauty that makes us follow. ... Some works degrade our humanity; others elevate it. Classical art is our powerful ally in teaching the greatest virtue, that of proper love.”
As I teach in my home, I strike a sort of compromise: I hold the nude art card quite a distance from them as I explain the history, the artist, and the background of the piece, and then pass the card around, allowing them the option not to examine this card in detail. (Almost always, the boys awkwardly and quickly pass it around the table!) When I am teaching at a church or public co-op, I first crop nude art and state that different families have different opinions, and I choose to be as conservative as possible so we can all appreciate the art together, but if children would like to see a fuller version of the work, they should talk with their parents at home. I hope this gives you some ideas as a springboard for a philosophy of nude art.
Although most of my years doing Morning Meeting incorporated traditional art and painting, this year, my definition has expanded. We looked at pictures of various breeds of birds instead, and studied God's artistry in creating birds. I think expanding visual art into the realm of what we might consider that nature and science have some great potential: think of looking at different types of trees, gemstones, cloud formations, or flowers for an entire quarter or semester, keying the visual arts with integration with science, not just history. We can spend time reflecting quietly directly on God’s creation, as an option for morning meeting, too. After all, Stratford Caldecott reminds us, “The animals, plants, and minerals, the stars and elements, were universally thought to “praise” their maker, either simply by their very existence, or when called upon to do so by man (who gives them a voice they do not possess in themselves)” (107).
Although you may have already shared the joy of singing during morning meeting during the recitation portion, there are a number of different options for incorporating music into your daily routine. Younger children might easily absorb music theory with clapping rhythmic patterns, or learning to recognize a pitch of the week on a staff. Nearly all children enjoy participating in rhythm instrument exercises, or learning to read notes with elementary handbells. You could study different composers, if you haven’t already done so as an overarching theme for Morning Meeting. However you might incorporate it, music brings so much joy and beauty into daily life.
I like to incorporate recitation, visual art, and music each and every day into Morning Meeting, and I generally tack on one other subject at the end each day of the week. Perhaps on Mondays, we study a poem in depth, again, usually keyed to our historical period. Perhaps on Tuesday we study and draw a world landmark or geographical phenomena in our notebook. On Wednesday, we might diagram a sentence from the Bible together. Perhaps on Thursday, we work on copywork, practicing our best handwriting on a beautiful piece of paper to share with someone who would enjoy it. Copywork has myriad venues for beauty—the content of the verse or quotation can incorporate beauty as well as the writing and paper aesthetics, as we practice mimesis of that which is beautiful. Generally on Fridays, we complete an art theory lesson, as well as a project, often aiming to imitate a beautiful, well-known work of art. Other ideas for a once-a-week inclusion in Morning Meeting might include the study of Greek or Latin root words, biographies of famous people—especially the artist or composer of the month, or even mathematical concepts. Although the idea of incorporating mathematical concepts to Morning Meeting is quite new to me, I’m convinced of the idea after reading Beauty for Truth’s Sake. The author writes, “Since the Logos is love, and since all things are created through Him and for Him and are held together in Him, we should expect the logic, the rationality, the intelligibility of the world to usher in the delight that beauty bestows. … The beautiful meaningfulness of a numberly world is most evident in the perception of harmony, whether in music, architecture, or physics…” (7-8). Whether you bring in the symbolic associations of natural numbers, symmetry, mathematical formulae, or concepts like Fibonacci’s Sequence, ideas that introduce math as beauty to our children are … countless… :)
The Morning Meeting topics that rotate by day of the week seem to change each year as I reflect on what is important to me, what my children and students would benefit from exposure to, and what I have time for. Time, both for planning and executing Morning Meeting, is finite. Whether your schedule allows a lot of time, or only a little, we can, as Sarah MacKenzie writes, “recognize all the small moments throughout our day for what they are—the makings of a cathedral of timeless beauty, the planting of seeds that will bear fruit in their season.” When incorporating a Morning Meeting into your day, not only do you have however long that session lasts to dwell upon beauty, you can also look forward to next week, next month, next year, and the rest of eternity to delve into God’s beauty each and every day.
