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Salesian spirituality: Four examples.

Shifting gears a little bit to write about what I've been thinking as a spiritual anchor for my upcoming school year, which we'll be starting late.  

Ever since I first got deeply into the Western classic Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales, I've been reading bits here and there about the Salesian tradition of spirituality.   I've read bits about Benedictine and Dominican spirituality, thinking at first that these would appeal to me because of their intellectual foundation; but it's really the Salesian material that has spoken to my center.

This path to devotion doesn't seem very common in my circles, and I think that's odd.  The dominant spiritual trends at my own parish appear to be those of St. Louis de Montfort, St. Josemaria Escriva, and (maybe most widespread) Carmelite; there's a Carmelite weekly study group, for instance.  

I know that Carmelite spirituality promises a certain retreat from the world, of staying aloof from it in order to remain focused on the eternal.  St. Thérèse, the little Carmelite flower, brings it back down to earth in her "little" way of scrubbing floors and serving others with great love, while the mind remains turned away from worldly concerns.  I understand that the interior castle is far more expansive than our homes and workplaces, and that for those who are up to their elbows in the frustrations of daily life, Carmel offers a place of refreshment.  

But Salesian spirituality seems to me tailor-made for ordinary moms, working mothers, anyone who is very, very busy with worldly concerns, wealthy as we are by global standards; and in a particular way, those who are daily enmeshed in the work of educating young people:

• Francis de Sales was a spiritual director, most notably, of married women living in the world, women of a comfortable-enough social class, women with familial and social duties.  His Devout Life is directed at "Philothea," a female figure who is assumed to be able to scrape together a little time for solitary meditation, but not a lot.  He directs her to move back and forth between the prayer life and the ordinary life of duties, sanctifying the ordinary with acts of intention, and bringing the ordinary life to prayer in the form of frequent self-examination.   

 

• Jane Frances de Chantal, Francis's protégée, was a widowed mother of four who had to defer her calling to religious life until she had provided for her children; the Order of the Visitation that she started with Francis's help in Annecy was an unconventional sisterhood of women, many of them older, some of them sick or disabled, who eschewed asceticism in favor of public, active outreach.

 

• John Bosco was an Italian priest who dedicated his life to the education of disadvantaged and delinquent youth, whom he attracted to his "little oratory" with games and magic tricks.  He rejected the "repressive" or punitive systems of educating children; his own "Preventive System" of child discipline is "based entirely on reason and religion, and above all on kindness; therefore it excludes all violent punishment, and tries to do without even the slightest chastisement."  He called the religious institute he founded the "Society of St. Francis de Sales."

 

• Elisabeth Leseur was an aristocratic Frenchwoman who was surrounded in her social circles by anticlerical, unbelievers, including her dearly beloved husband Félix.  Frequently ill but keeping up a lively correspondence and social life as much as she could, she "focused all of her self-chosen penance on contradicting her natural inclination toward solitude and introversion, and instead joyfully extended herself in genuine love to her active social circle...In this approach to mortification, she followed Francis de Sales who recommended moderation and internal, hidden strategies instead of external practices."  Her correspondence with beloved friends who were unbelievers reveals an exemplary faith in the power of reason and kindness.

 I've explored quite a bit about St. Francis and Elisabeth Leseur here on the blog, although I haven't come close to exhausting the material I have.  In upcoming posts I hope to share thoughts on Don Bosco's "Preventive System," reflections on Jane Frances, and some of St. Francis's rules of life for the Visitation sisters he helped found.  Planning to tie all this together into some recommendations for worldly, well-off, working women -- the group that St. Francis seems (to me) to speak to the most.  

Come along and we'll see what we can see.

Cooperating, not competing, priorities.

That put-on-your-swimsuit-for-your-kids'-sake post that I wrote about has spread its influence throughout the feminine half of the blogosphere, at least the sector* populated by mothering mothers. Elizabeth Duffy, writing at Patheos, had a good post the other day:

One of the swim coaches stood on the side of the pool in a handsome black tank, and she was as plump and dimply as the rest of us, but she stood up straight, shoulders back, making bold demonstrations of each stroke for her pupils. I remember thinking that her confidence paired with an obvious tendency not to take herself too seriously was very appealing, and not just to the eyes.

