Each season, I try to plan out what I want to learn, read, and improve on as part of my mother culture plans. These plans generally include a booklist, handicrafts, and sometimes a homemaking skill to focus on.
My mother culture plans for Lent center around Little World Wanderer’s “A Mother’s Education” (AME), which I’ll be using for the first time. If you haven’t heard of AME, it’s a curated term of mother culture plans. These plans can be done on your own or along the same timeline as other ladies who are doing the same term. Beth has done a wonderful job putting together meaningful and interesting selections that I might not have picked up on my own otherwise.
A Mother’s Education Lent
Each term of A Mother’s Education includes a booklist, hymn study, art study, and tips for handicrafts and keeping.
In A Mother’s Education Lent, there are six book recommendations, including the book of Mark. The books all center somehow on Christ and the Lent season, but each book is a different genre. I love the variety here, which makes the list feel full and rich.
The hymn and art study suggestions are also centered on Lent and the crucifixion. These are particularly helpful for me, because when it comes to art and music, I often feel like I don’t know what I don’t know. It’s helpful to have a list of hymns and artwork that I can then spend time digging into.
For handicrafts, a list of possible handicrafts related to the season are included along with some tips. I’ll share more below which handicrafts I’m choosing to focus on.
Reading
For my reading list this season, I am mostly using AME Lent. However, there were a couple books from that list that were challenging or a little too expensive to get my hands on, so I opted to fill in those two slots with books from the same genre that I already had on my shelf waiting to be read. All of the books below come from AME Lent with the exception of the last two.
- Bible, book of Mark
- Lent and Easter Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton
- Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss
- The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
- Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot
- Habits of the Household by Justin Whitmel Earley
AME Lent provides a suggested reading schedule for spreading out the six readings across the seven weeks. Using that timeline, I’ve planned out all of my readings, and I love how intentional this makes the term feel. Instead of simply picking up a book when I feel like it, I have an intentional plan to stick with.
Handicrafts
While I have a few projects on hold right now, the only handicraft I’m taking on for this season is hand lettering.
Hand Lettering
Over a year ago now, I purchased a digital course to improve my Procreate hand lettering skills. I started the course but have yet to finish it, so I’m choosing to make this my “handicraft” for the season. I’m honestly not sure if this would technically be considered a handicraft, but it’s a skill I’d like to improve, so I’m making it count. The course I’m using is Beautiful Lettering by Every Tuesday.
Keeping
Keeping is an area I really want to grow in this year. I’ve had a commonplace notebook for a little while but rarely write in it. The same is true for my nature journal. But I see immense value in both, along with keeping a book of centuries, so I’m making it a goal to record in each of these more regularly moving forward.
For Christmas this past year, I was gifted (at my request, haha) a copy of The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater and immediately read through the sections on each of these three types of keeping. If you’re thinking about notebooking or keeping of any kind, I’d highly recommend investing in this book. Of all the books I’ve acquired recently, this one is near the top of my list of favorites.
Commonplace
I have always made a habit of marking quotes that I appreciate, but I’ve never consistently transferred those quotes into a commonplace. Recently, though, I’ve found myself wishing that I could easily find quotes on certain topics from a variety of books I’ve read. I know that having a well-kept commonplace would help with this, along with general retention of the concepts I’m reading about. A year or two ago, I purchased a notebook for this purpose, and I plan to start adding some passages from my Lent readings. I’m genuinely excited about this endeavor.
Nature Journal
I also have a notebook already set up for nature journaling that is rarely used. A large part of the reason for this is that I’m rarely in nature, which, admittedly, might be the bigger problem here.
Because I’m motivated by goals, I’m setting a goal for myself to spend 100 hours outside this year. For those of you who spend a good portion of your life out of doors or who actively pursue 1,000 hours outside (hats off to you!), 100 hours may sound like a small number, but for me, it’s actually a somewhat challenging number. Two hours a week feels like a manageable and stretching endeavor for the time being.
I was encouraged by the AME Lent guide, though, in noting that my nature journaling each day could be as simple as recording the weather. So that’s what I plan to do on days I’m not able to spend a significant amount of time outdoors – simply record observations on the weather that day.
If you’re interested in keeping a nature journal as well, Little World Wanderer shares more about keeping a nature journal on her blog. The resources she includes are both helpful and encouraging.
Book of Centuries
Keeping a book of centuries is an intention I set for myself before deciding on participating in AME Lent this year. I was initially spurred to do so by this year’s Literary Life Reading Challenge. It’s my first year participating in any reading challenge, and this one felt like the perfect place for me to start.
For a little while now, I’ve been wanting to read more with a focus on understanding history better. History was my least favorite subject in school and possibly an area where my education failed me. Textbooks just didn’t work for my brain when it came to history, and almost all of my history education consisted of reading textbooks. Instead, what I remember about history is what I read in living books, both fictional and non-fictional.
This year, the Literary Life Reading Challenge focuses on reading one or two books from each of the last eight centuries, along with one or two books from ancient, biblical, and medieval times each. As I read through my selection of books, I’m also reading through the Story of the World series by Susan Wise Bauer as a way of tying the readings into an overview of history.
Making recordings in my book of centuries will help me visualize the timeline of history, provide me with a record of what I’m learning, and hopefully help solidify the knowledge as I learn it. I don’t know about you, but I definitely hold onto information longer if I take the time to write it out by hand as I learn it.
Hymn and Art Studies
Because I feel incredibly inadequate in my knowledge of music and art, I typically leave these out of my mother culture plans. However, AME makes these topics very accessible with a list of hymns and artwork and tips for exactly how to engage with them each week.
One Last Note
Possibly the most important note about all of these plans is that I’m not seeking perfection here. In the past, I’ve tried to complete a list like this perfectly within a certain timeframe. Then, when I inevitably get behind, I get frustrated and tell myself I’ve failed so I might as well give up. I’ve been learning this year, however, the power of letting go of perfection.
The purpose of these plans is not to complete them. The purpose of these plans is to grow as a person – to be continually in a posture of learning and to expand my knowledge and capabilities. If I finish only one of the books listed here, I’ll have done that. For me, that’s a hard lesson but an important one.
I hope these mother culture plans for Lent are encouraging to you as you also pursue your own learning.
