bearing blog

An affirmation for especially hectic times.

A friend who has a lot on her plate right now -- multiple diagnoses in her family -- told me a story the other day. It was an anxious story in which she had to get her four children, ages 4 through 15, to their four simultaneous occupational-therapy appointments (thankfully, all in the same location) at 8:30 in the morning, and in which she must not be late lest she be levied an expensive fine.

This story is re-enacted every week, and, she said, she has never quite managed to Do All The Things: feed all four of them breakfast, make sure all four have clean clothes and neat hair, supervise toothbrushing, get herself fed and dressed and neatly groomed, and ensure that everyone has taken his or her meds. "I just can't do all of it. It is hard enough getting just one of my children out the door. And then I feel terrible because I can't do all these things that I have to do and still get them in to the appointments on time.

"And then of course, the therapists and teachers give me work to do with each of the children at home -- and that is another thing I can't do all of. I have four kids with challenges. I just can't do what they all need."

She finished her tale, complete with detailed descriptions of real, difficult struggles, and asked me: "How do you figure out what to do and what to skip, when you just can't do everything that you have to do? How do you -- filter the things that have to be done? And how do you not feel bad afterwards that you had to skip things?"

I couldn't answer, so our other friend who was there answered for me. "I know one of the ways you do it. You look outside yourself for some kind of role model, another example of a person who seems to be doing all right. Or, I notice sometimes, you might ask Mark what he thinks is the most important, and if he gives you his opinion, you'll go with that. And you'll carry that out and you don't generally second-guess that decision once it's made."

"You're right -- I do that," I mused. As I reflect on the conversation, I think perhaps I am often concerned that the perceptions inside my own head of what accomplishments are important -- and what deficiencies other people will notice and judge me for -- are theoretical, not connected with reality. I sort of double-check them, by comparing them to what another admirable or at least "normal" person would do, or else by running the question by my husband (since he has to live with more consequences of my decisions than most other people do). And once I am satisfied that I have arrived at a possible, not-crazy solution, I enact it, and move on.

Reflecting more, though, I think this power is available to me in some contexts but not in others. I remember feeling very at-sea back when I was in graduate school and still trying to cobble together All The Things so I could finish my thesis and acquire the experiences that would help me get a good postdoctoral job. It was clear that doing All The Things was not possible, particularly after I had my first child, and I never did feel confident that I chose them correctly.

So even though I don't have nearly the kind of challenges on my plate that my friend does with her children -- I do remember a time when I felt I could not do all the things that I was "supposed" to do, and I remember the feelings of impotence that went along with it.

+ + +

One of the things I noticed while my friend was talking to me was the frequent occurrence of the phrase "I can't." It bugged me (and I know, this isn't about me, and it isn't about my comfort with the words she chooses; still, I couldn't stop noticing it). I wondered if maybe some different words to call on would help. I thought about the situation overnight and the next day dashed off an email suggesting this:

Instead of speaking or thinking the words

"I can't do everything I have to do/ought to do",

try these or similar words:

"I have a lot of responsibilities, so I have to prioritize."

This strikes me as useful, I wrote to her, because it is

• (A) true
• (B) honors the huge amount of work she accomplishes every day
• (C) is a good personal mantra that anyone can repeat to herself especially in overwhelming situations
• (D) is a useful "script" that would be helpful if it were the first thing that comes out of her mouth when someone tries to pile on some additional work or yet another expectation.

So, to take an example my friend described, if the therapist were to say,

"I'd like you to go home and take a photograph of every chore and activity that your kindergartener has to do every day at home, so that we could make a visual aid for him to use in the therapy room."

instead of saying immediately "I guess I could do that" (and thereby committing to following through), or else protecting herself by saying "I can't do that" (which might not even be true), the first reply could be

"Well, I do have a lot of responsibilities, so I have to prioritize."

Which should be a cue for the therapist either to give her more information to judge exactly how important and helpful the visual aid is, or to suggest a less involved project. And it gives her time to think: How much time would I have to commit? When would that block of time come along? Maybe saying no to this is the best choice. On the other hand, if it turns out that it would be worth my time, maybe I can do at least some of it.

+ + +

Another example could be about expectations. This example is something that my friend told herself:

"You ought to make sure that all four children have had a good breakfast before they come to therapy in the morning."

But there is a reply to that:

"Maybe. I have a lot of responsibilities going on at once while we are getting ready to leave, so I have to prioritize."

And indeed, it may not be worth the effort to make sure that they all eat breakfast and that the breakfast they eat is a "good" one before therapy. After all, there will be other chances to eat throughout the morning, so perhaps forcing food into the ones who aren't hungry enough to spontaneously eat would be counterproductive, and the time could be better spent helping them find clean clothes and managing outbursts.

+ + +

I added two notes.

(1) Take care that the statement "I have to prioritize" doesn't represent an additional burden (another thing you "have to do") but instead represents a simply true statement that follows from the normal limitations of human beings. Perhaps you might prefer language similar to

"I have a lot of responsibilities, so at all times I am going to prioritize among them."

...just because it lacks the possible emotional trigger words "I have to."

(2) Prioritizing happens in the time that is available.

Sometimes you have sufficient time to sit down and analyze the competing responsibilities carefully according to the goals that make the most sense.

Sometimes the available time is short, and the prioritization happens with only brief thought. This still counts as prioritizing.

The minimum deliberate prioritization is to stop for a moment to ask yourself "wait -- what is the reason that I have all these tasks to choose from in this moment? Which ones, if not done, will really keep me from accomplishing that goal?"

(So, for example, on those hectic pre-appointment mornings, the entire reason my friend is rushed is so the kids can get to their therapy sessions. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that having a fruitful therapy session is the main goal of the morning. So one prioritization strategy would be to skip, abbreviate, or postpone all tasks that don't actually affect the quality of the therapy session.)

But on the rare occasions that we don't have time even to ask ourselves that one question and answer it briefly, we do prioritize without deliberation (maybe instinctively, or maybe using some other habitual, unconscious rule). Because we find ourselves choosing tasks until we run out of time or strength to choose any more. And then when it's all over, no matter how much time you had and no matter how conscious we were about our choices, we can say about our actions in that overwhelming moment,

"I had a lot of responsibilities, so I prioritized them."

It's also true, also a mantra, and also a perfectly acceptable answer to anyone who questions the judgment that went into the prioritization.

Indeed, there is no sensible retort to this statement. If challenged, the best response is probably just to keep repeating it until the challenger backs down. This is a way to set a boundary: you get to claim the right to use your own judgment in a difficult situation, and there are very few people who have the right to criticize that judgment without your permission -- only the ones who are very close to you, directly affected by your choices and so in possession of potentially useful feedback information, or who have demonstrably walked in your shoes.

If it feels emotionally safe, I think you can revisit how you prioritized in retrospect. Faced with responsibilities to do A, B, and C, you chose to complete A, to do a half-job of B, and to discard C; why was that? Maybe exploring whether there is a habitual or unconscious rule that you follow will help you construct conscious, examined rules of thumb that you can quickly call upon. Maybe that will give you confidence that you can prioritize wisely.

But unless it helps you look forward and move forward, looking back might not even be worth doing -- depending on your priorities.

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Elisabeth Leseur's "An Essay on the Christian Life of Women," IV. Responsibility to society.

Continuing a series on the writings of Elisabeth Leseur, which I started here and continued here.

Working our way out through her presentation of the Christian's duties, we began with the intellectual and continued to the familial. Now on to societal.