She was not slouching out of sight, and it wasn’t just because she found the right suit for her body type, or because she had memories to make. She had a job to do, an important one, and she clearly found her work fulfilling enough that she could be at peace with herself and delight in her body’s ability to do its job well.

This is really the way that I prefer to think about it; indeed, though getting in the water and splashing with your kids is important, this it's the reason behind that reason. We're raising kids, and so everything we do teaches them how to be. If we want to teach them what their bodies are good for -- doing and being, as part of their human wholeness; not just appearing and seeming, and certainly not merely things to be used and abused; well, being ashamed of the appearance of our own is only going to teach the wrong lessons.

Too, being focused on the jobs you have to do and the joys you want to have is better than being hyperfocused on What People Will Think When They See Me.

More from Elizabeth:

The irony is, that when a woman of a certain body type or a certain age decides to get thin–I count myself here–you really do end up giving everything else up as your mental energy goes into counting calories, planning meals, and incorporating strategies to prevent yourself from eating. There are many hours spent in the gym, many hours spent working on self-image rather doing things of interest to yourself or of import to other people.

Not every woman who decides to get fit loses their perspective this way, but I certainly have, and I have corroborated my experiences with female friends. When I decide to be thin, I become a very boring person, a stressed out person, someone who only thinks about food and mentally scourges herself for mistakes made when eating.

You don’t usually get to have it both ways–you don’t get to be a skinny woman, and at the same time, a woman who’s happy to sit at a bar and drink pints with her husband. You don’t get to be someone who is fully invested in being thin, and at the same time finds herself interesting enough in her own right to forget occasionally her body and its tendency to grow fat when it’s having fun.

I can also corroborate this. The year that I achieved my big weight loss was a year of absolute concentration and obsession. It consumed almost all my attention. I don't regret it, and I have found the effort to be fruitful in more ways than one -- it was an achievement I had never thought possible, and it opened up all sorts of possibilities for me as well as leading to a lot of reflection on my identity. But it was so costly. Also, I was a very boring person for a whole year except to other people who were trying to lose weight. I feel a little bad for having sucked other people into my vortex of gluttony-shaming.

But I wasn't bored.

I wasn't bored because, to put it bluntly, I am a geek, and I can really get into that which bores other people. Whatever my project, I must love it and dig deeply into it, understand it and analyze it, take it apart and put it together in different ways. This is how I cook, how I gestate and give birth and care for babies, how I educate my kids, how I approach faith. My life is a little laboratory, and it's okay if the results are not repeatable by others because they're highly tailored to my own surroundings. The year that I lost all that damn extra weight and learned to be an athlete was the first year that my own body became the laboratory for the sake of itself.

(And I do call it "becoming an athlete" for a reason. I won't call it just "fitness," it was more than that, an identity crisis was involved. I wanted not just to appear thin, but to feel like Elizabeth's swim instructor, strong and capable.)

So I wasn't bored. And if my spouse was bored, he did a good job of hiding it. We sat at the bar and drank pints together -- only we split them, and he drank more deeply than I did, for that year.

We still share pints that way. And that's emblematic of the difference.

Some friends speculated that it was possible for me to temporarily prioritize becoming an athlete in a way that it might not have been for me today, had I put it off. I was six years younger, I had only three children. And maybe that's so.

But staying an athlete, even an amateur one only competitive against herself, is a priority -- not in competition with the priorities of raising my family and accompanying my husband, but in union with them.

I am married to a person who aspires to be always training for the next goal. His sports are downhill skiing and climbing (both rock and ice); seeing as how we live in the northern plains instead of the western mountains, he's never going to be able to find the time to do either of them frequently enough to excel at either, but he can always be training for his next trip so he can have more options and have more fun. And so he tries to get to the gym three times a week if he can. And so it's something we do together -- not so much the climbing (I have an old wrist injury) but the training. Neither of us has the time to train very well or thoroughly, but it's something we can talk about over those single shared pints.

And since he's a geek too, and also since training involves chemistry and physics that neither of us has ever mastered, we can talk about it over and over and over again. That's a lot of pints.

