Instruction in women's attire from the early Church

What follows is a selection of quotes from early fathers on veiling and women's attire. I'll let them speak for themselves.

But we admonish you, too, women of the second (degree of) modesty, who have fallen into wedlock, not to outgrow so far the discipline of the veil, not even in a moment of an hour, as, because you cannot refuse it, to take some other means to nullify it, by going neither covered nor bare.
(...) Arabia's heathen females will be your judges, who cover not only the head, but the face also, so entirely, that they are content, with one eye free, to enjoy rather half the light than to prostitute the entire face.
(...)
It is incumbent, then, at all times and in every place, to walk mindful of the law, prepared and equipped in readiness to meet every mention of God; who, if He be in the heart, will be recognised as well in the head of females. To such as read these (exhortations) with good will, to such as prefer Utility to Custom, may peace and grace from our Lord Jesus Christ redound

- Tertullian, "On the Veiling of Virgins." approx 200 AD

"Let the woman observe this, further. Let her be entirely covered, unless she happens to be at home. For that style of dress is grave, and protects from being gazed at. And she will never fall, who puts before her eyes modesty, and her shawl; nor will she invite another to fall into sin by uncovering her face. For this is the wish of the Word, since it is becoming for her to pray veiled." [Clement, The Instructor 3.12]
Clement of Alexandria, Egypt, approx 190 AD

"And let all the women have their heads covered with an opaque cloth, not with a veil of thin linen, for this is not a true covering."
-- Hippolytus (200 AD), Apostolic Tradition

“Woman, because she was created by being drawn from man’s side, is constantly trying to return to him. She desires the original unity of one flesh and one bone. The desire for unity between man and woman is a mirror of the relationship between Christ and the soul. As woman longs for union with man in human relationships, she is also drawn to unity with God. He calls her to become one with Him: to come under His side and become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. This occurs during reception of the Eucharist. The covering of the head with a veil symbolizes the reality of woman sheltered in the side of her Source and becoming one with Him. She becomes covered and hidden in her Divine Spouse.”

~ St. John Chrysostom, Father and Doctor of the Church

Instruction in Christian prayer from the early Church

Let every faithful man and every faithful woman , when they rise from sleep at dawn, before they undertake any work, wash their hands and pray to God. Then they may go to work. But if there is some instruction in the Word, they shall go there, considering that it is God whom they hear in the one instructing. For having prayed in the assembly, they will be able to avoid all the evils of the day. The pious should consider it a great wrong if they do not go to the place in which they give instruction, especially if they know how to read…

If there is a day when there is no instruction, let each one at home take a holy book and read enough of it to gain an advantage from it.

If you are at home, pray at the third hour and praise God. If you are elsewhere at that time, pray in your heart to God. For in this hour Christ was seen nailed to the wood. And thus in the Old Testament the Law instructed that the shewbread be offered at the third hour as a symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ. And the sacrifice of the irrational lamb was a symbol of the perfect Lamb. For Christ is the Shepherd, and he is also the bread which descended from heaven.

Pray also at the sixth hour. Because when Christ was attached to the wood of the cross, the daylight ceased and became darkness. Thus you should pray a powerful prayer at this hour, imitating the cry of him who prayed...

Pray also at the ninth hour a great prayer with great praise, imitating the souls of the righteous who do not lie, who glorify God who remembered his saints and sent his Word to them to enlighten them. For in that hour Christ was pierced in his side, pouring out water and blood, and the rest of the time of the day, he gave light until evening. This way he made the dawn of another day at the beginning of his sleep, fulfilling the type of his resurrection.

Pray also before your body rests on your bed.

Around midnight rise and wash your hands with water and pray. If you are married, pray together. But if your spouse is not yet baptized, go into another room to pray, and then return to bed. Do not hesitate to pray, for one who has been joined in marital relations is not impure. Those who have bathed have no need to wash again, for they are pure. By catching your breath in your hand and signing yourself with the moisture of your breath, your body is purified, even to the feet. For the gift of the Spirit and the outpouring of the baptism, proceeding from the heart of the believer as though from a fountain, purifies the one who has believed. Thus it is necessary to pray at this hour.

For those elders who handed down the tradition to us taught us that in this hour every creature hushes for a brief moment to praise the Lord. Stars and trees and waters stand still for an instant. All the host of angels serving him, together with the souls of the righteous, praise God. This is why it is important that all those who believe make certain to pray at that hour. Testifying to this, the Lord says thus, "Behold, a cry was made at midnight, saying, 'Behold the bridegroom is coming! Arise to meet him!'" And he adds,
saying, "Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the hour is coming."

Likewise, at the hour of the cock-crow, rise and pray... hoping daily in the hope of eternal light in the resurrection of the dead.

With these things, all you faithful, if you do and remember them, instructing one another, and encouraging the catechumens, you will not be able to be tempted or to perish, having Christ always in your thoughts.

--  St. Hippolytus of Rome written around 215 AD.

Hearts and minds

**NOTE-- since I last wrote, this particular young man was reported killed in an airstrike carried out by the Assaad Regime in the eastern city of Deir ez-Sor, Syria on November 4, 2014. His real name was William Hasmo Clinic and he was from London.  May God accept him and have mercy on him.

*NOTE-- since I published this blog, the twitter account here linked has been disabled. There are tweets circulating speculating that this particular ISIS fighter is the suspect responsible for the beheading of journalist James Foley. (No further information on this rabbit trail.)

I spent a good deal of time reading ISIS tweets today from young, British-born jihadis who had joined the fight.

We are the ink its written with. pic.twitter.com/BadCNKdhM5 (ISIS flag)
— Abu Abdullah Britani (@AbuAbdullah_RT) 3 Août 2014

So interesting.
Like, possibly the most interesting thing in the world.

Perhaps it's because once again it is my Catholic sisters and brothers being tortured, raped, and beheaded. It could be me. It could be any of us.
Or perhaps it's because this whole crisis in Iraq is happening concurrently with my return to journalism. I wanted in on this career in the first place because of this very issue-- the middle eastern thing that occupies so much of my heart and thoughts. My co-workers on the college paper I started on used to joke about me ending up reporting from the middle east in a mini skirt and pink knee-high ugg boots, excitedly chatting with battle-worn men. Even as a young, oblivious, partying college student, the middle east and the religious dialogue excited me and called for me. I'm older and wiser now (I hope) but that call is still there.
Whatever the reason, I feel wide awake for the first time in years.

I am still shaken by the intimacy afforded by social networking in our day--reading tweets is a glimpse into the minds of these men who committing unspeakable violence against peoples who have literally done nothing wrong save profess a different belief system.  Reading these is such an intense experience. It is terrifying, because of the proximity... they are sitting here, tweeting, just like me. It is also strangely beautiful. They are sitting here. Tweeting. Just like me.

Recently, my Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, called ISIS out. ISIS had crossed into Lebanon and he knew he needed to act, and fast. He said to them:

"Humanity is the only thing we share with you. Come let’s talk and reach an understanding on this basis ... you rely on the language of arms, terrorism, violence and influence, but we rely on the language of dialogue, understanding and respect for others.”

When I first heard his words, my reaction was disappointment. I wanted him to say something stronger, something more aggressive and harmful. But having soaked in these tweets, now, I believe his response was perfect.
All we seem to have in common is our humanity-- and yet humanity is everything. In the midst of that idea and despite their horrifying actions,  I find myself struggling to really despise them. Their humanity impresses me, because their courage and bravado seems almost superhuman. Like the Vikings of old which I so admire, they march on, fearless and unrelenting. Superhuman, in some ways.  Something deeper is going on here.... because a human being just like you and I cannot possibly be capable of the kinds of atrocities these men are committing.

But let's get something straight-- these guys bleed like the rest of us. Heartache, frustration, a need for identity, loneliness, unrest... you name your struggle, they have experienced it. Some of them come from a long line of terrorists, but most of them appear to have been radicalized not by their families but by those who were willing to mentor them, those Muslim leaders who poured into the youth and the hurting and the hungry for truth. These are men who strove to make meaning out of their lives, and out of existence, and not only that but had the courage to do something about what they discovered. Something uncomfortable. Something insane. We have to hand it to them, almost... for if there ever was a worthy enemy, here it stands. I am simultaneously disturbed to my core and silent in awe and admiration. There are men not so dissimilar in many ways all around me yearning to find the meaning of life and to give of themselves to get at it. Men who would go in a heartbeat to defend my suffering sisters and brothers in Iraq, if the opportunity came along. Men who ache with incredible sadness that they cannot join in the struggle to defend Christians from these zealous Jihadis. This boggles my mind. Men boggle my mind.

So my Patriarch is right, but dialogue will also get us only half-way there. They speak violence, but they desire sanctity and a purge of evil and sin. My sense is that we must speak violence back to them, for it is the only language they understand, but we must do so with respect for life-- a challenge many Christians are not capable of accepting,  but which contains the hope of glory,  because it is the life-changing Gospel that actually purges evil and sin and brings that sanctity which these men seem so hungry for.

Americans are often dumbfounded at the hatred Islamic extremists have of the West, and yet we have to admit that every single American soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan--- or even here at home--  and who came home with something on his conscience has contributed to the problem. Every single Western civilian who has embraced materialism, modernity, and sin and left even one part of his life untouched by the light of truth and goodness is to blame. God allows this because it purifies. We have to acknowledge our own failings if we are going to dare to hope for a different and better future for our children.  I sat transfixed at the idea that each of these ISIS fighters felt they had gone "From the land of the west to the land of the blessed." I've done it too--- moved east in the hope of finding what my soul was craving. I found it there. I get that.
Their twitter feeds told this unspeakably beautiful, heartbreaking, hideous and despicable story with so much detail and intimacy. Each time, the same tale: they hoped to go from pain and sin to submission and salvation... to glory.

Do we need to use violence to combat ISIS? I believe so. Absolutely-- it's the only way to deal with this threat. We need to act with equally lethal force, but we need to do so with IMPECCABLE accuracy, and with a moral high ground. With SPIRIT. And we need to do so in the name of humanity, and with the Gospel and the hope it affords for humanity on our lips and hearts and minds. In other words, this must be a crusade, and not an ordinary military operation.

Many of the ISIS Fighters appear to have left affluent upbringings and "normal" western-style families in cities whose streets I have walked often, to live in the dust of the desert and blow us and themselves away. In their own words, they have come "from the streets of London to the dirt roads of Jihad." They are brave, they are motivated, they believe that they are literally saving their souls, and they are on a mission to give their all for Allah. Their courage is astonishing.

At the same time, they are the first to tell you that their aim in itself is a struggle. As Abu Abdullah Britani, an apparent volunteer with IS,  said on his twitter bio: "Me being here don't mean nothing and don't make me nothing. I don't even know if its accepted." This stands in stark contrast to the message of the evangelical protestants we often hear in America, which cries out--- "It doesn't matter, we're all OK because Jesus died! You can't work your way anywhere. Just say it, believe it, and you're good. Sit back and let God."
No-- this, this is such a different mentality. So sacrificial. So.... Catholic.
There is a lot of talk in the US Army about "winning the hearts and minds of the people."
Even a cursory glance at these militant's feeds show a constant, steady, stream of unwon hearts and minds. These are men on a mission, and nothing but God Himself can deter them.