Elisabeth Leseur on the societal duty of Christians

Just as important, every Christian woman has a responsibility to society. Because of your education, you will be able to accomplish more and must work with all your strength to improve the material and moral condition of others, especially of the dispossessed masses that, though often deceived and taken advantage of, are, nevertheless, still good hearted and are the great reserves of the nation and of the church. You see, we must never forget the tender words spoken one day by Jesus on seeing the crowd gathered around him, "I have compassion on the crowd" (Mark 8:2).

Like him, let us be compassionate, and love these people...

Two notes here:

(1) Elisabeth mentions here a second, practical purpose of education ("you will be able to accomplish more").

(2) This is an important reminder not to look down on the masses, the crowd, what we often call today the "mainstream." We often mistake "deceived" and "taken advantage of" for "stupid", "hopeless," and "bad."

Let us go to them as brothers and sisters, not as superiors or benefactors, and show them

• that real equality is found only in the teachings of Christianity, which recognizes the same human dignity in all people, assigns to them the same end, and promises them the same happiness.
  
• ...that the church alone carries out the ideal of fraternity and imposes it as a law upon her children, and
• that she alone, according to the sayings of Jesus assures us true freedom: "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free" (John 8:31).

(Yeah, I see what you did there. Liberté, égalité, fraternité.)

Quite soon... you will be able to share to a greater degree in the social action that is emerging everywhere, choosing those [activities] that are at the same time the most spiritual and the most practical....Never be one of those who want to be the command and not an ordinary soldier, who want only to participate in the good projects they create and only recognize as good anything that is done in their particular way according to their own procedures. Here, as elsewhere, you should have a broad mind and generous heart; put up with the contradictions and difficulties that are the price of success; work day by day without looking for results, but be confident that God will make something of your efforts.

This is all quite practical advice about working with and for others on visible things out in the world. Don't be a control freak; be broad-minded and generous; expect hardships to result even from successes; don't get discouraged if the payoff is smaller than you wish.

Remember, however, that... during this period of transition through which we are passing, in order to work to bring about a new Christian social order, you must prepare yourself by making a serious study of these very difficult problems, bringing to any attempt at their solution very great prudence together with Christian courage.

I confess I am not exactly sure what "period of transition" she is referring to exactly. At the time, there would have been public controversy and debate that several months later would culminate in the 1905 "Law on the Separation of Churches and the State." I suspect (based on some cursory Wikipedia research) she is writing to counter a notion that French Catholics must be monarchists á la Action Française. Wikipedia says: "The Dreyfus Affair gave some Catholics the impression that Catholicism is not compatible with democracy." But Elisabeth says:

Catholics are not afraid of democracy; they know that the church baptized, transformed, and civilized barbarians, and that the masses of our people still retain a rudimentary seed of Christianity, capable of growing and developing into a tree with spreading branches. Catholics love these sister souls and long to make them Christian.

Even if they make themselves liable to be thought to be socialists or revolutionaries by their embittered opponents,

-- and here, my amateur analysis makes me think Elisabeth is thinking of opponents who would be right-wing monarchist Catholics, not the left-wing anticlericals (her husband Félix included) which were angling to get rid of the establishment Church --

they would continue their work of social progress, saying to themselves that after all they are content to be socialists in the company of Saint Thomas Aquinas, or revolutionaries with the fathers of the church,

Love that! Elisabeth seems here to be outing herself as a political progressive -- progressive not in spite of her orthodox Catholic beliefs (which are at this time popularly associated with the French right wing) but because of them. She invokes Aquinas and the church fathers and implies that Catholic tradition is -- or at least can be interpreted as being -- on the side of democracy.

(At the same time, don't forget that she earlier urged her niece "to bring about a new Christian social order." Maybe she foresees the defeat of antidisestablishmentarianism*, and already envisions a transformed French church, no longer protected by the state but also no longer in thrall to it. If that's the case, maybe she would say to those faithful Catholics who are disappointed with the political situation in the U.S. today, Take heart.)

Repeating myself for clarity,

after all they are content to be socialists in the company of Saint Thomas Aquinas, or revolutionaries with the fathers of the church, and that only the people who do nothing at all can hope to avoid being called unpleasant names.

At this cost, what Catholic worthy of the name would want to avoid such epithets?

Sounds to me like Elisabeth subscribes to the political doctrine that if you're pissing off both the left and the right, you must be on the correct track. I can drink to that.

+ + +

The very next letter in the collection is written about a year after this one, and to a young man -- "A Little Essay on the Christian Life." Like the one we've just gone through, this letter was composed by Elisabeth for the occasion of a god child's first communion. This time the godchild is her oldest nephew, André Duron. The editor has noted that although Marie was Elisabeth's only niece, she had several nephews, and she intended to further develop the thoughts in the latter essay as her other nephews came of age.

The second letter is not called "on the Christian life of men," but simply "on the Christian life." I think it clear that in the later letter she meant to give general, non-gendered advice; and indeed the letter contains good advice for either men or women; but it still has a masculine sort of tone, a frankness to it, which I appreciate very much. I will take a look at her letter to André next time.

____________________

*It's taken me a long time, but I finally managed to use this word in a blog post.

 

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Elisabeth Leseur's "An Essay on the Christian Life of Women," III. Duty to family: immediate, extended, neighbor.

Continuing a series on the writings of Elisabeth Leseur, which I started here and continued here.

Last time I quoted some of Elisabeth's advice to her niece:

From now on you ought to prepare yourself for this great task that is required of each of us... All Christians have the same aim and ideal, in every age... But circumstances require them to adapt their mode of action...

As a matter of fact, our Christian duty appears under a threefold aspect--

• intellectual,
• familial,
• and social.

I went on to cover the section about education and intellectual development, and now I want to move on to the other two aspects of Christian duty.

Leseur on a Christian woman's familial duty

Your second responsibility is for your family... With the church, I believe that the whole structure of our moral, national, and social life is based on the family, and I am convinced that everything done for the family enhances the greatness and strength of peoples and societies; on the other hand, they are irretrievably destroyed as soon as the family, the cornerstone of the structure, is attacked.

Thus, you will do all you can to strengthen in every way respect for family life. 

Elisabeth here develops the theme of concentric circles, from the private to the public, where development of an "interior" aspect illuminates the "exterior" aspects.  That "light-flowing-from-center-to-outside" concept appears explicitly in her following directions:

Later on, when you have your own family, you will make your home a warm and lively center of influence, and you will be a guiding spirit for those who live in the light that you spread.

 You will be a friend and companion to your husband, and a guide and model of moral strength to your children.  

For the woman of faith, the return for such perseverance, Elisabeth promises, is "one of those mysterious compensations, unknown on a purely human level but known only in God:" 

You will possess that precious treasure... a serenity and peace of mind that nothing can destroy, neither trials nor losses, since God is their source, and God gives them [serenity and peace of mind] sometimes in proportion to our sufferings.

To me, this sounds like more development of Elisabeth's theme that the gift of faith adds to and transforms the gifts (and corresponding responsibilities) that are natural, without taking anything away from those natural gifts.  I get the impression that Elisabeth would also advise a "natural" (unbelieving) woman to strengthen respect for family life, to make her home warm and lively and influential for the good, to befriend her husband, to guide her children.  These duties can be difficult by their nature; but because Elisabeth trusts that her niece will have faith, she promises that the experience of difficulties will be transformed.

(The difference, I think, is that in the light of faith the difficulties we encounter -- our suffering -- is not meaningless, but has meaning.)

Then, and even now, in the midst of your extended family --

(clever with the "even now!"  Elisabeth represents, of course, Marie's "extended family" at present.)

