Book Review – Saint Clare, Beyond the Legend, by Marco Bartoli

I expected this book to be a biography of Saint Clare of Assisi, but it was more an account of what has already been written about Clare, and how this information was come by, as well as a discussion about how accurate (or inaccurate) the information we have about Clare may be.

Nevertheless, though it wasn’t what I expected, it did hold my attention and I learned quite a bit – about Clare and her beliefs, as well as about the times in which she lived. 

Clare’s story is entwined in the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, and so I also learned a bit about Francis.  Many of us know about Francis, the lover of nature and animals, but he was apparently even more so a lover of lepers and the extremely poor.  Clare followed in his spiritual footsteps, loving poverty to the extent of owning absolutely nothing of her own.  Born into a wealthy and noble family, through her love of God she developed a social conscience that would not allow her to live in luxury while knowing there were many at that time in Italy who were the poorest of the poor.

The fact that we have any account of Clare, a woman living as a religious in the 13th century, is amazing.  Her order of nuns were a silent order (except in cases of necessity) and Marco Bartoli makes a point of the fact that despite being cloistered and silent, Clare’s life of holiness spoke out loudly in a time when women were hardly considered prominent members of society or worth listening to.  In other words, Clare definitely made an impression.

I came away from this book wanting to know more about St. Clare, and will be looking for an actual biography about her.  It’s possible that we may never know the complete story of St. Clare of Assisi since she did live in the middle ages, but I feel she is a great example for Christians of any age or time.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Farm Yard and Dino Land Play Sets

I’ve been on a mission lately to increase M’s interest in non-battery-operated toys.  It’s been a tough job.  I’m not sure how it happened that he became so addicted to toys that “do something”, I only know that it was a turn for the worse.  After receiving several hand-me-down toys from cousins in January, all of which are battery operated, he just hasn’t been as interested in expending any energy or imagination when playing.  He will push buttons and watch toys light up, make sounds, and move, and somehow being entertained has become more pleasant than actually playing.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I will save it for another post, another time.

In an effort to engage his imagination and creativity in play again, I (very)  quickly put together some play sets for him using fabric I’ve had lying around in my sewing cart for ages. 

I’ve mentioned in other posts that I’ve been trying to have something interesting waiting for him when he wakes in the mornings so I don’t have to hear any whining before my first cup of coffee. ;)  Often, it’s something like playdough or a new sensory bin, but one evening I made a farm playland for him and had it ready the following morning.  I included his farm animals and barn (Target) and some Duplo blocks.

It started off like this:

Then became this:

And eventually ended up like this: He had gotten out more blocks, a zoo, a truck, and some books and was sitting in the middle of his farm, reading books to a little plastic duck.  Hello, imagination! :)  And I realized something a bit bigger might be better.  So, off we went to the fabric store.

I purchased a yard of green fleece, and put it on the floor when we got home.  He spent 45 minutes, I kid you not, mowing the green fleece grass with a little toy tractor.

I cut a larger pond out of some blue fabric from my stash, and we used the other pieces I’d had for the smaller version to make more hills ( by putting fabric over an upside down bowl, or over large blocks), and a chicken yard.   

I wish I had a better picture than this… in fact I think M may have taken this picture: but you get the idea.  He loves his new farm yard! 

I should mention that none of the fabric has been hemmed or sewn together.  I simply grabbed what I wanted and cut it to roughly the size and shape I needed for a pond or hill or dirt field.  I’m not worried about pieces unraveling - fleece doesn’t unravel, and the other pieces were just leftover scraps from old projects.  This way he can rearrange the layout of his farm if he wants to.

This was such an enormous success that the following week I used the same green fleece, added some new pieces, and made a dino land for him:

There’s a cave (a small crate from Dollar Tree turned on its side with brown fabric on the floor and covered with some other green fleece):

And a volcano (note the dino skeleton at the base of the mountain, hee hee): 

This was a huge success too, and M had a lot of fun playing with it.  It was definitely worth the 15 minutes it took me to cut fabric and put it all together for him. 

I won’t say it cured him of his preference for toys that “do something”, but it did help him see how much fun a little imagination can be!  Baby steps, right? ;)

Have a beautiful day! :)