Athleticism of a certain individualistic type is a family value for us. (It runs in Mark's family of origin; his siblings and their spouses have been runners, mountain-bike and road-cycling racers, equestrians, and collegiate-level wrestlers, along with the occasional dabbling in climbing and downhill skiing.) We are working to pass it on to our kids. That priority meshes with our other family and marriage priorities, so it isn't in competition with them (although it has to be balanced with them: I have to teach and feed the children, and Mark has to go to work). I think this more than anything else is why the changes I made six years ago have remained permanent. They reinforce, and are reinforced by, the other good things I have in my life and want to keep.

_______

*Yeah, I couldn't stop myself from googling just to double check that "sector" was the correct geometrical term with respect to a piece of a sphere, as I knew it was for a circle. Although it isn't quite as satisfying because the arcs that define the sectors of a circle, being one-dimensional, perfectly tessellate the "surface" (i.e., the circumference) of the circle -- cf. pie charts -- but the domed spherical sectors by necessity have gaps between. Unless, of course, there are an infinite number of them in just the right distribution of volumes, much as you can fill a rectangular box perfectly with an infinite assortment of differently-sized spheres.**

 

**Yeah, I finished writing the footnote before I went on to write the rest of this post.

 

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In case of emergency.

Here's a repost from last May, with some new material at the bottom.

+++

Last week I unwittingly worried a friend of mine in Facebook chat.

I'd mentioned that Mark was out in Colorado on a climbing trip. The last exchange of the chat went like this:

FRIEND: Prayers 'till Mark gets home!

ME: Thanks! If he doesn't call by 11 pm I have to call search and rescue.

Would love to chat longer but have to teach history now. Take care!

+ + +

On Sunday at coffee and donuts she mildly chastised me for joking about the search and rescue. "I wasn't sure whether to be worried about you or not!" she said.

Of course, I hadn't been joking, but I also hadn't thought that it would have been the kind of thing that would worry a friend. Why did I throw the offhand comment out?

I suppose it's one of those things you do in the Twitter age. We are now masters of the Short Enticing Comment Intended To Give The Appearance Of Having A Much Longer Story Behind It.

The idea is, of course, that in your interlocutor's imagination, the story you merely hinted at will grow to hilarious proportion, and your interlocutor will project their own imaginings onto you, and you will be lauded for your sparkling wit. When in fact all you wrote was something like "OMG NO NOT THE MOLASSES #twoyearolds #bathtime #gin"

+ + +

Anyway, the truth is that I was not, in fact, joking about the search and rescue -- well, I did abbreviate a bit, as one is wont to do. My actual instructions were to wait until 11 p.m. for contact from Mark, and then start calling these numbers in order:

1. Mark's cell
2. His climbing buddy's cell
3. The backcountry guide's cell
4. His climbing buddy's wife back at home in Tennessee
5. The mountain climbing school and guiding service
6. A climbing gym that serves as the after-hours contact number for said service
7. The county search and rescue (SAR) dispatch

If you're wondering whether it isn't the job of the mountain climbing school and guiding service to decide whether it's time to call SAR, you're right -- the service has a protocol for keeping tabs on their guides in the field. If one doesn't check in after a trip, they are supposed to follow up. (That's why I'm supposed to call the guiding service before going straight to SAR myself.)

But redundancy is a good thing, and nobody's more interested in having Mark come home safely than I am, so nobody's better suited for the task of checking up on him should he go missing. Besides, he was planning to climb a different mountain two days later with his buddy and no guide, and in that case there wasn't going to be a mountain school looking over his shoulder.

+ + +

"I'd be so worried if my husband gave me a set of instructions like that," a different friend said to me on a differnet occasion.

I said, "I'd be more worried if he didn't."

One of the first rules of safe backcountry travel is to let someone else know exactly where you intend to go and when you intend to get back. You'll find this advice everywhere; here it is in a well-written .pdf about backcountry safety:

One important rule too often forgotten is to let others know exactly where you are going, with whom and when you can be expected back. I hate to sound maternal, but search and rescue teams often spend hours driving around on back roads looking for a subject's vehicle before they know where to enter the field to begin a search.

