.jpg)
Density of Personhood
Here is a conversation we have been having at Red-Brick this first term. It’s an idea I have been pondering and a phrase I think I coined: Density of Personhood. If you have been following my writing you may have heard me use this phrase, most recently here.
As I said, this is not a Charlotte Mason phrase, but rather one of my own concoction and, as I reflect, must be a mash up of ideas: equal parts Charlotte Mason on personhood, CS Lewis’s take on his ghosts gaining density as they progress through his book “The Great Divorce”, and needle-felting.
If you have never needle-felted as your handcraft, this is your invitation. Of all the things we have done, this was the most satisfying… and slightly addictive. If you have needle-felted you will know that at first it seems like absolutely nothing is happening, and when I say at first, I mean like possibly your entire first and second sessions. Nothing. You just have this fluffy bit of wool and a barbed needle that you are randomly poking in and out to seemingly no effect. None.
In reality, the tiny barbs on the needle are gradually, ever so slowly, grabbing bits of wool and invisibly “knitting” them together. After many, many, many pokes, the wisps of fluff begin to start holding themselves together. Almost imperceptibly the thing begins to gain a bit of shape, but just barely; many more pokes later, decisions can begin to be made about features and design. Eventually the piece begins to gain enough density that it has substance of its own. One boy, refusing the features part, just locked in and needled his ball of wool to such a density that he could bounce it like a rubber ball!
And so, layering this particular handcraft atop readings from Mason and Lewis, ideas began to coalesce (and this is in fact a microcosm of how Charlotte Mason’s philosophy works for our kids). I began to see needle-felting as a bit of a metaphor for the living lessons we offer the personhood of our children.
You see, all people are “born persons” this is principle number one, and yet in the same way that each person is born with a conscience, but no one is born with a perfectly functioning conscience, as it must be instructed; so am I beginning to think it must go with personhood. We are all given wool, but the knitting together of that wool is varied and dependent.
Consider.
Have you ever met people with whom you just can’t get-it-going? You want to, you make every effort, and maybe they do too, and yet. They may be any temperament, or personality – but there is something missing. Nothing to push up against. They may be “good” or “bad”, but this is to miss the point. The wool is present, personhood obviously there, but no density. I like the old-fashioned phrase “person of substance”. To what were they referring?
Conversely, have you ever met the person with whom there is a volley of interaction, be it positive or negative. They may be someone you like or don’t. They may be quiet or outgoing, intelligent or not as the case may be. But like a racquetball coming up against the wall and bouncing back to you, there is evidence of density on the other end of that encounter. We are tempted to call it spunk or wit; but in fact, what we find satisfying is not dependent on those extroverted elements, rather what we are experiencing is a density of personhood.
Density of personhood is gained the same way our wool gained density, many interactions with the barbed needle. In our metaphor, the needle may represent any number of human interactions, what Wendell Berry would call a 3-dimentional life. Any interaction that facilitates connections of height (spirit), depth (soul), and breadth (body) is an interaction that grabs a bit of our wool and binds it together with the other elements of our personhood. This is just the sort of thing that Charlotte Mason’s method facilitates so well. These kinds of interactions are the hallmarks of the child life that she maps out, an education, and in turn a life, that reaches in all directions to the preference of none.
The thing to keep at the fore is that density of wool and personhood are not gained in any single, or even several large movements. Density of wool and personhood are gained almost imperceptibly by constancy of interaction; a bulk of seemingly insignificant pokes. It’s not any one piece of art, or couple of narrations, no afternoon outside, or particular reading, no folk song, no single poem or handcraft that is the magic bullet. Truthfully these things may seem insignificant in the moment, do not be detoured – it is the consistency, the repetition, the habit of all of the things; the hum of them in the background, rather than the memory of particulars that result in the net effect of a dense personhood.
This perspective shines a fresh angle on Jonathan Haidt’s use of the phrase “experience blockers” for screens. The experiences being blocked are not lamented merely for the sake of memories or relationship, but literally as lost opportunities for the knitting together of personhood. What is it the lack-luster person is missing? It isn’t any one thing, but a thousand points of contact with the 3-dimensional world lost in gazing at a single plane.
This aspect of our biology has precedent in the brains of babies, as we now know that the work of the early years is the knitting together of the two hemispheres of the brain into a cohesive whole for the sake of function. And yet when I speak of density of personhood, I am not only referring to cognitive ability, but rather to all of the physical and spiritual parts of a person that must be felted together, literally matted together, in order for the potential of that person to be realized. Plenty of poorly educated children have woven dense personhoods, while many privileged straight A students border on translucent. We miss the point when we reduce the conversation to academics, just as we miss the point of Charlotte Mason when we reduce her method to academics alone.
Parent, be encouraged. The museum wasn’t supposed to be the most fun thing in the world. The afternoon outside wasn’t supposed to entertain. When we can’t remember the artist from year before last, or the book we read in Form 2, it’s OK. That needle landed and affected change on an interior level. Too many expectations on any one interaction and the volume required will never be attained.
Hold the wool loosely, handle the needle deftly.
Like Lewis’s ghosts, may our children gain density as they journey through this world having candid interactions with all that it offers.
Sara Timothy 2026
Bonus Thought:
When I think of density I can’t help but think of the working theory of gravity, that space and time form a kind of fabric, and that objects of mass literally bend the fabric of space and time. The greater the mass/ density of the object, the more it bends, and the idea is that this bending draws things of less mass to the heavier. Like a bowling ball in the center of a trampoline. If our sun is the bowling ball, the other planets are pulled to it due to the curve it is creating in the fabric of space/time. Denser objects have more gravity and so have things drawn to them.
I like this idea paired with the above. The denser the personhood of our children, the more gravity they will have. The more things will come to them of their own accord, additional experiences, opportunities, relationships. We often worry about “holes” in the education we offer. We worry about all of the things we need to give them or tell them and we set for ourselves an impossible task, a task that is not our job. Our goal should not be to tell them all about anything, but rather to needle for them a dense personhood and let the things come to them. “To him who has, more will be given”.
There is a certain kind of translucent person who complains that they were never given a chance and that it isn’t fair. I used to argue with them. Everyone has the same possibilities, its what we make them, I would say. I no longer think so. I have seen that the relationships that carry weight, the opportunities that have potential are drawn, as if by a gravitational pull, not the smartest, or the most privileged – but to the people of the most density.
This should be our goal for our children.
Comments