In the end I am struck completely in awe of the new way I see them-- as if through the eyes of the scripture I have memorized from Matthew 11:12, which reads: "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." (KJV)

For these men of the Islamic State --- who purge themselves through violence against others, Christianity is a great mystery, an offense, for instead of harming others we purge evil in the world through violence against ourselves--- through fasting and alms and prayer and good works, and undeserved kindness, and cheerful acceptance of suffering. Through the cross.

The stark contrast is not lost on me, and in my heart, I mourn the potential goodness these men would be capable of, had someone else poured into them, and radicalized them a different way.
Look to your left and to your right. The people you see there will all know a day when they will be forced to decide, to "choose now whom they will serve." (Joshua 24)
How will you impact them in that decision? What are you doing for those around you to ensure they are radically affected by the Gospel of light?

As I read today, in a status update:

"It's not enough to be of the right opinion, to believe what is right, to say what is right, to think what is right. To do what is right, for your own part, is nothing. You men and women who think that not doing evil is your occupation, you're like a city under siege. You're worthless. You are worse than worthless: You're demoralizing to even look upon. You doers of good deeds who think your 'doing' emancipates you from believing, thinking, and saying what you must you are like a tree whose fruit is eaten by birds before it ripens. It bears fruit but for no good. It is not enough to simply say, or think or do. You must do both, at once. But there is a third thing: You must inspire your brother! YOU must. YOU create the culture of unbreakable fraternity, of zeal and piety. That should be your brotherhood: Zealots of Piety."

As for me, and my house? We will serve the Lord.
And I hope we can harness that same zeal in this family.

The children here have hearts of lions. When the helicopters out the still play on the streets pointing their toy guns towards the sky.
— Abu Abdullah Britani (@AbuAbdullah_RT) 17 Août 2014

Transformation

Watching determined people hesitantly work towards implementing Charlotte Mason's ideas into their home is like watching a baby take his first breath.

Their tentative steps into nature...
Their sudden interest in good books...
The beginnings of their struggle to build virtue and character...
Their budding awareness that their children are persons with value and inherent dignity...
Their nascent gratitude for God's goodness...
Their newfound ability to pay attention and to use their reason....

It's so beautiful.

They don't know it yet, but it's leading them towards a wholeness they've never known.
They are becoming human again.

On books, joy, and things

There is something I hear almost every day while skipping through Charlotte Mason blogs, groups, and forums that I find troublesome. I want to address it, but since I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, this is only an attempt at grasping at the description of a premonition with words I'm not sure will do it justice.
Charlotte Mason's methods, and homeschooling in general are gaining in popularity. And I admit that popularity scares me a little bit, for many reasons I won't bother with here.
Of the families I have encountered who follow CM's ideas, I find there are two camps of extremes that many people seem to fall into. The first, are those who call their schools CM because they use living books, go outside,  and finish by noon, but who don't bother to look at the other things which make up a CM education. The second are those self proclaimed "purists" who reject all forms of education and curriculum which stem from anything that wasn't explicitly described/mentioned/theorized about by Miss Mason herself in her own writings, to include questioning forms of classical methodology on the basis of a lack of commentary regarding said forms.  The truth, I suspect, like all things, lies somewhere in the middle.

I love Charlotte Mason's ideas, but I am not Charlotte Mason. Her ideas were her own, but came from her interactions with other idea-havers, I take those and try to push them to new places, following the same trail that has been forged, and sometimes glancing off the trail. Looking behind me. Enjoying the scenery. And that's OK.  My identity is secure, But I get the feeling that, while navigating the homeschool world, many women don't seem to have that same security of identity, and seem to be seeking after something more than just a means to provide their children with a delightful, complete Classical education. Women want leadership and practical help, and Miss Mason certainly offers that in a most marvelous manner, with wisdom and patience and great care. But I get the feeling, every so often, that people just "hear about Charlotte Mason" while researching, think to themselves, "I want that!" and then go about trying to purchase what they need to make it happen. They don't understand  that receiving a classical education is a paradigm shift, a thing that will literally require that the whole family get on board and start living what they claim to believe as true, important, and necessary. Charlotte Mason is not a style of curriculum. It's a lifestyle change.

Now, you've heard me blog about classical education, and you've heard me blog about catholic education. You obviously come here a lot to read about a Charlotte Mason education. And recently, I tried to put to rest the idea that these educational theories were at odds one with the other. The pursuit of truth and beauty is not UNIQUE to a CM education, although CM does it particularly well. At the same time, without the ability to *reason* no student will arrive at truth or beauty. The value of the Classical / Catholic education, on which CM's ideas are based, is that it formally teaches this skill. But the value of that lesson is only as meritorious as the teacher who has instilled in his student the love of learning, the reason for needing reason, and the purpose of life-- Catechesis.

CM students who have parents that don't get this are bound to have problems. The students will form in themselves an ability to discern and connect with the true and beautiful that is handed to them, but they will be lacking the ability to sort through ideas themselves and come to their own conclusions.... and to join in the Grand Conversation in a way that adds to the conversation and doesn't just take away from it.

CM's techniques can help all children to appreciate truth, beauty and goodness, but it takes the ability to think like a philosopher.... to think and parse and organize...... to be someone who can attack the status quo. She knew this! And she advocated the teaching of logic, only in her time she felt that it was adequate to surround the child with good books, and then to allow him to absorb critical thinking skills from his interactions with the authors. Her reasons for doing this were two-fold.

First, students raised using her methods had been taught to carefully notice, mentally organize, categorize, and express information as it came from the very beginning of their education. They had little need of formal teaching in doing so by the time they were older because this was how they had been trained. Critical thinking was a habit. Hard mental work was a habit.
Second, her students had read ONLY the best books. And these books had become as friends to them, mentors and guides. Many of the classical educators of her day were uninterested in the persons they were teaching.... only enamored with the method of classical education. Because of that, they failed to inspire a desire for truth and a love of knowledge. This is huge, because it was through the reading of the world's greatest authors, often in the original languages,  and through knowledge of the scriptures, combined with the respect of the teachers towards the children on the journey that children grew to become critical thinkers.... students who desired to know more, and who were able to work with the information they were given in such a way as to organize it and come to logical conclusions. The Bible itself helps us to understand this:  

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

It does not say that God will do the work here. It says that WE will do the mental work.
CM parents who don't understand this will be raising lovely people who are self-motivators, hard workers, and beautiful citizens. But they won't be world-changers. They will still be followers.

Education doesn't happen by osmosis. The child himself must absorb and fiddle with and-- not regurgitate--- but process information. Recently, on facebook, I saw that an article written by a pope-hating schismatic condemning the Church-approved Divine Mercy devotion had begun making the rounds. I was distraught to find that in a group of homeschooling Catholic mothers, a woman posted the article. What was even more disturbing was to find that more than 2/3 of the comments from the beginning were from women who read the article and responded to it in this way:
"Oh my! I had no idea! I will stop saying the Divine Mercy Chaplet at once!"
None of them thought. Not logically. They were lemmings. Never mind that the very pope who leads their Church had handed out copies of the Divine Mercy prayers to visitors at his audience that week and exhorted them to pray it. Never mind that the Divine Mercy prayers are approved by the Church, and for a logical reason. No, they were satisfied to completely give it up-- indeed, to call it EVIL-- because they had read a convincing-sounding argument on the internet that said so. My mind was boggled.

In our day, things are much more complex than they were in Victorian England. Technology and the advent of the information age has made "knowledge" cheap and easy to obtain. But somehow people are more stupid now than they were when there were no smartphones to google questions. Their attention spans and ability to discern the underlying truths or lies of what they read are practically non-existent. It is maddening for the student of logic to walk through the clamoring earth, turning his ear to the left or to the right because illogical, false, and ridiculous conclusions are being formed in every direction and shouted from every hilltop.  Literally maddening. I'll get to that in a minute.

Suffice to say that logic is critical. Thinking is critical. Habits are critical.
The reason CM succeeds particularly well at speaking to my generation is because she lays out a map for the journey of the home educating parent. Not only does she vision-cast, but she gives practical advice. Not only does she theorize but she comes alongside her reader an expounds upon her theories. Her books are a compass and scale, her words a trail of delight through the dangerous and often confusing world of education.

Which brings me to my four-fold issue.
Daily, I come across women who, motivated by the promised joy that a CM education brings, attempt to "purchase" that joy-- or worse, steal it!-- without any hard work. And those who do have completely missed the memo.
Miss Mason's methods work because:

Life should be simple.
Work should be hard.
Prayer should be constant.
Only the greatest minds should be our friends and teachers. (Good books)

Life should be simple.
No, I'm not suggesting you buy a farm, although I'm quite sure that doing so would benefit every one of us. I am suggesting that a true classical, and therefore Charlotte Mason education requires a simple life. Gone are the excessive "extras" of modern life and back are the basics: good time management. attention to detail. remembering what's important. getting rid of stuff, clutter, and baggage. finding work that is meaningful. making do with what you have. Not taking on more than you can handle. Finishing what you start.
In following this idea, CM's student's are done early because we don't have endless piles of curriculum and things to sort through and accomplish each day. We don't switch it up every two weeks or every few months or even every year. We stick with ideas, and ride them through to the end.

Work should be hard.
A simple life is best lived in hard work. This is why people yearn for the family farm. We have work, we do it, and we are satisfied. This goes for mental work too, and Charlotte's students know this. We don't reward or punish the children as they work. We allow natural consequences and the satisfaction of a job well done. This builds confidence and.... surprise... joy.
Today people are lazy and obsessed with entertainment over work, chocolate and wine over sacrifice, naps and jammies over clean homes and diligence. This is not the way of the saints, and it certainly is no the way of joy! Is it any surprise that so many people in our world are medicated for depression?? Our minds AND our bodies are rotting away. Perhaps worse is the rotting of our minds, as mental laziness creates a seat for stupidity. A disciplined mind, no matter how simple, will always be superior.
In Chapter III of Ourselves, Charlotte Mason lays out quite clearly the enemies if the intellect: Sloth, poor intellectual habits, inability to stay in one field of thought, and an inability to connect ideas because of a lack of "well-rounded" knowledge. We all know that hard, physical work is good for our children, and even for ourselves. But let us never forget that hard mental work is the cornerstone of a truly CM education.