By letting someone know EXACTLY where you intend to go, when you expect to return and where your vehicle will be parked, you can eliminate the possibility of searchers having no idea of where to look. Should your plans change in route to your destination, stop and notify that person of your new itinerary. In addition, if you leave pertinent information on the dash of your car (e.g. name

and phone number of your contact in town, location of travel/campsite and so on) search teams will have a very timely idea of your plans. Otherwise, search teams can be of little assistance when all that is known is that you "went camping somewhere in the Gore Range."

And then, it's nice to have specific instructions. That's one of the things I insist on, whenever Mark heads off to go backcountry skiing or climbing -- guided or not: a specific set of "deadlines" and directions for what to do if he misses each one.

If he were to tell me, "I'm parking at the such-and-such trailhead and planning to summit such-and-such a peak; we're going to turn back by 11 a.m. at the latest and I expect to be back in cell phone range by 5 p.m.," that would be ... a good start. But that doesn't answer the actionable question, which is... so what do you want me to do if you haven't called me by 5 p.m.?

I can't read his mind (too bad, that would come in handy for backcountry travel), and I'm hundreds of miles away and not familiar with the area he's in. Furthermore, it's his job to set up the safety procedures for his trip, not mine -- even if I have a role to play in those procedures.

Some people might think that the right thing to do is call the authorities the minute someone is overdue. But this would be premature. SAR is expensive, and part of backcountry ethics is being prepared to deal with delays and unexpected events. You're not supposed to have SAR be your first line of defense if anything goes wrong; you're expected to do what you can to aid in your own shelter and rescue. So, for example, if there's a signficant chance that a delay could force you to spend the night on the mountain (rather than trying to follow a difficult trail down in the dark), you bring bivy gear and extra food, and you instruct your contact person that your arrival time could be delayed by twelve hours or whatever with no cause for alarm. It would be silly to send out the dogs for someone who's comfortably ensconced in warm waterproof layers, seated on an insulated pad, munching energy bars, and waiting for nothing more dramatic than daylight.

In this case, even though he expected to be back in cell phone range by 5 pm, he definitely didn't want me calling SAR at 5:01 . He figured on giving himself several hours of leeway time -- time to accidentally go down the wrong trail, figure it out, and backtrack if necessary; time to sustain an ankle injury and slowly crawl back to the vehicle, should that happen; time to arrive at the climb, find it occupied by another party, and wait for them to finish before starting. None of those delays, not even an injury, are an emergency that requires calling out the authorities; they're all the kind of things that you're supposed to be prepared to deal with yourself. And if you wind up dealing with something like that, you'll be delayed. And that's okay.

It's not terribly fun to have to wait the few hours between "overdue time" and "call out the dogs time," but it's much better than sitting there wondering, "Should I call out the dogs, or is it too soon? I wonder how long I should wait? If I make the wrong decision SOMEBODY COULD DIE."

I told Mark, he has to own the when-should-I-call-search-and-rescue decision. And he owns it by giving me specific instructions about when to call, and whom to call. And also by telling me everything pertinent: where he's starting, what he plans to do, and even what he's carrying (I like to know, for example, if he's prepared to spend the night outdoors and what weather he's prepared for, and for him to confirm that he has a GPS, map, and compass).

+ + +

Every once in a while I run into the opinion that it's irresponsible for anyone, but especially a parent of young children, to engage in common adventure sports at all. Backcountry hiking, black-diamond skiing, rock climbing, etc.

(Occasionally this extends to activities as banal-sounding as bicycle commuting. There's a lot of victim-blaming in the comments to news stories about cyclists who get struck by cars. It's very depressing. I have a theory that a large number of people simply don't believe that bad things can happen to good people.)

I think it's irresponsible to think you can remove all risk from life. Every day we're surrounded by common risky activities: from the acutely risky, like riding in cars or taking showers in slippery bathtubs, to the chronically risky, like occupational exposure to low-frequency noise or sitting around getting no exercise. And many culturally-not-considered-extreme hobbies carry a surprisingly high risk; for example, recreational boating is well accepted here in Minnesota, but it's also relatively risky (one estimate from Ohio: about 1 fatality per million operator-hours; anotherestimate has 1 canoeing fatality per 720,000 outings.)