   -- you will develop the habit through daily effort and the help of God's grace to "possess your soul in peace," to be gently and lovingly composed in your attitude towards events, people, and life itself.  

Sometimes managing to smile requires true heroism; may your smile, whether thoughtful or joyful, always do good.

I like the distinction between "joyful" smiles and "thoughtful" smiles.  Nothing there about fake vs. real smiles; it's more like "spontaneous" vs. "deliberate."  

You will meet many people throughout your life, but by preference go to the weakest, the most embittered, and the most marginalized, and regardless of your trials and sorrows, you should know "to rejoice with those who rejoice," and to share in the happiness of others.

I find this last bit interesting, appearing as it does in the section of the letter devoted to "family - extended" rather than in the section which follows about "society."  Perhaps Elisabeth meant only a stylistic segue as she moves outward from the family, to the extended family, to the society.  I also see in the placement of this mention a notion that the people whom we encounter "in person" are more like "extra-extended family" than they are like faceless representatives of "society."  I think the word we're going for here is "neighbor," anyone who can know us and be known by us.

So the advice we have from Elisabeth as regards family -- although she expresses it more as a confident prediction than as counsel -- is:

• Do all you can to strengthen respect for family life
• Make your home a warm and lively center of influence
• To those who live in that influence, be a "guiding spirit"
• To your husband, be a friend and companion
• To your children, be a guide, and a model of moral strength
• When family duty is hard, expect faith to supply consolations
• In reaction to events, people, and life:  make daily effort to achieve composure, asking for God's help
• With effort -- sometimes a heroic one -- you can manage a "thoughtful" smile that may do good
• By preference go to "the weakest, the most embittered, and the most marginalized"
• Even in the midst of your own trials, "rejoice with those who rejoice"

Elisabeth's center-to-outward theme expands in the next part, duty to society.  Next time!

 

Profiling.

Victor Davis Hanson writes approvingly in National Review of his father's policy of teaching his kids to employ age-and-racial profiling when evaluating the threat posed by passersby:

[Attorney General Eric] Holder[, in an address to the NAACP,] noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the lecture that his father long ago gave him....about the dangers of police stereotyping of young black males....

Yet I fear that for every lecture of the sort that Holder is forced to give his son, millions of non-African-Americans are offering their own versions of ensuring safety to their progeny.

In my case, the sermon — aside from constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race — was very precise....[H]e once advised me, “When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” Note what he did not say to me. He did not employ language like “typical black person.” He did not advise extra caution about black women, the elderly, or the very young — or about young Asian Punjabi, or Native American males.  In other words, the advice was not about race per se, but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.

It was after some first-hand episodes with young African-American males that I offered a similar lecture to my own son. The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping. 

There's so much wrong with this.  I hardly know where to start.

(1) "The advice was not about race... but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

Let's deal with the misdirection first.  It's rather precious to claim that a statement about "males of one particular age and race" is, not in fact, about race.    Especially when you take care explicitly to point out that males of the same age but of different races are excluded.

Second.  A "tendency" is something an individual, not a population, has; it means a "proneness to a particular kind of thought or action."  There are certainly individuals out there who have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.  An example of a person who had a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime would be Ted Bundy, who certainly committed more than his share.  You can, I suppose, generalize to some groups by using a bit of circular reasoning, and truthfully say, "Serial killers have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

But you don't get to say, "young black males have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

You can say something like, "Statistically speaking, young black males are overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime."  This is, sadly, true.

And it is not equivalent to the statement that Hanson made, which implies that any young black male has a tendency to commit crime -- not just A crime, but "an inordinate amount" of it!  No evidence of malfeasance visible?  The tendency must be latent!  It's just lurking deep inside him, waiting to leap out!

Am I being pedantic?  Yes, because I believe that words have meanings that matter. 

Perhaps Hanson was being careless with his language, but perhaps not.  Perhaps the lesson sank in exactly as he describes it.  Young black males are dangerous.

(2) "The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping."

More misdirection.  What Hanson means to say is that his decision to stereotype was born out of experience -- anecdotes that he, personally, lived through.  It's understandable that Hanson wants to justify himself by explaining where the decision came from.  It's laughable to pretend that somehow that makes it not "stereotyping."

(3) These are the words of someone who doesn't live in a neighborhood with many young black males.  I live in the residential urban core of a medium-size American city.  I live blocks away from several public schools and charter schools and a Catholic school whose stated mission is to serve students from underprivileged backgrounds.  If I was to "be careful" every time I was approached by a group of black youths, I'd have to "be careful" every time I went outside.  Especially right after school let out.  

It would be positively ridiculous for me to give this advice to my kids as they head out the door, because it would have to be enacted so often as to be entirely useless.  Roughly a quarter of the other children on the playground, many of the people they pass on the way to the convenience store for candy, the motorists who stop at the light to let them cross, will be "young black males."  

Hey, I understand human nature.  The unfamiliar sets off internal alarms.  That's one of the ways we protect ourselves and our kids:  by "being careful" when we see the unfamiliar.  When you first move into a neighborhood where lots of people are a different race from you, or culturally different from you in some other way -- if it's the first time you've ever lived in a place where that's the case -- the internal alarms are likely to go off way more than they should.   Because all the people are unfamiliar in some, obvious, way, and you haven't learned -- as you will with familiarity -- to ignore this red herring and returned to judge the safety of people in more useful ways.

And there are many more useful ways.  There are, in fact, other cues that you should be looking for to tell you whether someone, or a group of someones, is up to no good.  There are environmental cues that you should be looking for to tell you whether you are in a place that is relatively safe, or in a place that is relatively dangerous for you.  A good overview of these cues can be found in Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear.  Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his own reply to Hanson's piece, gives some examples:

Those of who have spent much of our lives living in relatively high crime neighborhoods grasp this particular stupidity immediately. We have a great many strategies which we employ to try to protect ourselves and our children. We tell them to watch who you are walking with, to not go to neighborhoods where you don't know anyone, that when a crowd runs toward a fight they should go the other way, to avoid blocks with busted street-lights, to keep their head up while your walking, to not daydream and to be aware of their surroundings.

When you start getting down to particular neighborhoods the advice gets even more specific--don't cut through the woods to get to school, stay away from Jermaine Wilks, don't go to Mondawmin on the first hot day of the year etc. There is a great scene in the film The Interruptors when one of the anti-violence workers notes that when she sees a bunch of people in a place, and then they all suddenly clear out, she knows something is coming down. My point is that parents who regularly have to cope with violent crime understand the advantages of good, solid intelligence. They know that saying '"stay away from black kids" is the equivalent of looking at 9/11, shrugging ones shoulders and saying, "It was them Muslims." 

(4)  When police release a description of a suspect who's been seen in such-and-such a neighborhood, the description usually includes age, race, and gender.  I have heard people use this as the rationale for evaluating the threat level of passersby via age-race-gender profiling.  But here's the thing:  The reason for including very obvious but general characteristics like age, race, and gender in a suspect's description is not to pinpoint a suspect ("young black male" or "middle-aged large woman" would describe a large number of the inhabitants of many neighborhoods) but to quickly exclude people who do NOT fit that description from the search.  It's like reading resumés:  when the pile is too big to deal with, you make it smaller as simply as possible, by throwing out all the people who obviously don't have the credentials you're looking for.  The pile that is left may or may not contain your target, but at least it's more manageable.