Prayer should be constant.
The elements of a simple life are perhaps best laid out in the monastic rules of Catholic religious life. I hear the Rule of St Benedict is excellent at demonstrating this, but I'm not as familiar with it as I should be. I live by a version of the Rule of St Albert of Jerusalem, who wrote it for the Carmelites.
Regardless, most of the monastic rules are perfect examples of a simple life lived, based on this principle: work, and pray. (You may have heard Catholics say: "Ora et labora!") I would add.... "detach," but this is not something that lay people can do in the same way that monastics do it. That being said, I assure you we can come closer to what they do than what we are doing now. Wink, wink. A life of prayer starts with a habit Charlotte Mason calls "thought of God," and which Catholics recognize as a contemplative life, one in which our awareness of God's presence brings about a change of heart and attitude. Prayer is sustaining, and food for our souls.... a way to acknowledge this "thought of God." And so we pray. Basing our schedules and routines off of prayer times rather than eating or playing times is a great way to discipline the mind and a practice of those who historically have achieved the greatest ability to think clearly.

And good books should be teachers.
I add this point as a fourth and most important point because it was so dear to Charlotte herself. Miss Mason's ideas about books should be read by each individual educator. Her methods can not be followed casually with any measure of success, as evidenced by the scores of unschooling "CM" educators busily fluttering around the internet desperate for new curriculum or new CM ideas "that work for them." 
We learn by imitation. I see my children do it every single day. If we do not give them the Great Minds, the Masters to imitate, who will they imitate? Would you rather your daughters imitate Penelope or Amelia Bedelia? Saint Joan of Arc or Judy Blume's Margaret? Would you rather your sons imitate King Arthur and Caractacus, or Harry Potter?
We who have heard Charlotte's thoughts on literature and who have smiled and agreed, what business do we have putting twaddle in the hands of our children? Why read a compilation created by a disordered thinker over a whole work written by a master? (Omnibus and Story of the World, I'm looking at you!) Discovering twaddle is tricky in a world full of books, but the best guideline I can give, and one I use in my own home, is this:
1. Does the book capture the interest of the adult as much as of the child and it is written in language that will not only delight, but also teach and instruct the reader(s)?
2. Does the book require that even the adult concentrate to extract it's full meaning?
3. I might even add an additional guideline: Is the book the original source of the ideas it conveys, or does it expound upon an original idea? And if it expounds upon that idea, does it do so in a logical way or is it building an illogical idea on top of the mental work of others?
And if you are following the other guidelines-- committed to a life of prayer, hard work, and simple living--- will you really have TIME to read twaddle, even "not quite" twaddle? Not a chance.
I was recently involved in a discussion between a group of protestant women and a group of Catholic women regarding the nature of the Church. It was a very upsetting conversation to me on many levels, but mostly because these are women who I have very much fond affection for. We had both read the Bible. They were sure of their position because of how they were reading the Bible, but I was certain they were reading the Bible incorrectly. I attempted to prove it with good books... by quoting the earliest recorded Christian writers like Ignatius of Antioch and Justyn Martyr. They remained unconvinced, I'm quite sure, because they couldn't even fathom the paradigm shift required in their thinking skills.... they had been taught one way: to follow rabbit trails of ideas, and I was trying to teach them TO THINK (to follow one logical trail of ideas) because if I could prove that Christians believed a certain thing HISTORICALLY, then surely they had to acknowledge that things had changed somewhere along the way.
These are "well-read" women, but they couldn't think because all their lives they had been reading books that were less than perfect, so that when they finally found themselves faced with logic, they couldn't recognize it and in fact, vehemently rejected it in favor of a fallacy they had repeated and repeated and repeated to themselves time and again by reading books which were good, captivating, interesting, etc..... but which weren't THE BEST BOOKS. They were used to reading books in the Christian Living section of the Bookstore. I was trying to point them towards the Church Fathers, original sources of ideas in their original form. Whole different animal. (It was reading the Church Fathers that led me to Catholicism, of course! I took them as my RIGHTFUL teachers.... and so should we all, not because I did but because they have the authority and place in history to teach us the BEST and TRUEST living ideas from which have sprung all other ideas about faith and Christianity!)

It seems like every day I read a new post by a homeschooling mother looking for ways to purchase.... or steal..... a CM education for their children, to secure joy without being willing to actually do the work of reading CM for herself and then applying it, keeping these four principles in mind. And yet these four principles are what constitute the bulk of a classical liberal arts education. These four things--- simplicity, hard work, prayer, and good books/teachers--- will lead to good thinking, and therefore to truth and beauty and the transformation of the world. I have even met people who felt satisfied and accomplished giving their children a list of "living books" to read each week and who all but ignored the foundations of good thinking--- grammar and arithmetic and logic! DESPITE Charlotte's own ideas, which I'm quite sure they never read for themselves.

So let me say it again, and I say it as much to myself as to anyone who might be reading:
You cannot purchase a CM education in a box. You cannot teach the classical liberal arts without setting up a culture of simplicity and order, hard work, prayer, and submission. You cannot be less than perfect, and then expect perfection. You cannot have children who love the outdoors, and not go outside yourself. You cannot have children who are kind, and not be kind. You cannot have children who are wise, and not seek after wisdom yourself. And you cannot be a Saint unless you seek to "be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) God will help you.

Follow the advice of St Josemaria Escriva who said: "Work, and things will change! You will yield more fruit, and it will be sweeter than before."

"Classical" educators, in my mind, who enroll their children in sing-songy memory work co-ops in the hopes of creating something they refuse to be themselves will not succeed. Charlotte Mason educators, in my mind, who allow their children to read twaddle disguised as literature, and to lounge around reading and playing all day rather than taking their studies and their responsibilities seriously, will not succeed. This is NOT a statement against any particular program or book or series, but rather against sloth, laziness, and intellectual suicide.

I leave you with these brilliant words, even more important in our day:

"Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study....there are many, who certainly have a taste for reading, but in whom it is little more than the result of mental restlessness and curiosity. Such minds cannot fix their gaze on one object for two seconds together; the very impulse which leads them to read at all, leads them to read on, and never to stay or hang over any one idea. The pleasurable excitement of reading what is new is their motive principle; and the imagination that they are doing something, and the boyish vanity which accompanies it, are their reward. Such youths often profess to like poetry, or to like history or biography; they are fond of lectures on certain of the physical sciences; or they may possibly have a real and true taste for natural history or other cognate subjects;—and so far they may be regarded with satisfaction; but on the other hand they profess that they do not like logic, they do not like algebra, they have no taste for mathematics; which only means that they do not like application, they do not like attention, they shrink from the effort and labour of thinking, and the process of true intellectual gymnastics. The consequence will be that, when they grow up, they may, if it so happen, be agreeable in conversation, they may be well informed in this or that department of knowledge, they may be what is called "literary"; but they will have no consistency, steadiness, or perseverance; they will not be able to make a telling speech, or to write a good letter, or to fling in debate a smart antagonist, unless so far as, now and then, mother-wit supplies a sudden capacity, which cannot be ordinarily counted on. They cannot state an argument or a question, or take a clear survey of a whole transaction, or give sensible and appropriate advice under difficulties, or do any of those things which inspire confidence and gain influence, which raise a man in life, and make him useful to his religion or his country."

Cardinal John Henry Newmann
On the Idea of a University

The Catechism on human sexuality

ARTICLE 6
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

You shall not commit adultery.¹¹³ You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.¹¹⁴

* I. "MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM . . ."
2331 "God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image . . .. God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion."¹¹⁵
"God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them";¹¹⁶ He blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply";¹¹⁷ "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created."¹¹⁸
2332 Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.
2333 Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.
2334 "In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity."¹¹⁹ "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God."¹²⁰
2335 Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."¹²¹ All human generations proceed from this union.¹²²
2336 Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins. In the Sermon on the Mount, he interprets God's plan strictly: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."¹²³ What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.¹²⁴
The tradition of the Church has understood the sixth commandment as encompassing the whole of human sexuality.

Eulogia

It's been two weeks and two days since the night I stood trembling in the dark kitchen, big wet tears pouring down my cheeks.
Moments before, I'd been doing the dishes, quietly mulling over the day's events as the children slept. As I flipped over one of the blue-and-white striped Correlle dinner plates my Father in law had picked out and began to rinse it, thoughts melted over me like the steaming hot water pouring over the cold, hard china. He had picked these out, hopeful. He had picked these out.... thinking they'd be useful. And they were. He had used these plates, every day, for years.
And now he may never eat from these plates again. My thoughts turned to his condition: restless in a VA home, quiet..... his children taking turns to stand around him bedside, speaking to him tentatively and with mournful voices.

Just then I felt a heaviness I cannot quite describe. I wondered if the lights had flickered or the room had darkened, and a shudder came over me. I felt his presence in the room, weighing on me. My heart raced and a sinking feeling came over me as I glanced at the telephone that had just begun to ring, sitting on the counter across from me. I knew.

"Hello?" I said into the phone, not even checking who had called.
My husband's sister's tearful voice broke the loud silence in my head. "He just passed, a minute ago." She began. I don't remember what I said. I don't remember the rest of the conversation. Just that I sat down, right there in the kitchen, shocked. I knew.

What happened next was a blur. Although it had been years since his diagnosis, and although we all knew he was very ill and was, in fact, dying, still no one had expected his end to come so soon.
We were left with questions. Many questions. We wondered about the cancer itself. About the types of treatments he'd received and the kind of care he got in the hospital. We wondered about the hospice team, which seemed hell-bent on seeing him go. We wondered about him... and how much he understood about what was happening. And then he passed. We had more questions, and more unsettling, longing should-have, could-have thoughts.

But my own father said: don't dwell on those. Just love.

I met my Father in law for the first time on the phone, calling him from a payphone in the company area of my basic training unit in Ft. Jackson, SC at the request of his son. His son had told me to do so on a love note written quickly in chicken scratch and passed clandestinely into my hands while drill sergeants looked the other way--- a note in which he had professed his love and given me his father's phone number to call if I needed anything at all while we were separated during training. I dialed the number confident that I was about to meet an honorable man- a man who had formed the handsome and impressive young man who had stolen my willing heart and inspired me to great feats that defied reason and common sense.

When he picked up the phone after the first ring, I introduced myself as the object of the affection of his beloved son's heart, and he interviewed me. Was I a Christian? Yes. Was I going to be good to him? Yes. Well, then I could call him "Dad. Or First Sergeant." The very idea cracked me up. He seemed... too funny to be real. And from that very first day, he welcomed me as his own.

Over the years I came to know him very intimately... maybe better than most, perhaps even his own children in some ways.At the end of his life I was a constant companion to him.

At first, he was a distant, slightly annoying relative. I hadn't really thought about how when you get married, you become family with your in-laws. My husband's family is VERY different from my own, and has endured a huge amount of difficulty and challenge. My husband's family is also divorced-- and for good reason--  something which I had never experienced before from the child's perspective.

Once we were released from the Army and made a home of our own, my husband's father was a constant presence in our little apartment, and then cottage, three times a week in the evenings and on every holiday, frequently calling to make sure we had enough paper towels, knew how to remove frost from our car windshields, and to inquire about the state of our refrigerator and air conditioning unit.

Each time we announced a pregnancy to him, his worrying mind would respond with fret and concern, which would later melt away into pride as he examined his next grandchild--the fruit of my womb--  and began to develop the bonds that later would become the glue that helped our family through our grief.