Rock climbing is riskier than boating, but not the OMG IT MUST BE MANY TIMES RISKIER HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING THAT WHEN YOU HAVE SMALL CHILDREN AT HOME!!! that you might expect from all the teeth-gnashing about it. Do you ever hear anyone say, "Gosh, I'd never have elective surgery under general anesthesia while I still had young children at home?" Well, that's more likely to kill you than a rock climbing trip.

All this is to say: Hobbies are important. It's good to have them. And it's okay to have hobbies that carry some risk. The important thing is to diligently take reasonable precautions and follow well-accepted safety protocols; to keep your head and know your limits; and to talk about safety and comfort with the people who depend on you, to make sure that no one is forced into a situation where they're uncomfortable with the level of "adventure." Mark and I have worked pretty hard over the past few years to create an atmosphere in which I'm always on board with what he's up to, and if I'm not, we work together to figure out what needs to change until I am.

+++

End of repost.

I did it again on Sunday. "Is Mark having a good Father's Day?" asked a friend after church.

"I assume so," I said, "He's out in Colorado rock climbing."

Her jaw dropped a little and she said "Oh my gosh! I'll pray for his safe return!"

"Go to Blessed Pier Giorgio," I said cheerfully, "it's what we always do."

On Saturday I had run into a little bit of an issue because Mark forgot to tell me which time zone he meant when he sent me my schedule of whom to call when. Was that "call SAR if you haven't heard from me by 6 pm" Denver time or Minneapolis time? The difference is only an hour, so I sent him a text message letting him know that I was going to split the difference and call out the troops at 5:30 Denver time. Fortunately he got that message in time, because they took longer climbing on the glacier than they intended and the schedule had to change; he sent me a text later to let me know I should extend the deadline.

So that was one thing learned on this particular trip. Another one -- not so much "lesson learned" as "detail that occurred to us for the first time" -- was that he really should tell me the make, model, color, and license plate number of the rented car he is driving to the trailhead.

People still ask me if I am not worried about him. We are, a little bit, I guess. I definitely start to get a little antsy when the "I will probably be done by X-o'clock" time approaches. But it is an enormous help to know that I will never have to sit at home wondering if I should do something or not. I know I can drop that worry and leave it behind, trusting him to take care of himself if he can, trusting in the grace of the sacrament of marriage to take care of the kids and me if he can't. And he knows that I know, and so that thread of intention connects us, whether we are both in cell phone range or not.

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Empty spaces.

The feast of the Ascension is transferred to the following Sunday in this diocese, and that was yesterday. Mark was not home, so I was bouncing a baby on my lap while trying to keep my four- and seven-year-olds from making too much noise grabbing MagnifiKid!s from each other. The oldest boys were serving at the altar.

The Ascension is one of the stories that sticks in my mind, possibly because of that enigmatic, "He will return in the same way that you saw him go" bit. One reads the description of how they saw him go, and imagines it unspooling in reverse, and wonders how that is supposed to work. But it's curious for other reasons, too.

For one thing: why couldn't, or didn't, Jesus send his spirit right away? Or "send" it at all: couldn't he have handed it over while they stood around him? Why leave like that, then string them along for ten days till Pentecost?

I know, I know: he didn't really leave them; I am with you until the end of the age. In his departing, I suppose, he was making himself more present, because ubiquitous; instead of localized in a body whose feet pressed his weight into the earth, he is outside of it all somehow, everywhere in general because nowhere in particular. But why the gap?

They waited, prayerful and perhaps frightened, in Jerusalem for a promise, and a few days later it came true. But why the empty space in between?

+ + +

Not much later I was sitting in the rocking chair in my living room, nursing the baby and juggling the iPad, and sipping from a cup of hot coffee. All was quiet; lunch was over, and the four bigger children had scattered to play Minecraft and watch movies in other rooms. I had just finished exchanging texts with Mark, who had been traveling for several days.