Apply this concept to the "be careful of young black males" advice, thinking, "Well, it's just a quick way to size up the situation, maybe you don't have time to conduct a more thorough evaluation," and you're treading in dangerous territory indeed:  the unspoken belief that people who aren't young black men can automatically be trusted not to be dangerous!  Here's the thing:  If safety is on the line, you owe it to yourself to conduct the thorough, reality-based evaluation, not the cursory evaluation based on externals that aren't actually predictive.

(5)  Still not convinced?  Still think it's a handy safety rule to teach your kids to avoid young black males?  (After all, they are overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime!)  

Let's suppose, for a rather awful moment, that growing up with an ingrained fear of young black males would, in fact, marginally increase the safety of our youngsters.  Suppose what Hanson seems to believe were really true.

Would the end justify the means?

Would a tiny increase in safety -- caused by an increase in caution around Those People -- caused by drumming into our children a fear of Those People -- be worth the damage we would be doing?

I don't want my kids to grow up judging random people's dangerousness on superficialities like age, race, and gender.*

I'm not confident that you can undo the damage from "young black males are potential trouble" by following it up with "but you should always judge a man on his merits"  (as Hanson claims his father did).

I think it's a short mental step from "that kind of person is likely to be more dangerous" to "that kind of person is likely to be less worthy."

I think it's a short mental step from "sometimes, judging people on looks alone is the right thing to do" to "often, judging people on superficialities is the right thing to do."

I think kids might take that extra step without their parents knowing.

I don't believe a marginal increase in safety justifies even every useful precaution one might take.  I enjoy downhill skiing, and I don't stay on the easy slopes just because they're safer.  I could keep my kids physically safer by locking the doors and never letting them outside; but they have growing to do, and that growing will be so much healthier if they can do it out in the world where there are dangers as well as wonders.

Even if teaching them to be more fearful of people who are of particular races would make them safer on the outside -- I won't risk what it might do to their hearts.

(My heart hurts when I think about how many times I have not been able to shield their ears from some other adult saying to another, "You know how those ______ are," in some family gathering or another.  Or the jokes.  I'm not anti-joke.  Humor is complicated.  But I am anti-make-impressions-on-my-impressionable-kid.)

And, frankly, I haven't seen a whit of evidence that it would make them safer.  I can think of many reasons why it wouldn't.  I have to agree with Coates that "this is the kind of advice which betrays a greater interest in maintaining one's worldview than in maintaining one's safety."

 

 __________________________________________

*She says, although admittedly she tells children that when they need to choose a safe person to ask for help in a strange situation, they should seek out a woman.  A mommy in particular.  (This is advice straight out of de Becker's book.)  But I maintain that the situation of "you are vulnerable and need help in a stressful situation, choose the right person to ask for assistance" is a bit different from "you are not in any particularly dangerous situation, choose which people to be afraid of".  Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Elisabeth Leseur's "An Essay on the Christian Life of Women," II. The threefold duty, and advice concerning education.

Continuing my series on the writings of Elisabeth Leseur, which I started here.

This is the life of faith, understood not as passive acquiescence on the part of the mind, but as an active acceptance, a lively assimilation of truths that surpass the mind and which constant experience, suggested and directed by grace, impresses upon us. You will possess this life, and it is now going to begin in you... You will be a link in the long chain that Christian tradition is slowly forming and that will last to the end of time. You will, in a greater or less degree, enrich the collective consciousness of Christianity by your effort, energy, and sacrifices.

With this Elisabeth Leseur makes a transition from the introductory part of her letter to the meat of it: advice and instruction to an adolescent niece about to make her first Communion. In the beginning, she described how the faith of a Christian enriches and transforms the natural human life -- itself something worthy and full -- into a new life that is invisibly and immeasurably valuable, because animated within by new motives and intention. Now she turns to counsel.

From now on you ought to prepare yourself for this great task that is required of each of us... All Christians have the same aim and ideal, in every age... But circumstances require them to adapt their mode of action...

As a matter of fact, our Christian duty appears under a threefold aspect--

• intellectual,
• familial,
• and social.

And indeed, the counsel that Elisabeth will offer Marie is neatly divided into a description of the Christian woman's duties in these three spheres.

Before visiting each one, though, let's look at the next sentence, because of what it reveals about Leseur's philosophy:

I do not add its spiritual dimension because the other three [that is, the intellectual, the familial, and the social] are only different forms of the religious responsibilities imposed on us all.

An interesting definition of the scope of the spirit, to say the least!

 

Leseur on a Christian woman's intellectual duty

You ought to be a woman of real worth, well educated, with your mind open to every argument from outside. You ought to know how to discern among incoherent and varying ideas and systems that which is true or fruitful in each.... In this patient search for the truth and a habit of fairness that we ought to have towards others and their ideas, we need integrity of mind, clear judgment, and solid learning.

These are the words of a woman who is completely confident in the reasonableness and attractiveness of her faith -- and in the reasonableness and good will of the young lady who will read her letter! Elisabeth has no fear that any outside argument, system, or idea will tear her niece away from her proper destiny. This is not cautionary advice about keeping away from dangerous notions or dangerous people. This is encouraging, ennobling advice to get out there and fight the good fight -- with the sharpest of weapons.

Consequently, you need a serious education; there should be nothing superficial or mediocre, not only in your literary and scientific studies, but also in the intellectual knowledge that you ought to have of all things Christian.

I am sometimes shocked to see how completely ignorant most women are of the religion they profess... its living and imperishable dogmas are to them a dead weight that they drag around, and their appalling narrowness in matters of doctrine shows how completely they fail to recognize the heart of Christ beating for them under the veil of rituals and symbols.... a woman who 'practices' her religion, but who has nothing of that nobility of spirit, that interior beauty and liveliness of soul that every Christian woman ought to display.

...Devotional practices ought never to be anything other than the manifestation of what lies in one's depths. We must first thoroughly grasp the truth that such practices help to enliven within us. So, too , we must grasp the harmony of the Church as a whole, the vitality and power of Christian teachings, and the moral and social value of Catholic doctrine.

I hope... that... you will be a thoughtful Christian and that you will understand the reasons that undergird your faith and the grounds that you have for hope and worship. Then, when you will have matured.... you will bring a real spiritual and theological awareness to your religious practices, and you will reject all that might lead others... to suppose Christians to be eccentric and narrow-minded.

Here is a vision, not of spirituality coexisting with intellect, but of spirituality AS intellect. Human understanding of the theology under worship, plus the light of faith that is a gift from God, plus attention to devotional activities, plus maturity, equals a fully developed Christian spirit.

You must also make every effort to increase your depth of human learning; I should like you to be very well educated or even learned...

A woman is responsible for her intellectual development... so as to be capable one day of simultaneously fulfilling her role as a mother and her duty toward the society in which she lives. For it stands in need of illumination, faint though it may be, from all of us.

When we work not for trivial satisfactions but to strengthen our minds so that others may benefit from our work, we can be sure that it will be fruitful, and that God will bless it....

Once more let me remind you that none of our disinterested or generous efforts is ever lost.

Here is another echo of this threefold religious duty. This time she places one in primacy over the others. For Elisabeth, the intellectual duty -- the interior transformation of the self -- comes first. It prepares the way for the exterior manifestations that are the familial duties (motherhood, for women) and the social ones.

(Much as, in the previous paragraphs about religious education, Elisabeth insisted that devotional practices must be grounded in a thorough understanding of the faith.)

Here we find out a little of why Elisabeth believes in women's education. The education of Christian women is not to fit them for making money, or to give them better parenting skills, or even so they can teach the next generation. No, it is vastly more important than that! The education of Christian women is to make them into sources of "illumination" -- or, rather, channels of an illumination of which the true source is God. The illumination comes from the interior, invisible development of the self, and cannot help but transmit outward to fall upon the family and on the society through her actions.