My husband's father NEVER left us alone. Every opportunity he had to give us an opinion, well.... he took it. And more. For many years I struggled with his presence... he was always kind of awkward and formal, and since we had so little in common our conversations were never easy or relaxed. He mistrusted women, and I was married to his precious son. He loved war and the army and ceremony and his country, and I was raised by hippies, nourished on the arts, and brought up in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual bubble far, far from the American South. He was from the midwest, a place I had never set foot in and had no desire to even visit, and had settled in a city which I found to be a black hole. I was from France and California, two places he saw as the epitome of all that is wrong in the world. He loved gadgets and electricity, having worked for years as an electrician, and I love nature and fresh air. He got excited about badges. I got excited about innovation and people who thought outside the box. He ate microwaved food and plopped donuts on the counter on a daily basis. I was raised to believe they were poison and to fear them. We were different.

Eventually, we were able to find some common ground mostly revolving around nature, food and the Bible. But I kept him at arms length, and found him irritating at best. Dutiful, I tolerated the frequent visits and the constant impact of his presence, but I secretly resented it very much and hoped he would just go away.

Then came the day my husband, who had been working out of state and gone for days, called me to let me know he was thinking about leaving his job. Although he had very good reasons for doing so, including his safety and our family's well being, I was .... furious. Constantly worried about money and provision, I felt let down and angry. I told him what I thought, but he wasn't listening. I called his father, and for the first time in my life I shouted and screamed at him. "DO SOMETHING," I said to him. "He will listen to you! Why didn't you raise him to tough it out when things get hard???!" At the time, I didn't really understand the work conditions my husband was facing. I knew he was very brave, doing an incredibly dangerous job with no health insurance and no help and in adverse conditions. I know it's absolutely ridiculous to compare, but I always felt like we had it harder than my friends who were in the Army--- Army families face separation and danger, but they are so well supported. We were separated six days a week but for pennies, and with no health insurance, no life insurance, and no support. I was always alone with the kids. We didn't get benefits for our job. Just a small paycheck at the end of the month. If you were sick, or injured..... too bad. And yet the dangers were very real: my husband's co-workers were frequently injured, even electrocuted! And the job entailed unbelievable feats of strength and bravery in horrible weather conditions and with a team he couldn't even trust to keep him alive. In my selfish mindset though, thinking only about my comfort, I was enraged at his decision to come home after a year of living this way. What else could he do? So I screamed and hollered into the phone at his dad, who was helping him find a way home, and his dad, for the first time in my life, lectured me on my faith. I found it terribly ironic, since I felt his faith was one-sided and nonsensical, but there he was, telling me the kinds of things I tell other people all the time: "There's nothing you can really DO in this situation, so just speak to God about your fears and concerns. Trust in Jesus. "I couldn't deny that he was right.And I hung up the phone amazed that at one of the most challenging times in my life, my FATHER IN LAW, who I considered one of the world's most annoying people at the time, had been the one to help me get through it and talk me down.

That moment was a turning point in my marriage, and I can thank him for setting me straight. My husband went on to be a very capable provider and father. And I realized he had been doing that all along.

Shortly afterwards, we went to live with my Father in law. This was a decision we made so that my husband could go to college and earn a degree so that we wouldn't struggle as much. Determined to live according to the Church's teachings (therefore running the risk of pregnancy at any given moment),  and yet living in a city where the only real money to be made was in the Army, we felt.... stuck. And his going back to school gave us hope. Little did we know that this was also a Godsend for my FIL. Shortly afterwards, he would be diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, and our presence would be a blessing to him in the end of his days. We never know what God has planned.... but He is always there!

Living with his father had two dimensions for me: Theory and Reality.
In Theory, I LOVED the idea of a multi-generational home. I loved the idea of my kids growing up with a grandpa around. I loved the idea of what we could build into this family with all these relationships around.

Reality was a bit different. Relationships are hard because people are difficult, and my Father in law was one of the most aggravating, difficult people I had ever encountered.  Every single habit of my father in law's annoyed me to the point of me losing my peace. And the man was a two-war veteran... you can believe he had some noticeable, intentional habits.

He was everywhere, his nose in everything, and he ran a tight ship. While my husband was gone at least 12 hours a day (and later 24 as he started work at the fire dept.), I was stuck alone in this old, shut in, dusty, ugly house with a man who had a method for everything, from walking down the hall to opening a tin can, and who wanted everyone on earth to use that same method. He had a penchant for sharpie-ing instructions on everything in the house. He loved to use loud electrical devices like fans and leaf blowers.  I homeschooled and discipled my children around the kitchen table and he never left me to it, not even for a moment, without interjecting or having a say in what I was teaching. We were Catholics, he was protestant, and even as we prayed together he would come piddling around in the kitchen right in front of us and make comments about what we prayed or sang. He persistently attempted to pour his knowledge and worldview into my children, something which we resisted with all our might most of the time since we didn't share his ideas about religion or politics. Few things annoyed my French sensibilities more than him indoctrinating my kids with endless flag ceremonies and speeches about the glory of Our Nation, or his distaste for opening windows and letting light into the house. He constantly poured out his furious, raging opinions about politics and "bad stuff" in the news, making us antsy and irritable. And for the past four years, I have NEVER-- not once-- been able to make a meal or a cup of coffee in peace.

But there were good things, too. He was a master BBQ chef and an amazing Fixer of Things. He genuinely loved his son and his grandchildren and was very thoughtful towards them. He was so generous towards those he loved and was always game for a good time, even if it was very organized good time. He always shared stories and laughs he had discovered with us, and persistently prayed for us, tried to lead us and guide us, and took his patriarchal responsibilities to heart. He loved to make conversation with virtually anyone we brought over. Most importantly, he always asked questions when things weren't to his liking, and he told us he loved us and that he was proud of us and grateful for us. Often.

Just a short month before his hospitalization and final demise, my Father in law converted and became a Catholic. He was received into the Church in our little Maronite parish, with us by his side and our excited children sitting near him in the pews. No one was more surprised than myself, but then again.... I know better than to be surprised by what God can do. With tears in our eyes, we stood before our wonderful priest and Our Lord, a completed family, and that vision for multi-generational faithfulness had never seemed so close. Reverent and somber,  his old and mottled hands tightly clasped, he prayed with thankgsiving.

The details surrounding his reasons for converting still somewhat elude me. I know he had many long conversations with my husband about it, often late into the night. I know he was troubled by the constant calvinist bent in the churches around him, which he found unbiblical. I'm not sure what exactly sent him across the Tiber but I do know this: he pulled me aside one day and thanked me for teaching my children the Bible, and holding devotions with them each day. "All my life, I wanted to do that with my kids," he said, with not a little regret. "I don't know why it never worked out the way I wanted it to." He told me he found Catholic prayer invigorating and disciplined, and that watching the children and I pray and study each day was exciting for him. From that day on, he would regularly join us during morning prayer. Instead of interrupting, he would wait quietly until it was time to sing the hymn, and then he would join in. Little by little he began to put up icons in his room, and to ask me what the Church taught about the different topics he faced each day. He began to form a Catholic identity, and it was quite strong by the time he passed... at least in his mind. He was thrilled to be "becoming Catholic," and often spoke to us and the children about it as if it was a special secret, like an upcoming birthday party we were keeping under wraps.

Though he was in great pain and mentally taxed most of the end of it, his life finally ended at peace with us, and with himself, and with God and that matters to me greatly. The last thing I saw him do was lay his trembling, weathered hands on my husband's head and bless him. My heart burst.

The last things I heard him say where words of delight over my children and family.The very last thing we did with him was to sing "This is My Father's World,"  a hymn he had once told me he loved and that we had spent many enjoyable minutes singing together during morning prayer with the children. 

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
 
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
 
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.
This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
 
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.
This is my Father’s world, why should my heart be sad?
The lord is King—let the heavens ring. God reigns—let the earth be glad.
 
This is my Father’s world. Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.
This is my Father’s world. I walk a desert lone.
In a bush ablaze to my wondering gaze God makes His glory known.
 
This is my Father’s world, a wanderer I may roam
Whate’er my lot, it matters not,
My heart is still at home.

I cannot but be healed by having watched his battle with cancer, as painful and horrible and PTSD inducing as it was to be at his side, especially at the end.
I think sometimes when I see people with cancer suffer, as we all, including dad,  did with little Daisy Merrick just a few short months ago as well, that the cancer is to teach the rest of us a lesson--- that life is short, and unpredictable, and that people matter.... families matter, our bodies and our souls.... we matter.  On the last day I saw him, a little old lady in a wheelchair stopped my family as we tearfully walked out of the nursing home. Gatekeeper of sorts, she cooed over each of my children, demanding hugs which they willingly gave. Then she turned her attention to us.

"Y'all are so blessed," she said. "And you know it."
We nodded, moved. We are.

God called him home that weekend, while my husband was away from his bedside. I hear that people often wait until their loved ones are out of the room to die, as if they need permission to let go.

We live in his house now and it's empty without him. The feel of him lingers in the old, worn wallpaper and the creaky, dark floor. It's in the faucets and fans, the stove and the dishes, the  mantle and mudroom.This house is him, and he is this house. Things are changing.

During the week of the funeral, many people waxed poetic about his life. We remained resolute to remember him as he was: impossible and headstrong, chaotic in clutter, but organized in chaos, a fan of attention and affection, a generous giver of gifts, steady in affliction, and a keeper of traditions. This helps me, especially, to remember the greatest lesson I ever learned from him.

The Scotch-Irish Nesbitts, you see, have a Crest, like all other clans. Ours has a wild boar in the center, and the mysterious words "I BYD IT."

I byd it means "I will endure."
Nesbitt life is no joke. It's not easy. It takes a special kind of woman to be a Nesbitt, and as evidenced by the looooooooooooong line of women who just couldn't make the cut (or those who tried and failed miserably.) Dad was no stranger to heartache, and the women in his life, beginning with his mother, had all failed him. And many, with good reason.
Resolute, I have always faced this fact with my typical headstrong determination.... courageously blathering on about how strong I will be.... until the hardships began to come.
And come they do. We've often wondered what curse we've inherited and what misery waits around the corner. And yet in every instance, time and again, I can hear dad's old, familiar lecture.... the one he reserved for when my voice gets all shrieky and my eyes, wide like saucers. "It's the Nesbitt way," he would say. "We endure. We think it through. We pray. We persevere."

And when I remember it, my chest swelling with Charlotte Mason-induced pride-- (I can endure! I am enduring! I will endure! I ought to endure!) I realize that this is the greatest legacy he could have left my children.... I byd it. It's the name. Its' our clan. It's the vision of the glory in the reward at the end-- the reward he is enjoying now.

Thanks for the past four years, dad. For every painful, blessed moment.

I will remember it always. I will endure. We all will.

How reading the Bible changed my life and 10 ways to let it change yours.

The inside of one of the 20 or so Bibles I have around the house. :D

Bible study is a critical part of Catholic life, but the Catholic approach took some time for me as a revert. It wasn't until I studied Carmelite and Maronite spirituality that it really clicked.