Possibly it was the combination of a bit of self-pity mixed with the general positive effects of caffeine on my sense of well-being, but as I sat there I felt an odd sensation that I can only describe as the purest bittersweetness I remember having.

I was lonely. I missed my husband. (And I knew it was really missing him, and not just wishing he were here to help me with the kids, because they weren't asking for anything at that moment; I was perfectly content.) I would have liked to share the Sunday afternoon with him, me in the rocking chair, him lying on his back on the living room rug with his head propped on a pillow -- he will never sit on a chair when there is a perfectly good floor to sprawl on. I would have liked it, but I was alone. I felt that sensation: a hollowness, a wishing, deep inside my chest.

But at the same time, the very sensation of loneliness, of missing, seemed to spread wings and reveal something else within it: a glowing coal, an ember of pure gratitude at its core. Longing for my love hurt, and the hurt was a proof that I have love. I would not feel this "missing," this hole, if no one had left it behind. In the keenness of my sensation of emptiness I knew that I am ordinarily in possession of fullness and great beauty. Maybe it has been a while since I knew it, or acknowledged it. At any rate, I overflowed with thankfulness that I should enjoy such abundance every day, so as to create real longings. I have something to long for, and that is something exquisite.

I wrote on Facebook:

Discovering now that an interlude of absence can truly be sweet; an empty space that is *felt* is a reminder and an evidence of the blessings that ordinarily fill it to overflowing.

I don't know if there is a connection; but may be, may be.

 

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New baby's resolutions: Resolution zero.

New Year's resolutions are so passé.

Especially in February, she said. But I digress.

If you have messed up your New Year's resolutions already, you could wait till Lent starts, of course. Lots of people try new things then. I do think Lent can be a good time to try new self-disciplines, so to speak, though unfortunately many of us attempt to turn it into a diet plan. That can be counter-productive, when you consider the reason for the season.

I am now thinking that a really great time for a resolution -- a shaking up of the old routines and a turning over of a new leaf -- is several weeks after the birth of a new baby.

Because you know what?

There's no going back to the way things were before.

I might as well formalize it.

+ + +

Even before we decided to invite a new little one into our lives, I knew I didn't really have room for one more along with everything else I do. I knew, I really did, that something was going to have to give.

That didn't stop me from trying to hang onto everything, even as I struggled to stay awake through the first trimester and to keep up with everyone during the second and the third. It didn't stop me from trying to keep up what I had been doing and hang on to all my commitments, and that is probably good because I really have to try and FAIL before I am okay with giving up.

Early on, I figured out that I wasn't going to be able to keep up with school by advance-planning everything on the weekends (including copying and printing, getting books to and from the library, writing new worksheets, composing emails with instructions to my "independent" students, and writing answer keys) and then sticking to my preplanned work on weekdays, keeping careful records of what everyone accomplished each day.

Up till this last year, that has worked pretty well. It isn't going to work anymore. I have now hit the point where if everything were going to be preplanned and prepared by me to my own exacting standards, I would have to spend my Entire Weekend on that work. And this is not good for my family, even if -- maybe BECAUSE -- I kind of enjoy holing up in a locked room with a computer and a curriculum catalog and no human interaction for 12 hours at a time.

Something has to give.

And that is just one area of my life where I was overindulging in productivity. We haven't even talked about things like housekeeping, or dinner, or the few volunteer commitments that one or the other of us has made.

It's the same way there. Something has to give.

I warned my partner in co-schooling, H., before I warned anyone else, not long after I found out I was pregnant, that my standards were about to slip, and I didn't think it would improve matters by trying to plan out exactly how they would slip, so I was just going to LET them slip and see what happened.

+ + +

H. didn't really have a chance to give me much feedback before she found out she was pregnant too, and then that she was going to have twins, so, you know, any plans we had for the year were going to go out the window anyway and be replaced by ... Something.

+ + +

So what are the new baby's resolutions? I think I am going to spread this post out over several days because I still have to process some of them, and I have been having a damnably hard time blogging for the last few months.

Which might have something to do with my foggy brain. Though the causality could really be going either way.

But the first resolution... No, wait. The zeroth resolution, really, since it has to underlie all the others... Is to recognize that I have priorities. Priorities with names. Values.