To the end of giving you some concrete ideas for how morning meeting has worked for my family in the past, here are some sample schedules. Although I give times for the various activities, these are approximations and one activity flows into the next naturally, rather than according to the clock.
2020-2021: American History Morning Meeting—8:00-8:45 a.m.
- 8:00—Prayers; Recitation of Memory Work; Poem of the Week Recitation
- 8:05—Learn a Greek or Latin root word; review
- 8:10—Pass Around Art Card by the American Artist of the Week; Ask for Observations
- 8:15—Play the CD of the Composer of the Month (Paine, Ives, Stravinsky, Copland, Sousa, Joplin, Rodgers, Shore)
- Monday: Read an artist or musician biography while children color a picture of the composer from the internet.
- Tuesday: Study the week’s poem in depth, including analyzing meter and rhyme scheme
- Wednesday: Sketch out the continent of the month
- Thursday: Diagram some Bible passages together
- Friday: Art History and Skills, concluding with a project based on the artist of the week
2022-2023: Ancient History Morning Meeting—10:00-10:45 a.m.
- 10:00—Prayers; Recitation of Memory Work
- 10:05—Pass Around Art Card featuring Architecture; Ask for Observations
- 10:10—Listen to the Bach Cantata for the week of the church year
- 10:15—Featured Weekly Activity:
- Monday: Read Weedon’s Celebrating the Saints and do a saint-related activity
- Tuesday: Complete a landscape painting project
- (Wednesday: Activities outside the home)
- Thursday: Read about a world landmark; draw and write in our landmark notebooks
- Friday: Read and analyze our poem for the week
We’ve just discussed a variety of good ways to build your own Morning Meeting. Next, let’s identify some practical resources for implementing your vision. I’ve created a webpage you can visit with direct links to many of these resources. Hopefully these resources whet your idea appetite as you consider a morning meeting!
Today, we’ve discussed a philosophy of beauty, brainstormed ways of implementing a beautiful morning meeting in your home or school, and looked at some resources for doing so. I hope and pray you have come across some inspiring ideas you will consider implementing after listening to this presentation. If instead you feel inadequate or overwhelmed, shift your attention away from the burden of YOU creating beauty in your home and classroom, and instead onto the One who has created you, and calls you beautiful. More beautiful than anything we can implement in our homes and classrooms, is that of the Heavenly Wedding. As I began, I will now finish, with a quotation from Rev. Carnehl in his Christian Culture article.
“In our Lutheran churches today (and I would add our homes and schools, as well), we have a unique opportunity to re-anchor beauty in God in a three-fold sense (which corresponds to our Creed). The first is that we must remember that beauty is objective in the sense that all truly beautiful things participate in God’s beauty. So things are only beautiful insofar as they reflect the splendor of God’s truth and goodness. … The second thing to remember is that beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder, but that we are in the eyes of the Beholder: He who sees all things also makes them beautiful in their time. God looks upon us as his beautiful bride, though we deserve nothing at all. Finally… the Holy Spirit makes all our vocational works beautiful, though they are often ugly in the eyes of the world. … As we contemplate the beauty of God’s creation and embrace the beauty that God gives to us, we also bear the beauty of the Lord in our works and duties. [You] are precious in His eyes, and He makes [you] into a crown of beauty, a royal diadem before all nations.”
Marie K. MacPherson is a wife, mother, and baptized child of God. She is a CCLE certified educator, writer of curriculum, and author. Marie has published Meditations on the Vocation of Motherhood, Volumes 1 (2018) and 2 (2023), Mothering Many (2016), and Lutherans for Life/Concordia Publishing House booklets The Story of Baby Shalom and Teaching Children Chastity for Life. Her Bachelor’s Degree is in Elementary Education, with a specialty in Communication Arts and Literature and Synod Certification, from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN. A life-long learner, Marie enjoys graduate courses from Memoria College’s Great Books program, and coaching speech team students in the progymnasmata and rhetorical devices. Her husband Ryan teaches at the collegiate level and also is the president of The Hausvater Project. Together, they home school their seven children. Visit their website at www.intoyourhandsllc.com