I remember as a teenager reading the Sunday gospel readings with the Fransiscan friars at the Mission Santa Barbara during my confirmation prep classes. Propped up against a mossy fountain with only the sounds of birds and running water around us, we'd crack open these thick, red paperback NABs and dig in. I don't remember a single thing we actually studied, but I remember the rhythmic turning of the pages, the reflective silences, and the sweet smell of newsprint.... moments of peace scattered through my busy teenage life.

When I began the first steps of leaving the Church, it was the Bible that spurred me on. I was in a serious relationship with a young Swedish Australian man, and though he wasn't religious himself, I was shocked to discover that his awesome family was--- they were Jehova's Witnesses!

Curious, I began to ask them more and more about what animated their lives. They shared the Bible with me, offering to study it with me and point me in the right direction. I was intrigued on two levels-- first, because I absolutely loved books, and the idea that a book could contain so much practical wisdom and insight that it could keep people entertained for all their lives blew my mind. I was also intrigued because of what I began to read. The central themes of scripture started to resonate in me deeply, and though the idea that I was a sinner didn't completely sink in, I began to feel the first signs of the twinging of my conscience as I read along. Something was shifting.

The Jehova's witnesses didn't know what to do with me. Most people accepted to study the Bible with them because they were looking for answers. I wasn't unhappy, and wasn't feeling like I needed "something more." And I actually didn't think they knew what they were talking about half the time.The little booklets and guides they used as they pored over the scriptures with me were interesting but --I felt-- came to illogical conclusions. My father was a historian. I wasn't buying it. But I thought it was fun. And necessary... stirring something up in me in a deeper, reflective way that I wanted to continue.

I praise God that though I studied with them weekly for more than a year, my "intuition" kept me from swallowing what they were preaching, but at the same time I thank God for their witness and example. Diligently, two by two, they took time out of their lives to meet with me and read the Bible every week. They brought me to the Kingdom Hall and encouraged me in my studies. They provided a beautiful example of what being "set apart" in this world means-- though they were dispersed throughout the world in every normal type of job and activity, they behaved with the kind of upright character and nobility that is seldom found elsewhere. They weren't judgmental, at least, not externally, but they were firm in their beliefs and absolutely unyielding to the spirit of the world that embraced immorality and ugliness. They were a simple, thankful, diligent people, and I enjoyed studying with them very much.

Over the years, they came to understand that I was going no-where with them. Although I had made many positive changes in my life and begun a pursuit of godliness, at least in an external form, it was clear I wasn't going to become a Jehova's Witness. We remained in contact, but they abandoned me to my sinful ways and the closeness we had developed over time became a distance.

My life remained somewhat unchanged, although there was a distinct shift in my thinking. I continued to party, to forge ahead on my own. I kept a Bible on me, though, and a rosary--- artifacts I held onto but hardly understood. Years passed. Inspired by a Christian roommate, I bought a Life Application study bible, and read it from time to time. It sat on my shelf and promised me answers to questions I didn't want to look at.

And on that fateful Christmas Eve when Jesus finally brought me to my knees a repentant sinner for the very first time, I didn't have a Bible in my hands. Just a prayer I lifted high.

But after that night, I ran home, cracked one open, and read with great attention. I could no longer deny that God was real, and that He was intimately involved in my life. I wanted to know Him more. I began to read everything I could get my hands on. I went to daily mass in an old Spanish style Jesuit church downtown near my apartment.

I found myself there with the same crowd each day-- a couple of homeless folks, an old lady, a tired old Jesuit priest and a young man my age who seemed very devout but who lit up a cigarette every time we left the church...something my non-Catholic Christian friends would have balked at. There was quiet there in that huge church, and reflection. Something sacred. But it didn't compare to the sea of faces down at my local Calvary Chapel expectantly looking to me to change.

The women at the Calvary Chapel all had shiny, well groomed hair and wore dresses and sweaters that matched the seasons. They held potlucks and retreats and had casseroles ready to drop off wherever they were needed. They drove mini-vans full of excited, happy teenagers who liked their families and Jesus and they asked me how I was doing and they stopped what they were doing to pray loud with hands on me. Their houses were clean and tidy and full of the world's riches--- big televisions, nice cars, marble kitchens that looked like magazines and boats in the garage, but they had spiritual riches too--- happy families, loving marriages. Open homes that welcomed me and prayed for me. There was an irresistable AMERICAN-ness to them.... though I had grown up wealthy in a European community, there was something different about these people. Everything was shiny and wide-open and unintellectual. There was nothing ancient in their homes or in their hearts, and I was continually confronted by a new-ness I didn't know how to assimilate into. Entertainment and enjoyment was the order of the day, and they were determined. And successful. And spiritual, which I loved.

Like the Jehova's Witnesses, they kept themselves separate from the world in their priorities and thinking. Unlike them, they enjoyed all of the things the world, and seemed to be constantly showered with good luck.
As a general rule, they were greatly concerned with the poor and suffering,  but the spirit of materialism sometimes crept in. Instead of not buying things, they only bought things which came from other Christian companies.  And they often bought a lot of things. Of course, they used these things to enhance their witness in the world, but there were inconsistencies that really bothered me. For example, they abhorred pornography, but were fine with using and selling "toys" to each other in the context of marriage. They were against abortion but ok with birth control pills. Some of it didn't sit right with me, but I really enjoyed their company, and the time we spent together. They had a lot of joy, and a lot of success, and enthusiasm. Just very American. Like I said, it was a different approach.

As I began to study the bible with them, true growth occurred in me. Each Sunday and weeknights in small groups were delivered a talk on a topic that applied to my personal life, and as they led me piece by piece through the Bible, the pages came to life and spilled out in my actions or the things I saw around me.
They offered many different methods for Bible study, all of which seemed helpful. Sometimes we would go book by book through the Bible. Other times we'd stick with themes and topics we found interesting and relevant. It would take our breath away, the clearness of the thing being studied, and we'd all agree and amen, and then pause in reverential silence before breaking into praise and worship and praying for one another. It was beautiful. I started to crave bible study all day long. At work I'd take breaks and scan the pages of my Bible for new truths. At home I'd spend hours holed up reading with some tea and a blanket, my cat batting at my toes. My friends and I would get together and STUDY THE BIBLE instead of going out partying. What??! But we did! And it was amazing.

At this point in time I began to have some issues with truthfulness. I hit a wall in my spiritual growth. At the time, I had a set of Christian friends, and a set of non-Christian friends, and I wasn't about to let go of either. At the same time, they absolutely could not mix--- my non-Christian friends drank, smoked, did drugs, lived promiscuous sexual lifestyles and stayed up late dancing every weekend. Their only plan was to have as much fun as possible.
My Christian friends, on the other hand, NEVER drank, or smoked. They stayed up late hanging out and talking about Jesus, and often seemed kind of.... unrealistic or at least different in their approach to life. I hesitate to use the term "blissfully ignorant," but for many of them who had grown up Christian, there was a naiveté there that I can't discount. They were unbelievably nice. But I couldn't connect with many of them on a deeper level because I felt that they genuinely couldn't understand my struggles or those of my closest friends. In their happy, joyful Christian bubble, they would never know the depths of pain caused by generations of mortal sin, or the tug of a soul who had tasted evil and been confused about its sweetness. I might be wrong.... but that was the impression I got. When I read the Bible with them, I was always mystified because things they took as "givens" were so new to me. The things I read challenged me to my core they casually passed through and moved on with.

It was hard. I felt that I would never be able to connect my real life with the theoretical life I was building in my mind and heart through Bible study. I felt that I would always have to have this double life, where I thought and felt one thing, but did and said another. And what was worse, was that whenever I had brought these Christian friends with me into my "other" life and bared my inner and outer real life to them, they had surpassed me in sinfulness and stupidity by the end of the night and even boggled my mind with their behavior, rather than showing me an example of an integrated life, where faith and reality interact in peace. I became convinced that many, if not most, Christians were hypocrites, and the ones who weren't were simply ignorant of "what was out there." I became depressed.

Enter a family who showed me that Christianity wasn't a theory or a spectacle, but a journey, and a relationship with a living God. With great patience and much prayer, they showed me how to turn every one of my undertakings over to the God who made me, and to take time each day to evaluate my own culpability and my own direction.... to hear from God, and to act on what I was hearing. Little by little, discipled by them, I learned to walk with Jesus, and to turn to His Word for my spiritual food and drink. Somehow, God began to integrate my head and my heart, and to help me TURN from my past life and actually begin to peel the layers of my selfish thought patterns away. I no longer felt I could integrate somehow SIN and RIGHTEOUSNESS, like the time I wanted to work in the porn industry and still be a Christian. (WHAT??! But it's true!)
I now knew I could integrate REALITY and RIGHTEOUSNESS, instead, and turn from sin. I also learned that righteousness didn't mean shackles but true freedom, and that I COULD change without becoming blind, ignorant, naive, or a liar and hypocrite. I learned that God is in the business of transforming and renewing, not repressing and hiding. Behold, he makes all things new!

This changed my life.... and this time, for good.

Weekly as we studied, talked, prayed, and I watched them live, I realized that each of us was born with the ability to come to KNOW God, and to hear Him, when we began to live a disciplined life that put Him first and loved on people, when we expected more from ourselves than we did others, we would come to growth and joy that was unstoppable. I learned that chaos and confusion, in which I had lived the majority of my life, was not the inevitable end. I learned that peace was the plan, and that there was a Shepherd who knew how to get me there.

As the years passed and I continued, as I had finally learned, to study my Bible not for whatever tickled my ears but for what the Holy Spirit was speaking directly to me that day, and to take that Word and apply it to my own life, my life full of sin and stress and sadness and selfishness..... I began to see real growth. Suddenly the things I had been no longer seemed as important as the things I was to become, and the places I had been no longer seemed like home as I pursued my true Home, the heart of God. But then, again, I hit a wall.

I returned to the Catholic Church from whence I had come because of the Bible. My husband and I refused to accept all the teachings of a church that didn't line up with what we read in the Bible, and we meant it. We studied the Bible, the arts, science, history, and the lives of the Saints and we saw clearly that the ancient paths had not swerved or changed. We accepted the heritage which was ours. We came under real apostolic authority. And we learned to tap into the grace available to us in the sacraments-- or mysteries--- infinitely more than just "ordinances."

When we came back to the Church, we experienced one of our greatest challenges. We learned that much like the Israelites of old, the Church was full to the brim of people who had every reason to get it, and who yet, inexplicably, did every stupid thing under the sun. Including worshiping idols of their own making, ignoring the clear voice of their Shepherd, and rejecting the Spirit of God in favor of the Spirit of the world. Those Catholics we DID meet who seemed to grasp the enormity of the blessing they had received by virtue of their belonging to the community of believers, tended to rest on the side of trusting the Church and her tradition (a good thing) but with very little emphasis on personal spirituality. Or worse, they failed to understand the true universality of the Church, preferring their own tradition to others' and looking with disdain across the East/West gulf. They worked and prayed, but always as if it was a job and not a transformation.