It's like this. We need these things in our lives (no particular order here):

• Connecting with God.
• Resting.
• Showing love to, and taking delight in, each other.
• Connecting with people outside our family.
• Resolving conflict and encouraging generosity, particularly among the children.
• Helping each other work, and learn to work, with diligence.
• Caring for our bodies (and that extension of our bodies, our clothing).
• Meals.
• Physical activity.
• Order in our environment.
• Learning.
• Creative work.
• Work that serves others.

Resolution zero is to recognize and honor these priorities so that I can somehow use my time (and help the rest of the family use their time) in a way that gives each of these their due.

 

+ + +

 

So much for new directions. I only know one way to start anything, and that is by making a list. I have written and rewritten and re-rewritten the list over and over for a week, moving the bits around, and yet nothing has changed yet.

 

Sooner or later I will have to put down the pen and get out of my chair.

 

But not yet.

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Workaholic.

One problem with living by pithy aphorisms and proverbs:  they aren't one-size fits all.  

This ought to be obvious considering how many of them are diametrically opposed.   Consider "many hands make light work" and "too many cooks spoil the broth," for instance.

Anyway, one of my current besetting character flaws could be characterized by an excessive adherence to "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

Or at least a selectively excessive adherence to it.  I had better not pretend a fake character flaw, the kind that people spout in job interviews when the interviewer says, "Tell me about one of your worst traits" and they say things like "Aw gee, it's embarrassing but sometimes I'm a perfectionist."   Because it's not like my problem is lack of procrastination.  

Just ask my mother-in-law, who recently cleaned out my cupboards for me. 

+ + + 

Here's one of the things about homeschooling.  At least when you are in the middle of it, as I am --

-- no wait, I'm not in the middle of it yet -- I'm nine years in and I have at least eighteen to go, unless I quit --

-- I mean we -- or they -- whatever -- point taken -- 

-- OK, at least when you are in the thick of it, as I am, it seems to stretch on forever into a boundless foggy future.   But you can see a while down the road, maybe a couple of years out, and... you've got to be ready for it, right?

 Especially if you're like me and you kind of hate winging it.  You need a Plan.

So you look out there and you think...

...my oldest will be starting high school in a couple of years, I need to get ready to set up a portfolio and a record system.  

And my second-grader just isn't clicking well with the same history program that her brother did, she needs something different or at least a break, maybe a geography program, I should look into those for next year.  

And I wonder what books I should have my kids read in high school for American Literature, I know it's several years off but it would be nice to have something in mind, should we do it in historical order or organize it by region, or maybe even some genre stuff , or how about the theme of how American literature fits into a world-literature canon, I almost don't care as long as we don't have to do The Scarlet Letter.  I should make a list now.  

And next month we're going to do some science labs that could use it, it's about time I start shopping around for a good used microscope.

 And I really hate making those spelling worksheets that I started on this year, but they're working so well and I'm seeing real results, I should just sit down and crank out as many as possible so I won't have to do them again for a while.  And I should and I should and I should and I should....

It doesn't ever have to stop, if you don't want it to.  You can spend your entire weekend, in the nice weather, if the kids are occupied, researching curriculum and churning out worksheets and syllabi.   Particularly if you kind of miss doing work at a computer, sitting down, the way you used to.  And which is even better in 2013 with Reddit just a click away whenever you get bored.  

And all of which is more fun than cleaning out the cupboards, and easier in many ways than actually interacting with one's children.

(I know.  Many of you have the opposite problem.  You play and enjoy your kids and your home and the outdoors, but then you never get around to any planning or school-prep, because that's not the  and so you feel really disorganized when it's time to sit down and do schoolwork.    I understand.  We are not all the same.  Except that everyone has something they wish was better about themselves.)

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Anyway, I decided I work too damn much, so I resolved last week (while I was walking around the lake with Mark, on a gorgeous autumn Sunday during which my in-laws were watching the kids while we escaped for a few minutes) to set some time limits and stick to them.  I can do advance school planning on Wednesday evenings while the kids are at religious ed and Mark is grocery shopping, and on Saturday mornings at the coffee shop during Erin's Weekend Sanity Hours O'Solitude And Breakfast, and in the leftover time on Sunday evenings -- if I have some after I've done my get-ready-for-THIS-week stuff.  

