Wonder – Auggie

Well, we’re here!  The last part of the book!  I sure hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have!  If you haven’t already preordered your tickets you can do that by going to the Franklin Park Cinemark website and selecting the 1:45 showing on November 19th.

Don’t forget that we will be having a taco bar immediately following the 11:00 worship service.  Since we have sooooo much time between worship and the movie, we will plan to chat while we are eating.  Bring your questions and thoughts with you as we share a meal and talk about what we read.

 

Auggie

We find ourselves with a lot of music in this last part.  Much of it will be included in this blog.  Enjoy it!  It helps us to enhance our encounter with the book.  To begin with we have the Eurythmics.

In this part Auggie is heading off to 5th grade Nature Camp.  In listening to Auggie’s story, he has never been away from home without his parents for this long.  Scary stuff!  Like most moms, Auggie’s mom helps get him packed with everything he could possibly need at camp, and then some!

Since Auggie is worried about falling asleep, his mom suggests that he take a book to read.  He is currently reading a classic, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  The part that Auggie falls asleep reading before camp says: “. . . though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time.  But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.”  C.S. Lewis the author of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is a well known Christian author.  What deeper magic do you think he was referring to in this passage?

Morning arrives and it off to camp.  Have you ever been to camp?  Were you nervous?  What were you scared of?  What types of things did you do at camp?  The movie night seems to be a big event at this camp.  All the schools coming together.  Here is a clip from that movie.

Probably not a movie most boys would love, of course Auggie and Jack wondered off.  The line was too long at the restroom so the boys look for a tree on the edge of the woods.  While in the woods, the boys investigate and find trouble.  These kids from the other school call Auggie more names!

See the source image  Alien

See the source image  Gollum

The boys from Beecher Prep really came to the aid of Auggie.  Have you ever been bullied?  How did it make you feel?  Have you ever needed to defend someone?  What was that like?  How do you think Auggie felt with all the boys coming to his aid?

There was a seismic shift after we got back to school!  The big kids name Auggie “little dude” and talked to him and protected him.  Why didn’t this happen earlier?

Mr. Tushman has a long talk with Auggie.  They talk about his self-portrait.  What would your self-portrait look like?

Read the story of the Ugly Duckling here:  https://fairytalez.com/ugly-duckling/

The last precept of the year comes from another song called “Light and Day.”

If you wrote a precept today, what would it be?

On the way to graduation, Auggie and his dad sing their favorite song.

What traditions, songs, games, etc., do you have with your family?

The graduation program has three pieces of music in it.  “Light and Day” (which is already in this blog)

“Canon in D”

“Under Pressure’ by Queen

Mr. Tushman leads the graduation program and speaks from a book called The Little White Bird.  “Shall we make a new rule of life . . . always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”  Can you answer that question?

And then he quoted Christopher Nolan from Under the Eye of the Clock – “It was at moments such as these that Joseph recognized the face of God in human form.  It glimmered in their kindness to him, it glowed in their keenness, it hinted in their caring, indeed it caressed in their gaze.”  Where have you seen the face of God in human form?  Who is that person for you?  Mr. Tushman tells the children that if they practice being kinder than is necessary that one day someone may recognize the face of God in them.  Is this something all of us can do?

The awards begin and lots of children are getting them.  Auggie was cheering everyone on!!  Mr. Tushman quotes the founder of the school then, Henry Ward Beecher, “Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character.  These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.”  He continued “Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength. . . He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”  How do you show greatness?

And Auggie was included in ALL of the pictures this time!

I am soooo sad to see this story end, but it is not the end of our story!  Be thinking!  What can we do next?

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