For example, they said vocal prayers, but often said things like: "I said an Our Father for him" instead of "hey, let's pray right now." Their kids were a bit wild, and often the mothers ran the home instead of the fathers. In the homes where the fathers did lead the home, they seemed so somber and strict and kept to themselves. We couldn't even get in to observe how it worked. We were very discouraged. And lonely.

On the one hand, we wanted orthodoxy of belief, orthodoxy in liturgy, orthodoxy in structure and action. On the other hand, we wanted people who LOVED THE LORD, who KNEW Him, and who had experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the regeneration that comes with it. On the one hand, we knew without a doubt that God had Himself called us to the Church. On the other hand, we constantly felt ourselves growing depressed over the state of the Church. Years later, we are still mystified every time we read about some ridiculous Catholic scandal that quite frankly shouldn't even BE an issue, as contrary as it is to the faith. The Church is a hospital for sinners.

The place of Bible study in all this has been frustrating. The Bible is a cornerstone of Catholic life. It is critical that we study and live what we learn in the scriptures. The Bible came into the world THROUGH the Church and the Church encourages people everywhere to not just read and study it but to pray it every day and let it transform our lives. Jesus Himself has set this standard for us in the Gospels. In theory, we are all about the Bible.

In practice, though, it's very different. I have attended Catholic Bible studies before in my local roman parish and found them lacking... usually touchy feely ("how does this passage make your feel?") in nature, I've been disappointed in the the depth of teaching somehow neglected on the assumption that all Catholics don't really know or understand the Bible. This assumption is ridiculous, as the Catholic faith IS the Bible. On the other hand, it is reasonable--- most cradle Catholics I meet have not made an effort to make scripture a part of their ordinary, daily lives. They have a family bible they take down for special events, but rarely have their own, worn copy of the scriptures. Frequently in Catholic bible studies I hear people say things like... "I'm not sure but doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible that. (insert thing the Bible does NOT say anywhere)" and "I always read that (insert scripture taken totally out of context here)." Whats' worse, the leader has often agreed!!
It is frustrating.

I have led Catholic Bible studies in my own home and in other people's homes. It has been incredibly challenging to find Catholic materials to teach with aside from the Bible that point towards practical life. While study guides that speak of deep theological issues abound, finding a simple women's bible study to use and share, for example, on married life or family life, is really REALLY hard.
Usually we have ended up using an inconspicuous protestant study guide like one of Beth Moore's studies, and we have added in Catholic elements as needed. There are some excellent Catholic Bible study programs out there, but they are often expensive and/or geared towards entire parish use, not small groups like I've grown accustomed to.

On the positive side of this is the fact that this points to the Church's universality and discipline: the Church says that (a) there is no one "right way" to do practical life so long as we are within certain guidelines (order in the home, etc.) and thus we have no need of specially written Bible study materials to pass out universally.  The Church provides the guidelines in encyclicals (teachings on doctrine), so when we read them regularly and daily read passages from the Bible, we have *all we need.* And the Lord himself places people in our lives to serve as examples and to give us ideas. And this is true! So we are expected to do this on our own, and especially.... in our families. Again, this is right and good.

And (b)  we are expected to grow, to immerse ourselves in the Word, and to make it a part of our lives, but we are NOT expected to idolize our personal Bible reading times, which can be so enjoyable that sometimes we want to do nothing else. :) I like this too--- when I was a protestant I spent more time each day sitting with a bible and a notebook than I have ever been able to as a Catholic. And don't get me started on the "quiet time" pressure cooker for married women.

So I sat with my bible much more as a protestant.... but the reason for this is that as a Catholic I am daily being sustained by my portion of the Word and spending myself in good works--- something I don't "like" as much in the sense of enjoyment, but that I think is good and right.

Reflecting on this, I can remember over and over again as a protestant witnessing people who needed to take action (find a job, go to work, love their kids better, forgive a spouse or parent, etc.) and who instead spent HOURS daily in "prayer and study," "waiting to hear from the Lord," and driving the people around them bonkers in the process.
I've done it too. It's called looking for a way out of what we must do.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for a retreat, but usually the midst of a crisis aint that time. And in a culture where the Bible is the ONLY place to turn, and a book we read, it's all too easy to get sucked into this way of thinking. In the Catholic Church, the Bible is the Word of God. And revered as such. But there is more--- Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium (or apostolic authority) together form a balanced approach to life that helps us to stay the course without getting selfish or side-tracked. There are sacraments, mysteries too. We are married, and the grace that flows from that is something that speaks to us of what we must do. Don't need a Bible for that--- it's a given. We are baptized. We are to confess. We are to meet the King in the Eucharist. Again, these are givens, and they help us to pick ourselves up and move forward when we might be tempted to hide ourselves in the comforting words of scripture. Because faith without works is dead-- because talking without action is just that..... talking. And works have a price.

So eventually, though that HUNGER for God's Word never abated in me, I learned to be satisfied with my portion, and to put it to good use, which caused infinitely more growth in me than I had had when I spent hours each day with my nose in my Bible, but totally ignored all the hard stuff around me I needed to do.

When I discovered the Carmelites, I was in so much need of a way to balance those two things out. I wanted the use of intellect that Catholicism had brought to our lives, but I also wanted the profound trust in God and relationship with Him that my Charismatic friends had. And I wanted to be surrounded by people who got that. The Carmelite tradition is deeply spiritual, but it is also profoundly biblical, and it was at the foot of Mt Carmel that I found this peaceful balance between letting God speak to me in quiet and remaining in the presence of God in the noise of the world. Of course, God never lets me stay put when I get comfortable, and He took me from the Carmelites as soon as I felt at home.

Interestingly enough, he placed me securely in the arms of another, very similar spirituality, also called the "Faith of the Mountain" by it's people. I followed my husband to our Catholic church home, a tiny Maronite parish where we are one of the only young families. And yet--- I love it here.

Like Carmelites, the emphasis in Maronite spirituality is intensely biblical and often relies on a clear vision of the Old Testament and Hebrew tradition interpreted through the New. Like Carmelites, Maronites emphasize silence but recognize the Presence in the midst of the world. Monastics in the midst of the world, they know a balance between "retreat" and "pour out," and their interaction with sacred scripture is life-giving and unselfish, both transformative and functional. Did I mention that I love it here?

I still read my Bible every day. I read it alone, and I read it with my kids, and I read it with my husband. I rarely read it with my friends, but we talk about it!

I take great joy in listening to the sounds of my children practicing verses they have memorized, or sharing a Bible story with their father in the back room as I do the dishes. I enjoy praying scripture over my children as they sleep and at the Shabbat table, and over my friends as they sit on my couch pouring out frustrations and joys. It still animates every part of my day. And I do miss the days when I had nothing better to do than to read, read, read the Bible. But I'm glad that now my life is about doing and not just hearing. That's in the Bible, too. ;)

Below is our family's bible reading and prayer routine. If you don't have one yourself, I encourage you to get one started.

1. Personal Bible reading.
We get up in the morning and each read the Bible on our own. My kids are young, so they might just thumb through a picture Bible, but I have a set schedule: I read a daily devotional from the lives of the saints, and then I read the day's readings and journal them using the SOAP (scripture, observation, application, prayer) method. I find that it is the perfect balance between Lectio Divina and Inductive Bible Study.

2. Family liturgy of the hours.
We stop all activity in the house during the traditional hours and pray the psalms.

3. Family Catechism in the morning and Family Bible reading at night.
These both involve USING the Bible, but also involve lots of discussion and sharing and praying. We also memorize scripture together during these times.

4. Topical Bible study during the week as needed.
Sometimes someone in our family has an issue or needs to make a decision, and we study what the Word of God has to say about it to help us make a right decision.

5. Praying scripture.
We often pray for ourselves, each other, and our guests or friends and family using words we pull directly from scripture. We have these on a calendar we use to help us pray.

6. Encouraging notes.
When we write each other reminders, little notes, or cards we use Bible passages to emphasize what we want to say.

7. Meditation.
Whether we are praying the rosary alone or together, or practicing lectio divina or some other type of scriptural meditation (like doing dishes! Haha) we use scripture to animate our thoughts.

8. Torah and Gospel study.
On Saturdays we study the Old Testament and Sundays the Gospel reading for the week both individually and as a family, often listening to talks by others or reading sermons to each other. Charlotte Mason gathered everyone together on Sundays to discuss the Gospel readings. We think it's a wonderful practice, and even more so when it's done with family members, friends and guests, or neighbors and community members!

9. Games.
We sometimes play Bible games or scavenger hunts to sharpen our bible knowledge skills.

10. Blessings, proclamations, war and Word baths.
When my husband and children go out from our home, and when they come in, I have made it my practice to wash the world off them using the Word of God. I pray -- over my husband's work uniform and vehicle, and as he goes out and when he comes in, and do the same for my children. We also make it a practice to bless each other with scripture before bed and on special occasions like birthdays and our feast day meals. Often times, when we feel led to really incorporate a scripture, we will make a proclamation of God's truth by just speaking it out loud into the house or room. We also use scripture in spiritual warfare-- when someone speaks something we know isn't a godly way of thinking, we speak the opposite scripture over our selves and family members. We don't do this out of superstition but to remind US of who is King, and to immediately submit whatever part of us might be slipping back into agreement with God's Word.

Duty and Discipleship

I had a fascinating conversation with my husband yesterday in the car on the way to confession.
As a part of my midwifery studies, I have been seeking out a method or plan for incorporating the concept of discipleship into my practice. I wanted to see my own midwifery practice in the context of ministry to women.
My goal is pure enough, I hope--- if I am to be a Christian midwife, a large part of my role is certainly to encourage wives and mothers to seek God, and I wanted to know how best to pour into them. Should we meet weekly or monthly? Should I be available by phone? Should we have group meetings or one on one? What types of things should we discuss? Was there an order in which to teach these things?

The process of discipleship has always been very fruitful for me. It usually involved an active relationship with a person who had a vested interest in my spiritual well-being and who was willing to take time each week or month to check in and encourage me along the journey. Put simply, a Christian disciple follows Jesus, and takes on intentional relationships that encourage others to follow Jesus as well.

In non-Catholic Christian circles, we were always encouraged to seek out other lay members of the church who seemed to be doing spiritually well to meet for discussion. Could this person be called to disciple me? Conversely, we were encouraged to seek out people we felt called to help who seemed to need it. Could I be called to disciple this person?

Although we were called to evangelize everyone, it was clear that we were also called into unique mentoring relationships with each other, as led by the Holy Spirit.
It was also crystal clear that discipleship happened in this relational context--- as a couple we sought to be discipled by another older, wiser couple. As a woman, I sought an older, wiser woman to befriend me and be a guide towards Jesus. As a mother, it was a given that I was called to disciple my children.

Usually, the person who discipled me required something of me: trust, and obedience. If they were going to take the time out of their own lives to invest in me, they wanted to know that it was having an effect. For that reason, they requested that I be open enough with them to share my true thoughts/feelings (unlike in other relationships where you can certainly gloss over some of the hard stuff.) This was challenging for me especially at first, because I am accustomed to giving people what they want to hear. The person who discipled me needed a lot of patience, grace, and wisdom to get past my outer shell.