That's like six hours in total.  I'm tempted to write "...and that ought to be enough," except that it probably isn't and won't feel like it and it will feel like I am leaving ten thousand things undone that, if only I would do them in advance, would make everything run so much more smoothly.

But I have to shut off the damn computer and come to bed sometimes, you know? Whether I've done "enough" or not.  Truth is, I'll never do "enough" because I could always do "more."  In all the areas of my life.  It's time to do Not Enough on purpose in this one.

Full-time.

Time for a blurry cell-phone selfie in the mirror in my closet:

That's not-quite twenty weeks.  I feel bigger than I look, I think.

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The other day, in the YMCA locker room, was the first time that someone said to me with a smile, "So is this your first pregnancy?"   

I love the shock value of "No, it's my fifth."  The wide eyes and the Wow.   I am pretty sure this makes me a bad person.

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I was pregnant with just number four the first time someone else -- in the same locker room -- followed that question with a brief lecture on overpopulation destroying the planet.  

I said, "I think we should welcome and accept children from all kinds of familes, don't you?"

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I have to tell you, I'm absolutely tickled to be pregnant with my fifth child.  Whether there would likely be a number five was a much-discussed subject around here.

 I really didn't know what kinds of feelings to expect -- I have experienced each pregnancy with more ambivalence than you might think, considering that none were surprises.   There's just so much going on physically, and so much preparation to make, and the ever-looming Day of No Choice that comes some estimated day in the future, and the hopes for a good outcome and the worries about all the bad things that might happen.

So I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself simply happy about this new child, and about the prospects of being mother-of-five, which just has a very cool ring to it, don't you think?  I feel like I'm earning a shiny new badge.

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At the same time there's been a sort of odd stop-in-my-tracks realization that, indeed, the way this story is turning out is that I am spending my entire, er, career or active life or whatever you want to call it, almost exclusively mothering.   I mean, I kind of knew that this was what was going to happen, but it sort of hit me in the last few months.

Don't ask me why this is hitting me now and not the last time I was pregnant.   I was thirty-five years old when I had my fourth baby, and what with the general intention to keep homeschooling as long as it is working out, I was already quite clearly not expected to be off the hook for full-time involvement until my mid-fifties.  I'll be thirty-nine when I have number five, which brings me into later-mid-fifties, not that big of a difference really.  

(Perhaps it feels big because I lost my own mom when she was fifty-four; in that sense there was and is an infinite distance between mid- and late fifties.)

I haven't, either, chosen to keep active in my field even part-time on the side -- I explored it for a while, and decided I didn't want the added stress; and I haven't, either, thrown my extra energy into working for any cause I care about.  The volunteer work I do is local, the kinds of things that parents do to help keep their kids' Scout troops and homeschooling co-ops going from year to year.  

I have a lot of energy, a decent amount of talent for setting up systems and organizing stuff (not people, just stuff); but apparently, I have a limited supply of giving-a-shit.  

Or maybe you could call it a limited supply of caring, and I  can't afford to spend it much except on the people I have relationships with.  

The people who need me, personally, to give a shit about them, and no one else can replace me.

This is not everybody's problem.  I have friends I admire who raise several young children and are also pillars of a community, doing good and useful and vital work.    I am happy for them and grateful for their example (and often beneficiaries of their efforts).

Caring for and about my family, even though there's nothing especially needy about my family, requires my full-time effort.  It seems this will last about as long as I can stand to have a full-time anything.

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That's the thing I wake up surprised about, almost every day:  That it's an endlessly fascinating challenge, that I always have something to think hard about, that I go to bed satisfied almost every night .  I am happy every morning when I step out onto the porch with my coffee and watch the school buses rumble by, or if I happen to glance further down to the end of the block, where the busy east-west road crosses, and can catch a glimpse of the morning rush hour line-up to get onto the highway.

My job takes me nowhere that I am not curious to explore.   And I've signed up for another adventure, is what it feels like.  And I haven't had time to pack yet, but I will.

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!

 

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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