No one with Elisabeth's conviction that every human action has incalculable value and consequence, could ever dismiss the worth of a woman's education.

So here is a summary of Elisabeth's program of the intellectual duty of Christians:

• Acquire the best education you can
• Be open to listening to all kinds of ideas
• Thoroughly understand the doctrines and teachings of the Church, and understand the reasoning behind all your devotional practices
• Work "not for trivial satisfactions but to strengthen" your mind so that others may benefit

Next time, we'll revisit what Elisabeth advises about these external duties.

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Elisabeth Leseur's An Essay on the Christian Life of Women, I. External and interior realities.

A couple of days ago I received my copy of Elisabeth Leseur: Selected Writings, which I ordered almost immediately after I "discovered" her in a blog post last week. I briefly scanned through the diary entries that form the front part of the book, and then I decided to skip them and go straight to her essays and letters -- writings that were meant by her at the time of writing to have an audience, composed syntheses of the thoughts she may have recorded in bits and pieces in hr diary.

(I always feel it's better to get to know a writer first via the voice she presented to the world, before turning to something more intimate like diary entries or even letters. It's after I become intrigued by the themes found in stories, novels, and philosophies that, hungry for more, I have the motivation to look deeper inside a mind and see the rawer, scattered threads from which the big-picture was woven with labor. Just to name two such writers in my library -- why would I want to read the collected letters of Flannery O'Connor before I became fascinated by the mind which could produce such characters and stories, or the letters of Richard Feynman before being charmed by his eccentric and clear way of setting out the principles of advanced physics?)

At any rate, the first piece I turned to was An Essay on the Christian Life of Women, which Elisabeth wrote to her goddaughter Marie on the occasion of the child's first Communion. I didn't see any mention of it in the book, but from what I know about French Catholic culture around the turn of the century, it's likely that Marie was twelve to fourteen years old when she received this letter; delaying first communion till adolescence was at that time a common practice that would not be condemned until 1910 (Quam Singulari, Pius X).

This little letter turned out to be a great introduction to Elisabeth's thought, as we might expect since she wrote it as a sort of "introduction to the Christian life" for a young person.

I'll starte with one tiny detail which charmed me. Elisabeth Leseur was opposed to "indiscreet proselytism," and strongly believed that her calling was to preach the Gospel in hidden ways. I love the way she first plainly testifies about God's work in her own life, but then, pauses to express respect her niece's intellectual autonomy by, essentially, acknowledging that she hopes for Marie's permission before she writes to her openly about Marie's own interior life:

Now, I want to talk to you and pass on to you some of my most important thoughts and deepest convictions, which by God's grace and inspiration are the fruit of the effort, meditation, prayer, and work of many years. All the good in me I owe to God alone, whose parental and continuous action is so visible in my life that, in spite of great trials... I can still fervently thank him and try to transform myself and my life for his service in the future.

If it is all right with you, I will talk to you about your first communion, and especially about your Christian life that will follow from it. I will talk about what you can and ought to do to become spiritually strong, to make your life fruitful in good works, and to share with others, according to the great law of Christian solidarity, the gifts that you have received.

It seems a small thing, but it stood out to me as emblematic of the degree to which Elisabeth felt she was called to understand and respect other people, who necessarily walk a hidden interior path.

Here is another passage that makes reference to an "other," in this case not Marie, but human beings who do not share the Christian faith. She is laying out her theological understanding of what faith is, by contrasting people who do not have it with people who do. But note the positive, fully-human way that Elisabeth describes all people; she doesn't say that unbelievers are any less, nor does she suggest that they are endangered or that God loves them less. Rather, faith adds something to the fully human, subtracting nothing.

Every individual is a thinking, reasoning being, illumined by that natural light which is the first degree of the divine intelligence, as you will learn later from Saint Augustine. This is the light that Saint John says enlightens everyone who comes into the world. Those who know no other will be judged by God according to this light. We, too, possess it, and it leads us to the place where the light of faith begins, to that point where, as Pascal says, "reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it."

This light of faith comes directly from God and shapes our supernatural existence. It gives our actions, which appear to resemble those of other people, an end that the actions of others do not have, and it gives an incomparable value to ourselves and to souls. Our bodily and rational lives differ in no way from those of the other members of the human race, but there is something "beyond," not, as all too many people imagine, antagonistic to this life. There is a higher life, which permeates our entire selves, transforming them, giving them motives for action, supernatural like itself, and fashioning our outer lives into the likeness of our innermost being, so as to create an harmonious unity.

This supernatural light never overshadows the human mind and its learning. Rather, shedding its rays upon them, it illumines them more intensely... It reaches the soul within and gives it a motive for living and acting...

Elisabeth writes with profound respect for the natural human intelligence and reason which exists prior to the gift of faith. It is clear that she regards those who enjoy the "natural light," and no other, as fully realizable human beings in a natural sense.

There is, too, a remarkably Eucharistic vision of the human person here. I love her insistence that the actions of Christians "appear to resemble" those of other people -- on the outside, they look the same and perhaps have the same effects as the actions of other people. The exterior has a natural appearance. But in those who have faith, a divine gift alters something wholly invisible, and not demonstrable to others -- the motives, the intention, the end-goal behind those actions.

Can any of us prove to another what were our motives and intentions behind such and such an action? No? Are motives real, are or they imaginary? Do they matter? I think they are real, and that they do matter, although they are not material. Is there a sense in which our comprehension of the reality of an action is transformed by knowledge of the intention that motivated it? I think so. But, again, motives and intentions are not material and can never be demonstrated -- only testified to. The reality is transformed, has meaning, although the externals appear the same.

I know many people, Christians included, find themselves asking -- either in general or about some specific matter: Do I have faith? Has God given me any? There is nothing I can see to point to -- how can I know if I have been internally transformed?

Leseur's comments here make me wonder if one sort of test is to ask oneself: Although I look the same and act the same, have I new motives and intentions that I would not have were I merely a "natural" man or woman?

Another riff on the same Eucharistic theme of hidden interior reality that emphasizes, by contrast, the vast significance of our external choices and thereby the value of every human person:

[N]eutrality is impossible where it is a question of doing the good... Every person is an incalculable force, bearing within her a little of the future. Until the end of time our words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves is lost, but our words and works, passed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to later generations.

This is why life is something sacred, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly but to understand its value and use it so that when we have finished our lives we will have increased the amount of good in the world.

This is an astonishingly clear vision of the value of every human life and the import of free will. I found an echo of the same theme reiterated in a quote from an earlier letter to Charles Duvent which appeared in the introduction to this part of the book:

The first thing to do is to try to become our best selves... And God will do the rest. Our effort, our sacrifices, our actions, even the most hidden, will not be lost. This is my absolute conviction: everything has a long-lasting and profound repercussion.

This thought leaves little room for discouragement, but it does not permit laziness.... I am unable to despair of humanity.

With that, I'll stop for now, and next time write about the advice that Elisabeth offered to Marie as the younger girl was about to set out on the Christian life.

 

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I think I can eat, and I think eating gives me energy now.

Today I felt better most of the day than I had in a while. H. and M. -- not to be confused with H&M, I suppose -- came over with all their kids. Originally we had planned to do a little schooling here and there, just to stay in practice. But then my first trimester hit me like a truck, and H.'s house suffered a series of basement floods, and various people had to leave town for various reasons, and....