They also requested that if we both agreed something needed to be worked on (attacking a particular fault of mine, for example) that I would actually DO what they recommended. If I didn't, they reserved the right to question me honestly, and to withdraw their help -- but not their love or prayers-- when they saw that I was determined to stay on the bad course that I was on. This was also particularly challenging in my case, because I had always struggled with a deep-rooted rebellion against God and any type of authority.

So there is always a place within discipleship for authority and submission. One person leads, and the other follows and submits. There is much potential there for misuse and abuse, which is why the details are so important-- who provides it, and what is their motive?

Also, there is the concept of spiritual parenthood involved. I often say that the woman who primarily discipled me throughout college and beyond is my spiritual mother--- in many ways, my heart is closer to her than to my own mother, because not only did she teach me many of the practical aspects of womanhood and wifehood (care of the body, care of the husband, care of the home, and children) but also the spiritual aspects (she taught me to pray, taught me to war in the Spirit, to fast, and to exercise my faith daily.) For many years she was not able to have children of her own, and I was moved whenever I prayed for her to think what a true mother she actually was to me. Similarly, her father was my first real pastor-- a person whose own faith and public teaching led me directly to confront my own sins and the majesty of God, and to begin in practical ways to not only accept the reality of the Cross but to embrace it. When her father saw that I wanted more, he recommended that I speak to her because he knew that I needed a woman to guide me in ways he was not called to, and the wisdom of being willing to relinquish the authority and trust I had given him is not something I will ever forget. Like her wise father, his wise daughter-- who had been an authoritative guide for me throughout my adult single life-- similarly relinquished the trust and authority I had given her over my life when I became a married woman.

An important side note here is that I don't believe we NEED that human interaction to be able to discern God's voice to us. Those living in solitude are able to commune with God and take positive steps towards godly living solely by reading the scriptures and praying in the Spirit. BUT there is a vast benefit to having faithful people around us to confirm a word or thought, and also to help us when we stray the path and cross over into places we ought not.

We have to remember that this relationship of discipleship is not ultimately a means of creating carbon-copies of individual people (that would be a misuse of authority) but rather a means of living our best lives, imitating the disciple of Christ in his seeking after the face of God.

Even so, there is a practical aspect that comes into play. If I am being discipled by someone, I come to conform very much to their way of thinking and doing. If they have "put on the mind of Christ," (1 Cor 2:13-16) this is a good thing, but some people in their own sinfulness might want the person they are discipling to conform to the way they do things (Be it how they dress, talk, eat, pray... whatever). This can be very harmful, so a necessary virtue of a person doing the discipling is humility. This is a protection for the person being discipled AND the person doing the discipling. Just as a parent raising a child does not seek to create a carbon copy of himself, but will still see himself reflected often in the interests and mannerisms of his child, so a person in a discipleship relationship must be aware that the disciple belongs to Jesus.

I remember often calling the woman who discipled me to ask for help (the same way people call their mother!) when in need of clear, spiritual thinking and advice for most of my adult life, but one day after  I was married,  I noticed that instead of giving me a clear answer she began to say to me: "what does your husband think?"
At first, this frustrated me to no end. If I wanted to know what my husband thought, I would have asked him. I wanted to know what she thought, because I felt she had the answers. She was closer to God, and more spiritual. Plus, she was a woman, and just understood me better. Right? Hehe.

But she knew this was wrong. Ever so gently she continued to encourage me to ask my husband, and as she did it dawned on me that this was God's will for my life. I had married a man, and in doing so, given him spiritual authority over my life. I was called not only to respect and love him but to submit to him, and though I had been quite quick in my choice of a husband, I knew it was in God's hands now. Her encouragement, though it "weaned" me into a different type of relationship with her, was priceless in that it led me to confront a reality of married life I had not spent enough time understanding previous to becoming married: it was now my husband who was going to primarily disciple me. Many thoughts flooded me. Was he spiritual enough? Would he be able to guide me? Would he satisfy that craving I had for more relationship (which was ultimately a craving for more of God?)

And these ideas, sadly, took the back burner while I learned to be a wife to the particular man I married and faced the challenges of the practical aspects of wifehood and new motherhood. Although we prayed, this period in my life was mostly marked my trials and error in the keeping of the household.... learning to build family culture. However, I felt strongly that we kept failing at it--- mostly because we often were at odds in our ideas about HOW to run the house and what God's will for us was. We were also often at odds because children can get in the way of a marital relationship if you let them, and we have lots of them. Mostly we were at odds because I wanted him to change and be more like me, and he wanted me to change and be more like him. What we really needed was to both change and be more like Jesus.

I often returned to the idea of discipleship to help me. I knew that my husband was supposed to disciple me, but it still felt helpful to have someone outside of the marriage to lead me, mostly because I felt that my husband had only his interests at heart in what he wanted to lead me in. This wasn't true, mind you, but came out of my own innate rebellion against his God-given authority over the family. And though I looked and looked, no one offered to take on this role of discipling me, so I felt that God had clearly spoken about it.

To add to the confusion, we returned to the Catholic Church a few years into our marriage, and though it was wonderful and right because we believed the Bible teaches the doctrines of the Church, these clear lines of what discipleship WAS became slightly blurry and confusing for me, instead of a normative process.
First, because the Catholic Church, like Ancient Israel, is a mess. The most sublime of divine truths are taught and promulgated by her, as a sacred heart beating wildly with love for God and for His plan for mankind pumping life into the world,  but the most hardened and rebellious of people clog through her tired veins. It is easy to understand why in Luke 18:8 Scripture asks us: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
And second, because two new words began to be introduced into my Christian vocabulary as a Catholic: Catechesis and Spiritual Direction.

Catechesis is the process of handing down the faith. In a formal sense, a catechist gives lessons on true doctrine. At first, I understood catechesis to be sitting down with a catechism-- the tool of the catechist-- and learning / confirming what we understood from reading sacred scripture and studying the lives of the saints and fathers, etc. Over time, I began to understand that catechesis happens not only when I am sitting around the table with an open bible and catechism and my children, but also when I am praying with them at night before bed, or having a right response before them, etc. In short, I began to equate catechesis with this idea of discipleship--- a lifelong, relational process.

Similarly, Spiritual Direction is the receiving of catechism in a personal sense. A spiritual director is a person with whom you have a clear relationship for JUST the purpose of direction (these relationships do not blur the lines of friendship in a traditional sense) and who is invested solely in your spiritual well-being, in guiding you towards holiness and sainthood in a concrete sense. Typically, a spiritual director is also your confessor, the person to whom you confess your sins,  because traditionally, spiritual directors are priests. This is because priests have been given the authority by the apostolic Church to teach the "true faith" and to guide souls. (which isn't to say that there aren't some awful priests out there, because they are. But it is the Bishop's responsibility to ensure that the priests in their diocese are up to the task. And not all priests are spiritual directors, nor do they want to be.) These mentors are also found in monastaries and hermitages-- there is a long Christian tradition of looking for and receiving profound spiritual answers from holy men and women living in these places. I have hiked up some of these ancient mountains and visited some of these ancient caves and I can attest to the fact that even centuries later, these wise saints are still speaking to us and giving us spiritual direction.

Spiritual directors have a responsibility to be open to the Holy Spirit, but they also have a responsibility to follow certain methods which have been handed down throughout Christian history, and not to innovate. We have no need for innovation, because truth be told-- there is one path towards sanctity: a personal relationship with Our Lord, and character  built by the acceptance of our vocational duty. Some spiritual directors are lay people, but those lay people have had the authority to call themselves spiritual directors vested upon themselves by the Church--- in Catholic teaching, no one is advised to  just start advising people because they think they should. Dwelling on that for a minute, it became clear to me that there is a vast difference between the idea of discipleship in protestant circles and in Catholic circles.

In other words, discipleship is tied in with the concepts of authority and submission. Because the non-Catholic Christian concept of authority in the church is fuzzy, as my husband spoke I began to see it as the image of divorce--- we *give* authority to a person until they no longer do something we accept, and then we take it from them and might give it to another. The Catholic concept of authority, on the other hand, is the image of marriage and family-- either we are born into the Church and accept it's authority from infancy or we enter into courtship with the Church and study her doctrines, accept them, and come UNDER her authority, accepting it as we do in marriage. Forever.

Now, I have had several spiritual directors as a Catholic, and met with varying degrees of success. The most fruitful have come from a parish priest, from a carmelite nun, and from an Opus Dei priest. I have also taken on a saint as my spiritual director, devoting myself to studying their spiritual writings and their lives for a time. My general impression of the face to face is that it was no where near as effective for me as the protestant discipleship model because my spiritual directors don't know me or my family and friends personally and therefore has a limited scope and view of the situations I relate.

On the other hand, this can be beneficial, too--- sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees, and distance helps. But more often than not I have left spiritual direction frustrated. Following a saint's life, however, has been very fruitful. I don't have a spiritual director at this time, but I have also received unexpected spiritual direction that was excellent from many priests, often just after confession. I find that when I return to them for more at another time with the intent of seeking direction, they often disappoint me. In other words, God has been at work but when I tried to take the reigns, I was prevented.

As I said before,   in protestant circles, everyone was always abuzz with the word discipleship, and it was a given that at any moment we should be in discipleship relationships with one another, both discipling and being discipled.
In contrast, Catholic circles, everyone I know WANTS a good spiritual director, and no one can find one. Seminarians and priests are strongly encouraged to have one, but lay persons tend to struggle to find one that fits. Catechesis happens successfully in different contexts but is a given IF a Catholic wants it-- but those who don't can go through life free of doctrinal constraints quite easily. We sadly ALL know Cradle Catholics who are indistinguishable from their pagan or atheist counterparts in the world in thought, word, and deed.

So reflecting on all of this, I set to work attempting to build a model in my mind of the ideal midwifery discipleship model. What does discipleship look like for women who are called to be with women?
Certainly, midwifery encompasses "women's ministry," but because it involves childbearing and marriage, health and fertility,  it also goes deeper. There is a quote about midwifery that states: "Birth is as safe as life gets." It is so profound, because birth and childbearing is a perfect analogy for life. We labor in pain and toil for a seemingly unending period of time, and just when it looks like things are at there worst, a most glorious event occurs: birth, which includes both deliverance and perfect joy. From our innermost secret parts we bring forth something that melts and gives hope to the whole world. Not only that, but we then co-operate with God to raise this baby--- forcing us to LIVE the principles which we speak of and preach. When we don't, our sin goes before us and is visible to the whole world. Life and death hang in the balance. The entire process, from beginning to end, is rich with spiritual meaning.

