The House of the Heart: Love, Justice, and Humility
Patterns for Life audiobook Chapter 7
In Charlotte Mason’s model, love and justice balance each other the way mercy and fairness balance each other. Like two sides of the same coin, the tnesion between the two opens up a space for the practice of what the Orthodox Church calls economia: the spiritual discernment involved with the proper application of a rule. In much the same way that economia in spiritual matters shoehorns us out of the letter of the law and back into the Spirit, the balance in matters of the heart is why Mason believed that education needed to avoid becoming a system. The goal in exercising economia in education is not to produce a product, but to promote relationship, with God and with others.
Patterns for Life, Chapter 7
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In chapter 7 we turn to take a look at the Heart, whose lords, according to Charlotte Mason, are Love and Justice. Here we diverge slightly from Mason’s model of the person, though not in substance as much as in perspective: she looks at love and justice as the main “lords” of the heart — our take is to encompass both love and justice in the bosom of humility, which we touched on quite a bit in the last chapter. With humility we forget ourselves in order to focus both love and justice on others.
The more we choose to act in such a way as to put Christ before self, the more prepared we are to say “yes” to Him in every area of our lives. When our whole orientation is toward Him then we find the path laid out before us and we always know the next step to take. When we continue to choose Him over and over we establish a particular shape (or pattern) for our lives and we reject other shapes/patterns that would move us away from Christ. But even when we misstep we can always return to the right path through the doors of repentance.
Even in our thought lives we can choose in such a way as to shape our minds to move toward Christ. We have to go deeper than the obvious surface thoughts and examine the opinions we hold as well. It is important to consult others on various topics and to acquire a broad range of knowledge on the subject at hand — but we should not adopt the opinions of others without first examining them carefully and holding our opinions loosely, understanding that we may not have the full picture.
Appendix B, in the back of the book, gives an overview of the past few chapters in a chart format, which you may find helpful.
Questions to ponder:
How does humility as a foundation give us secure footing on which to set about orienting ourselves and ordering our loves?
Saying yes to one possibility usually means saying no to several others. How can we keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed as we consider our options?