Somehow it has just seemed like a better idea to sit around and drink coffee on the back deck while the 11 kids bounce on the trampoline, or sit around and drink tea in my living room while the 11 kids watch movies and play video games and build elaborate horse-racing tracks in Minecraft.

This morning I got up with Mark and nursed the toddler on the couch while we had coffee; I wrote quizzes for next year's eighth grade world history. M. arrived and we chatted while I set up a cold cut tray and mini-bagels and carrot sticks and bananas for the children's lunch. I made gazpacho for the grownups:

(First chill, then process till smooth: 2 lbs whole fresh tomatoes, quartered; half a fresh jalapeño; one peeled cucumber; half a green bell pepper; one clove garlic; several leaves of fresh basil; a teaspoon or more of salt; 1 cup water; 2 tbsp red wine vinegar; and a large heel of torn-up, day-old, crusty French bread.)

After lunch we cleaned up and had a leisurely afternoon of interesting discussions, temporarily interrupted with a (bought) birthday cake for one of M.'s girls at snack time. All the friends left just as Mark was coming in from work. He laid out a dinner of Leftover Buffet so that we could quickly clean up and go to the Y for family gym time.

The three younger kids disappeared into the maw of the child care room. My oldest went to the pool for a swim. Mark went to lift weights. I let the women's locker room door (WOMEN AGE 18+ ONLY) sigh closed behind me.

I changed into running clothes (still regular running pants, but today was the first day in a maternity running shirt). I have a habit, maybe a bad one, of picking lockers directly in front of the full-length mirror. I can't not look at myself, always appraising whether I am taking good enough care to remain in acceptable shape. I probably should be avoiding those lockers especially right now, because I can't deny that I am feeling lumper than usual, and it isn't generally a good feeling.

You know how the first trimester is. You eat what appeals, what stays down, even if it's fried chicken sandwiches and cups of artificially flavored butterscotch pudding. You eat when your brain and your blood sugar give you the thumbs up or the panic flutter. You rest as much as you can and you can't always fit in a run or a swim at the times when you have the energy to drag yourself off the couch. I worked hard to create good habits. I thought they were strong and firmly established. They are nothing but spun-sugar when the first trimester comes along. Pregnancy is the great habit-destroyer. It scours the ground clean.

So I am feeling very lumpy; I told Facebook a few days ago that I look about five months pregnant, and I don't think that is an exaggeration. It isn't a baby bump; this happened to me last time. By the time I had been pregnant for a few weeks, my core muscles had opened up and relaxed so much that my whole belly distended outward. It is unnerving to say the least. In fact it is sort of weirdly fascinating. I stand there in front of the full length mirror in the (mostly empty locker room, experimenting with sucking in my gut and letting it out again. I can't believe the change from just a few weeks ago. I have put on about ten pounds. I am excited to be having a baby, looking forward to hearing the heartbeat in three weeks if all goes well, but there is always a sort of culture shock to find oneself suddenly in a body with very different properties.

Here is the new thing I am trying this pregnancy for runs at the gym: warming up on the stair machine. I don't grab the handles, I let my arms swing, so that my hip motion isn't constrained and I am forced to attend to balance. As my pregnancy progresses, I plan to gradually increase the time on the stairclimber and decrease the time on the running track; last time I found that running got quite uncomfortable around the 24th or 25th week, but the stair machine felt great on the day I went into labor. I plan to use that knowledge this time.

So today I did 7 minutes of stair climbing and then went to the track, and the minute I started running I knew I was going to have a great run. I don't know if the track just felt easy after the climbing, or if it was the temperature drop as you go from the fitness center to the running track at the other end of the building, or if it was a well-timed blood sugar rise from my dinner digesting, but I fairly flew. At least I felt like I did; I forgot my stopwatch, so I couldn't check. But it felt so good! I know I went faster than usual, because right now, sitting on the couch with my iPad on my lap, I can feel the soreness all up and down my thighs and the core muscles on my sides. I'm tired now, but it is the good tired of having exercised. After weeks of the crushing weariness of first trimester that makes you wonder if you what you are really gestating is not a fetus but a flu virus, this is an improvement.

I passed the time as I circled the track by thinking bitterly about the fried things and grilled cheese sandwich crusts and ketchup and puddings and ginger ale and plain white rice I have been putting into my body, and envisioning a new mantra: Grown-up food will help my baby grow. I pictured myself over and over again saying no to the kids' leftover frozen pepperoni pizza for tomorrow's lunch, and instead sitting down to a cup of chilled gazpacho drizzled with olive oil, and a half-sandwich of salmon salad and avocado, and a pile of fresh, crunchy sugar snap peas.

I feel like I have done my time lying around sipping sugar water and eating ginger candy with the shades down, dully working crossword puzzles or browsing Reddit until I fall asleep with my glasses on. It's time to work for my keep again. Maybe it's not as easy, but sensory input is so much more satisfying.

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Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur: A new "little way?"

This morning I encountered a somewhat obscure figure, about whom I now want to know more:  Elisabeth Leseur.  She was a married Frenchwoman, born 1866 and died of cancer in 1914 at the age of 48.  

By all accounts, she was a remarkable person who developed a truly unique method of living out a sacrificial calling to evangelize the people around her by example, rather than words.  In its originality, completeness, deceptive simplicity, and depth, I am reminded of the spiritual work of St. Thérèse, who was her contemporary.  

Follow me to find out more about her and see if you agree.

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A few details from her Wikipedia page (the following are barely abbreviated direct quotes) will give you an overview of the milieu in which she lived her life:

•  Elisabeth was born to a wealthy, bourgeous French family.
•  She had had hepatitis as a child, and it recurred throughout her life with attacks of varying severity.
• She met Félix Leseur (1861–1950), also from an affluent, Catholic family [but no longer a practicing Catholic] in 1887. 
• Dr. Félix Leseur soon became well known as the editor of an anti-clerical, atheistic newspaper in Paris.
• Their marriage was a happy one. 
• Well-to-do by birth and marriage, she was a part of a social group that was cultured, educated, and generally antireligious.
• Elizabeth underwent a religious conversion when she was thirty-two and already married. 
• From the beginning, she organized her spiritual life around a disciplined pattern of prayer, meditation, reading, sacramental practice, and writing. Charity was the organizing principle of her asceticism. In her approach to mortification, she followed St. Francis de Sales who recommended moderation and internal, hidden strategies instead of external practices.
• Her correspondence with Soeur Marie Goby [from 1911 until Elisabeth's 1914 death] was a source of companionship and mutual spiritual support for both women.
• Her husband, inconsolable in his grief, was converted by her writings and an uncanny sense of her presence after her death.
• Félix subsequently published his wife's journal... and letters to Soeur Goby.  He was ordained in 1923.  He was instrumental in opening the cause for Elisabeth's beatification as a saint.

The emphasis on "internal, hidden strategies" is mine.

I first learned about Elisabeth Leseur from this post at Disputations:

In her essay, "Elisabeth Leseur, A Strangely Forgotten Modern Saint" Janet K. Ruffing, R.S.M., proposes seven characteristics of this Servant of God's lay sanctity... Here are the seven characteristics identified by Ruffing, along with my clumsy descriptions. 

1. An apostolic strategy in a hostile, secular milieu. ...Outnumbered everybody:1, Elisabeth chose the path of non-confrontation, despite the frequent wounds inflicted by the conversation of her vocally anti-Catholic friends.
   