Before midwives practiced obstetrics, they relied on faith, herbalism, and their spiritual formation in all things pertaining to womanhood. An OBGYN can see a stalled labor and pull a baby out with forceps, using his understanding of anatomy. And sadly, this type of behavior has been known to have adverse effects on both baby and mother.
But a midwife can see a stalled labor and coax a baby out using spiritual means-- by encouraging the mother to bond with the baby and speak to it, or to let go of whatever fears she has about motherhood, or by crying out to God on her behalf. This isn't to say that anatomy and physiology don't play a role in midwifery-- they absolutely do. But a midwife operates holistically, connecting dots between the mind, body, and soul of the laboring mother, educating her,  and providing a culture of encouragement that allows the MOTHER  to take responsibility for her own choices and outcomes, whereas a doctor simply "knows best" and does "FOR" the mother what she is often better suited-- but unable at the time-- to do for herself.
This causes me to reflect on the role of God when we call him "the Divine Physician." For certainly midwives and doctors are both healers in the truest sense of the term, but in today's usage while midwives encourage education, growth, and self- care, doctors use physical intervention and mechanisms, until last we hear from them we this common phrase: "We've done all we can. It's up to God now." In the past, both roles were necessary, but more and more women are being asked to chose one or the other.

However, God does both, and for that reason what we learn from Him as "healers" should be reflected in our discipleship, whether we are on the giving or the receiving end.

All of this led me to ask my husband what he felt was a good model for discipleship in the context of midwifery. I explained my thoughts, and he listened, but during the course of my explaining, he became slightly frustrated with me. Confused, I asked him what was wrong with what I was hoping to generate.

And once I got past my usual bristling when he corrects me, I realized he was saying something deeply important-- that though there was a time and a place for the type of "discipleship" I had experienced in the past, in similar settings, there was a deeper layer to the requirements of discipleship for Christians.

"We aren't protestants," he began, "and we don't need to re-invent the wheel. The model you are looking for already exists. It's called duty." Ugh, I thought, Here we go.
"You don't need a model for discipleship," he began. "The Gospels themselves provide us with the model."
"Women achieve sanctity through a personal relationship with God and primarily through doing their duty. They have no real need to have a committee with each other about how to do it, because none of them can tell each other how to do it, and all it does is cause confusion at best and strife at worst between them. If you are a wife, your husband has the God-given authority to disciple you, and anything another woman might tell you about how to live just doesn't matter.She might have insight for you, but learning is more caught than taught.You don't NEED to sit down and talk about it."
Easy for you to say, I thought.

At the time, I became angry and indignant because I felt that my husband had not ever really embraced this role as discipler of his wife, but in doing so, I failed completely to see the irony that even as I asked myself that question, he was doing just that!  He was giving me spiritual advice, and I was rejecting it on the grounds that he couldn't possibly understand what women go through! Again!

He continued to explain that unlike in other ecclesial communities, the Church grants authority to a person who has been tested and found true who can offer spiritual advice. These are usually priests, and a good one is hard to find, but we should persist in seeking these faithful priests out until we find them. They are our only spiritual authority. In the home, discipleship for women and children was clearly laid out as an example in marriage. Look at the holy family-- Mary listened to Joseph and followed his lead, praying all the while and meditating on the things happening to her. Jesus, the bible tells us, was obedient to Mary and Joseph, growing up under them.

Then he asked me: "How many women do you know who faithfully do their duty to God and their families, and never sway from it into selfishness and self-serving behavior? How many faithful, impeccable, heroic women do you really know? Are you perfect? Then why do you think it's your job to disciple other women? And what can you receive from them that you do not receive from the Holy Spirit and from me and from your priest?"

Many things went through my mind. "Fellowship," was the answer I gave in my head. But fellowship is not necessarily discipleship!
Of course, he and I both know that discipleship is a requirement of the Christian life and he certainly wasn't saying that we aren't ALL called to be disciples AND to disciple others. At the same time, I couldn't help but agree with his emphasis on diverting my train of thought as he continued to speak.

He pointed out that usually meeting one on one with other women several times a week took time away from my "real" alleged priorities--- the ones I claimed were at the center: my family's needs. I felt justified in doing it because it seemed from my perspective to be a normative part of christian ministry, and felt self-righteous and indignant when he pointed it out because HE takes time out to spend an hour with friends here or there each week.... with us around, granted, but he was just playing with his friends, wasn't he? While I had a spiritual agenda with these women, Right? So shouldn't MY needs take the priority in a Christian house until he started doing that too? Hah.

And yet, he was right on, I realized with a sting. Here I was ignoring my family under the pretense of helping these women to not ignore their own families, while here he was wordlessly creating a powerful example of faithful family life by incorporating friends and acquaintances into our family life so they could see it themselves... in action... and not just talk about it. The reality was that I was bitter about it because my way involved quiet, enjoyable one on one time in a setting I controlled and therefore "looked good in," whereas his way involved me remaining in a state of servanthood and the possibility of my own sin going before me at any given moment! Ugh.

I also thought vicious thoughts about his own imperfections. I felt that he had failed to disciple me and therefore do the very duty he was promulgating because he doesn't usually carve out time each week to ask me how I feel about where I am at spiritually. Oh, my deceitful heart!! Every day that my husband provides an example for us is a day he disciples me. And every day that my husband reminds me of my duty is a day he disciples me. Every day my husband prays with me , reads his bible, encourages me to introduce myself and the kids to a new mom at church... is a day he is discipling me. Even in the stressful times in life when he had failed to do any of  those things, just by being with him and listening to him and sharing life with him, he helped make me a better person.

Discipleship under my husband didn't have to look like him and I sitting and drinking tea and searching the scriptures, although it could.

No, discipleship under my husband was instead a very different, much busier and more ordinary type of picture: cooking a meal side by side for unexpected guests, or tag team parenting an unruly kiddo, or taking turns reading bedtime stories to the family, or seeing him get up early to read his bible before heading off to work.

What's more-- when I recognized that for what it was instead of trying to re-invent ways to make my own voice heard, my children began to grasp the same concept and to TURN to us for their important questions. And, for the record, those times he does speak sharply, or forget to pray with us, or whatever other failure he might have,  he disciples us when he turns around and repents. Just like when we both have failed, our children will bring us back to a repentant place. Like a perfect circle, our family disciples each other, each taking turns to spiritually feed and direct the other.

In the end, REAL discipleship for the married woman is completely tied into my duty--and it's a lot less glamorous than I had envisioned. Good bye cute coffee shop and hello boring sink full of dishes. Goodbye weekly bible study and hello messy morning devotional around the kitchen table. But though I had begun to see the beauty in that, as I sat in the car and listened to him, slowly dying to myself and my ideas about what discipleship "must" look like, I was sad and upset. He was calling for more service, and more loneliness or separation from my friends, and not at all the type of bond with other women that had brought me to the place I held now as wife and mother. But as I listened, I discovered that the fruit of that type of hidden life was something I had witnessed all along! In fact, the longer I reflected, the more I saw this bright picture becoming clearer and clearer in my mind... my husband was right on.

In the picture, I saw myself, being discipled by the faithful daughter in the family I described above. we met often, and in the quiet space between our words I did a lot of growing. It was a model that had worked very well for me, at the time. But there were other things happening to me too back then, things that were being built but that I hadn't picked up on.

In my minds' eye, I saw the other women in the family who had sort of escaped my notice. One was a sister who was married, and very kind. I had babysat for her and really enjoyed their family. But as she was married and had a home of her own, I rarely interacted with her in the context of learning about Christian living in the family home she had grown up in. When  I had babysat for her, I supposed I actually had learned about Christian living by what was expected of me... praying with the children. Caring for her son and her daughter who had down's syndrome with great love and attention. Keeping things neat, and orderly. Giving nourishing food and nourishing thoughts to her children. Serving her husband. She was discipling me!

My mind moved to another person in the picture: the mother in the family. I had met her the first day I attended at bible study in their home. And I had found her insufferably silent.
Yes, her house was impeccable, her children were polite and faithful, her husband was an obviously deeply spiritual man with a quiet, but deep, love and affection for her.

But instead of animatedly engaging us in the bible study we held every week at her house and taking the spotlight right next to him, she sat on the steps in the back of the group, getting up only to help someone find the restroom, find a seat, or find a passage in their bible. She attended to the needs of their other sons. She was beautiful, and clearly loved and Godly and was important to her family and to the group, so I wondered why she was so.... meek.

Over the years, I came to know her a little better. The family brought me on vacation with them, and blessed me tremendously by allowing me to share in their life a little, which painted a very different picture for me than the family life I had experienced. A life centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Kingdom life. Her personality began to be more known to me, and I realized I had been completely wrong-- she had a LOT of it! She often opened her home to her daughter's friends and together they helped us learn to keep house, to pray, to raise a family. But always she remained at her husband's side, quietly encouraging her children as they blossomed. What a faithful woman! What a glorious example, I realized. She was discipling me!

I am married now, with a family of my own, and though I have spent countless wasted years trying to escape the requirements of married life, the reality is that what I want-- discipleship that leads me to the quiet peace of God's presence-- is completely tied in to my duty. When I was a single young women, my duty was completely different than my duty as a wife and mother!

With deep love for him, and a repentant heart, I looked over.
My husband finished by pointing out that this wrong idea about discipleship being anything less than doing our duty and living by example was like the last frontier of feminism that has infiltrated the Church, and that women in the church everywhere were completely deceived and deceiving.

We have all these good, godly women trying hard to live lives submitted to God and family, and yet they are running all over the place and exhausting themselves at best, ignoring their families at worst,  trying to build relationships over and under each other and attempting to take what is not theirs to give but God's-- power. Under the pretext of "helping women."

They are reading and writing books about how to run households and make schedules and raise children and have loving marriages and powerful women's ministry but they are not DOING the one thing that shows by example without a doubt that they have understood what is required of them: to obey their husbands and to love them, to educate their children and to live by example, and to teach and train the younger women, beginning with their own children, to be faithful, prayerful, and dutiful by example. Which isn't to say that there ISN'T a time and a place for doing that, but rather to point out that discipleship takes many different forms, and is always tied in to our vocational duty.

Catholic wives and mothers and midwives don't contracept, and many of us are likely to keep having very busy family lives for quite some time. Keeping our families TRULY first is really the only way to ensure a fruitful ministry.

And I had been falling for it, hook, line, and sinker, seeking to focus my duty towards other women and my own self, without the greater context of my foremost duty towards my husband, and my family. Why? Because I want to be in charge, and I like coffee shops and talking loud. And because I like friends, and people who ask me how I'm doing.  Duh. :)

So for me, what that looks like practically was that my midwifery needs to have room for my family, needs to come after my family, and needs to be lived by example, daily. It didn't mean I was going to stop blogging or holding workshops or anything like that, but it did mean that I was going to feel a little bit better about having "tea" with my kids instead of my girlfriends each day. And it did mean that folding laundry, a drudgery I cannot even begin to describe, suddenly had great significance, even with regards to other women. Over time, I've learned that God is very involved in the ordinary things of life. Discipleship was like a last frontier in my spiritual life that I thought was supposed to remain extraordinary, but now I see that it is glorious, although mundane.

But we urge you, bretheren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need. - 1 Thessalonians 4:11

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5.