   This wasn't a purely passive approach. She saw her role as trying "always to understand everyone and everything. Not to argue, to work through contact and example; to dissipate prejudice, to show God and make Him felt without speaking of him; to strengthen one's intelligence, enlarge one's soul; to love without tiring, in spite of disappointment and indifference... to open wide one's soul to show the light in it and the truth that lives there, and let that truth create and transform, without merit of ours but simply by the fact of its presence in us."
   
    
2. A redemptive and transformative use of her physical and emotional suffering....
   
    
3. A mature sense of agency and surrender. Elisabeth understood a woman's life as one of duties: "to bear children ... to develop unceasingly one's intelligence, to strengthen one's character, to become a creature of thought and will... to view life with joy and to face it with energy... to be able to understand one's time and not despair of the future." These duties in turn were ordered to the Christian duty of bringing Christ to those who suffer and to those who do not know Him.
   
    
4. An active intellectual life....
   
    
5. Devotion to her husband and [extended] family. This she saw as her principal duty, as a woman and as a Christian, notwithstanding her husband's hostility to her faith.
   
    
6. A lay pattern of devotional and ascetical life. She developed her own rule of life, combining the discipline of daily prayer with an active home and social presence. According to Ruffing, her home-grown asceticism was "based on silence [with respect to discussing religion with her husband], self-giving, and austerity."
   
    
7. A relationship of mutuality and support in her friendship with Souer Gaby.... After years of being essentially alone on her walk of faith, she finally found someone to walk with her.

 

I followed the link from the Disputations post and read Ruffing's entire essay about Elisabeth Leseur, reproduced as a PDF version from a chapter in a book.*  The chapter is 13 pages long and begins with a brief introduction that presents Elisabeth, should her cause for canonization be successful, as an all-too-rare example of the Church putting forward a married laywoman as and example of how to live out one's Christian vocation in daily life.  

Take a few minutes and read it.

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I think I was most struck by two aspects of Elisabeth's life:  

(1) her strategy of silently evangelizing the people around her, particularly her husband, through diligent empathy, secret prayer, and self-giving; and

(2) her integration of her life as a married woman with her spirituality, in particular, the "rule of life" she set out for herself.  

On (2), I'd like to pull out a few quotes from Ruffing's essay, beginning on page 125 of the book.  

On "Marriage and Family:"

One of the most appealing characteristics of Elizabeth as a saint for the laity is how well she integrated her family life and spirituality. Tutored in the Salesian spiritual tradition, she fully accepted Francis De Sales' teaching that a life of devotion was fully compatible with marriage.  Since her conversion occurred several years after her marriage, she assumed that this call to a deeper, more intimate relationship with God was to be lived as Felix's wife.

Despite the pain she increasingly suffered from Felix's inability to share faith with her as they shared everything else, every reference to her husband suggests a loving and mutually respectful relationship. She felt herself to be deeply loved by Felix, supported by his presence, com- panionship, and expressions of affection....

From his side, Felix was devoted to her and remained constant in his love and affection for her throughout her multiple illnesses. The devastation he experienced at her death evidenced the depth of his love and his emotional reliance on her. 

On "Pattern of Devotional Life and Ascetical Practices:"

Elizabeth developed a flexible rule of life that organized her devotional life and ascetical practices, which she outlined in the part of her journal titled "Book of Resolutions..."  Although she gave her life a specific structure, she adopted the two principles of flexibility and charity as determinative of her practice.

Her devotional life was never to interfere with either the comfort or needs of those she loved. She rigorously adhered to her program when she was alone and did not need to con- sider the rest of the household, and she was entirely flexible where others were concerned.

There was a daily pattern of morning and evening prayer.... She went to confession and communion every two weeks. She desired to communicate more often, if she could do so "without troubling or displeasing anyone"....Monthly,she gave one day to a spiritual retreat. For her this meant as much solitude as possible, more time in meditation, an examination of conscience, reflection on her life, and preparation for death. Annually, she tried to make a few days of retreat. 

It takes an unusual kind of listening to respond to the cryptic call to evangelize through silence.  It takes an unusual kind of perception to discern the need for a rule that is characterized by flexibility.  And yet, having done some reading about Salesian spirituality myself, and feeling a certain attraction to it, I immediately see the connection to the kind of devotion promoted by St. Francis de Sales, whose peculiarly modern voice has a lot of solid common-sense advice for women living comfortably in the world, just as it did around 1600.

To give you an example of the kind of reach she has:  According to the Wikipedia article, through her husband's exhortations she even exerted some formative influence over good old Abp. Fulton Sheen, and her story apparently appeared in some of his talks.

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Now I want to know more.  This Kindle eBook and paperback (Sophia Institute Press) purports to be an English translation of Elisabeth's diary and spiritual writings.   The author of the essay I excerpted, Janet Ruffing, has published a book of her selected writings in Paulist Press's Classics of Western Spirituality series (the same series where I originally encountered St. Francis de Sales).  Félix originally published her diaries and letters, respectively, under the titles  Journal et Pensees pour Chaque Jour (Journal and Daily Thoughts) and  Lettres sur la Souffrance (Letters on Suffering).  Amazon.fr has them, but I haven't yet found a copy for sale in the U.S.; maybe the library.

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 *Ann W. Astell, ed.  Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern:  A Search for Models, Notre Dame Press, 2000. 

Book review: The Sinner's Guide to NFP by Simcha Fisher.

Everybody knows who Simcha Fisher is, right? Right? I link to her blog and her other blog often enough, right? I don't have to fill you in?

OK, well, I recently had a chance to review a pre-publication copy of her soon-to-be-released e-book, The Sinner's Guide to NFP. (I am told there will also be an audiobook. When I find out the publication date, I'll update with a link.)

Let's start with two lines I considered including in my review of this book, and then thought better of.

Line number one: "I recommend The Sinner's Guide to NFP wholeheartedly. Why? Because it reinforces all my personal preconceptions about the exact attitude everyone should have towards NFP."

Line number two: "Simcha Fisher's attitude in The Sinner's Guide to NFP is a welcome addition to the many writings about marital chastity we've all been subjected to. If it helps your faith and practice, you should take their advice to heart. If it doesn't, you can freely ignore it. Kind of like an approved Marian apparition! Except not likely to get quite as much attention."

Now that I have those out of the way, here's a more helpful review.

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I am not Fisher's target audience. Here's a quote that explains why:

[This book is] for couples who are completely dedicated to the idea; couples who, as long as they have a good reason to postpone pregnancy, will be using NFP to do so. But so far, they have found the fabulous side effects to be elusive; and by “elusive,” I mean “horrible, horrible lies.”

I am the first person to admit that my husband and I have drunk the NFP kool-aid. Not from the very beginning of our marriage have either of us even considered artificial contraception to be an option that remains on the table. We enthusiastically recommend it to everyone we can, using Catholic arguments when we think those will work, and usingsecular arguments when we think those might work better. We "get" the concept of bearing the inevitable annoyances as a cross -- a cross that ultimately strengthens our marriage. We are temperamentally incapable of relying too much on "providence" and not enough on "prudence." We are rule-following engineer types for whom charting and data analysis practically count as a form of foreplay. By all evidence we even appear to be good at NFP.

But even if I am not the target audience, I am maybe the target reviewer, because I wholeheartedly endorse the attitude in this book. The truth is that even when you're both totally on board, NFP has features which, well, you might as well laugh at them so you don't

(a) cry or

(b) throw things at each other.

As for the state of NFP discourse, even (especially?) among faithful Catholics? Well, it can be even worse.

And that is why we need Fisher's book. It's frank, it's conversational, and it's funny. What's possibly most important: it firmly rejects the nosy judgmentalism that pervades the conversation today, choosing instead to emphasize the great variety of good paths that a couple may find as they discern together the right decisions for their family.

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Although the title of the book is The Sinner's Guide to NFP, it's really more of a loosely organized collection of essays, some of them reprinted from Fisher's popular columns in the National Catholic Register and other publications. This isn't the sort of book that takes you from "beginner" through "intermediate" to "advanced" stages of natural family planning expertise. It's more of a corrective to some of the less-helpful attitudes that often prevail. It's an attempt to help couples avoid common pitfalls -- mental, spiritual, and sexual ones.

Here are some of the topics that Fisher covers:

- Why the Church doesn't "make a list" of specific situations when it would be good to postpone a pregnancy and another list of specific situations when it's bad.

- That there are many ways to live according to God's will.

- That a cross is a cross even when you aren't the one carrying it.

- That you can follow a good path that works for you now without committing to doing it always. You get to change your plan, and you can do it without thinking that you used to be wrong.

- That if you can't laugh about sex, you're doing it wrong.

- Why we shouldn't judge others' hearts based on the appearance of their families or even on their stated reasons for their decisions.

- Some principles to keep in mind when talking to kids about sex and baby-making.

- Positive ways to think about sexual differences and disparities between husband and wife, and how to use them to grow together in chastity and complementarity.

- Why NFP is the worst family planning system in the world, except for all the others.

 

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I have a few quibbles with the way the book is presented.

First, the title is a little misleading, because it's not really organized as a guidebook. But that's not actually a problem with the content; since each chapter is a stand-alone essay, the reader can take them in any order, and skip whatever doesn't address her concerns. I could easily see individual chapters being reprinted for group discussions -- maybe even for marriage prep, if the leader is exceptionally bold.

Second, in one chapter Fisher contrasts couples "who space pregnancies using NFP" with "providentialists" who don't. An "ism" implies a belief, not a practice; I prefer not to classify couples as "providentialist" based on something they do, rather than something they think. Using that guideline, a "providentialist" (with respect to child spacing) is a person who believes one should generally not try to postpone pregnancies, and that's not the same as couple who discerns a personal calling to that path. This is a rare departure for Fisher, who generally makes a sensible distinction between what general principles advise and what particular circumstances dictate.

Third, the book doesn't quite manage to find a voice that consistently speaks to couples rather than to women. This is almost certainly a consequence of its organization as a collection of separate essays, which quite naturally were not all aimed at precisely the same audience. To Fisher's credit, it's also a natural consequence of the ease which which she can address both men and women. She clearly and sensitively articulates the concerns that seem to come up repeatedly among Catholic women; but at the same time she refuses to even dip a toe into sentimentality, let alone wallow in it.

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These three, however, are minor concerns. The Sinner's Guide can be a quick read or a lengthy immersion, depending on what you need from it. The informed Catholic reader will be glad to know that Fisher takes for granted that her reader understands basic Catholic teachings about marital chastity and family planning -- so it won't waste your time going over the fundamentals. Instead it dives right away into the lessons that can be learned from the daily putting of these principles into practice. It's a funny book, and it can be digested in small pieces. It contains a wealth of conversation starters for couples -- whether they are starting out or burning out, or just in the mood for a chat.

NFP may be the worst system in the world, but -- as Fisher writes -- it's the worst except for all the other ones. Maybe it's more accurate to say that NFP is actually a myriad of individualized systems, one for each couple striving to live out their faith through day-to-day expressions of marital sexuality -- naturally, a system that's intimate and personally tailored to circumstances, and also slightly ridiculous, because so is marital sexuality. Fisher's voice is a refreshing addition to the conversation.

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Quick takes to break the block.

Okay, pregnant-me is still sleeping a lot and using my waking time to catch up. Here are a few short items that interested me for one reason or another, but that I never managed to turn into full posts.

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Christy P. sent me a link some time ago to a site about traveling light: OneBag.com . It has tons of tips for keeping the packing weight down (including in the case of traveling with kids). I think it has some wisdom that could apply to "traveling" around town, just running errands, with your littles in tow. If you always feel like you are lugging too much around, you might find it useful.

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From the OneBag site, I followed a rabbit trail that took me to a clothing manufacturer, Scottevest, that had me wishing I had found it when I wasn't under the No-Buying-New-Nonmaternity-Clothes-When-Pregnant ban. The concept behind these folks is crazy, I know, but let me spell it out anyway:

Women's clothing with functional pockets in it.

Okay, they have men's clothes too, fair enough. And they don't have lots of different clothes. But still! A dress with pockets. Women's cargo pants with real, not cosmetic, pockets. A classic trench with a pocket capable of carrying an iPad. A travel vest with tons of pockets. I am going to autosend myself an email for a year from now, when I might conceivably be getting back into my old clothing size, to go back and check them out.

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Back when DarwinCatholic and I were posting about whether college education is worth the cost, whether a liberal arts degree is generally worthwhile, etc. -- even my husband got into it -- we were doing a lot of calculation about means and medians: costs, returns, salaries, debt, graduation rates, etc. I recently came across a short post by Tyler Cowen that reminded me of a piece of vocabulary that we should really have been using to talk about what's changed in the college calculation: variance.

If you're deciding how much to invest in a particular game, there's a big difference between a situation in which most of the possible outcomes are clustered tightly around the median, and one in which the possible outcomes are spread widely on either side of the median. Even when the two medians in question are exactly the same. In the one case, you have a very high chance of getting the value you expect out of your investment, and a low chance either of "hitting the jackpot" and doing much better or of failing miserably and ending up a big loser. In the other, there may be nearly as much chance of losing your shirt as of getting the expected value; and even if there's also a better chance of hitting the jackpot, that's not much of a consolation to the large pool of losers (especially since humans often feel worse about losing than they feel good about winning.)

I've had more statistics than the average person but somehow that never stops me from forgetting to consider the effects of variance, at least when I first look at a problem.

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The Fourth and First Amendments have been getting a lot of press lately. From Melanie B via Facebook comes this interesting link about a lawsuit brought on (comparatively rare) Third Amendment grounds. I'll save you from looking it up: it's the one protecting us from having to quarter soldiers in our homes during peacetime. The Nevada homeowner in question refused to allow into his home police who wanted to establish a "tactical advantage" against persons in a neighboring house, but the police forced their way in anyway and occupied his house.

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Another FB friend pointed to this article from the UK about a rise in rickets and scurvy there. The article's lede suggests it's related to parents who "rely on takeaways and microwave meals," and one analyst suggests it's related to the "impact of promotions, advertising, and marketing from the processed food industry."

It seems odd to blame the entire "processed food industry" for rickets and scurvy, when that is the same industry that brings things like frozen concentrated orange juice; canned and frozen fruits and vegetables of all kinds; canned oily fish such as mackerel, sardines, and salmon; and numerous other foods that would be out of reach of urban families during much of the year if we were limited to fresh, local food in season. Isn't it more likely to result from inattention to basic concepts of a "balanced diet," and (especially considering this is the UK) lack of natural sunlight?

It's possible that the marketers who advertise various processed foods in the UK have shifted away from advertising foods that help provide vitamins C and D and towards foods that don't, I suppose.

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Finally, another link suggested by Christy P: A plea to pack a "go bag." Timely, what with all the evacuations and tornadoes and explosions and wildfires that seem to have dominated the news this spring and summer.

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Do you know it took me all day to write this post? And it's practically a holiday. I started it this morning at 7 and have been working only in bits and pieces since then. Pregnancy brain -- ugh.

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