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Special
section: Family Life
One mothers mentors helped her pull through
By DOLORES LECKEY
Years ago, as a young mother of several small and energetic
children, I realized I needed help. A nanny wasnt what I had in mind.
Guidance, surely. Some role models, maybe. Some kind of inspiration to show us,
as a family, the way to an ordered, centered life. A small group of mothers in
similar circumstances, who met regularly for prayer, helped me find the way to
the center.
When we gathered each week, it was not only to try our prayer
wings but to search for mentors. One of our first discoveries was St. Teresa of
Avila. The 16th-century Carmelite nun entered my world bearing all kinds of
riches.
She spoke of interior life, that inner landscape where the true
self dwells. But she also emphasized the importance of faithfulness to the
small, everyday domestic tasks, necessities even for those behind cloistered
walls. I felt a deepening bond with this wise woman, whose developed spiritual
life invited me, and others like me, to explore the metaphor of Mount Carmel.
It helped to learn that Teresa in her early monastic life had difficulty with
meditative prayer. The wandering mind was not exclusive, then, to harried
homemakers!
Her accounts of the use of imagination in prayer (learned, we
understand, from Jesuits) offered a way to still mental whirling. Furthermore,
she was brimming with common sense. Sayings like, Let nothing disturb you
... All things pass away soothed the inevitable hills and valleys of
marriage and family life. Another saying, Theres a time for
partridge and a time for penance, seemed particularly suited to 5 in the
evening when meal preparation was underway and the children were at their peak
of inventiveness.
For many years now, a reproduction of the Velasquez painting of
St. Teresa has graced our kitchen. I look at it everyday, full of gratitude for
a mentor who, though separated by centuries, gave me a lifeline when I needed
it. (Not long ago one of my sons confided to me that as a little boy he thought
the quill pen in Teresas hand was a paper airplane).
One of the great treasures the church has to offer to everyone is
the witness and wisdom of religious orders. I know that over the last few
decades, voices have been raised in complaint that the only spirituality
available to the laity was that developed in the monastery and therefore
totally unsuited to active lay life. For example, what in the world do
Trappists have to say to the common person? To the woman holding together a
family and holding down a job? To the lawyer caught in a mountain of briefs? To
the middle-aged man who has just lost his job to younger (and cheaper) labor?
Plenty.
Trappists in their varied personal and communal personae have much
to offer, and I am keenly aware of having received much. One can begin with
Thomas Merton, whose life and writings have had a profound influence over the
past half century, an influence that is likely to continue. (I strongly
recommend the gift of The Seven Storey Mountain, for 17-year-old young
men, especially those who find religion a bore).
Beyond Merton, Trappist monasteries offer lay people (most of whom
have family responsibilities) the experience of silence and solitude and the
possibility of slowing down and savoring ordinary daily life. Many monasteries
have guest houses available for retreats (women are welcome), a legacy of the
renewal flowing from the Second Vatican Council.
At the Trappist monastery my husband and I visit from time to
time, retreats are unstructured, offering time and space to renew depleted
energies. Retreatants are free to attend the chapel liturgies if they wish, a
highlight for me. The small whitewashed chapel is filled with intense care: The
monastic bow, the pace of the chanting, the pauses -- all are so utterly
attractive. The fields and pathways and the retreat house itself are steeped in
silence.
One can, of course, consult with one of the monks who is available
to retreatants, but there is no pressure to do so. There is no pressure of any
kind. The Trappist environment (whether one spends a few days or a few hours
there) underscores a different way of being in life, one of mindfulness.
Spouses and parents attest to a less-driven life back home after time with the
Trappists. Solitude, silence and mindful action, part of what it is to be
human, are often difficult to learn in the busy give and take of family life.
But our enclosed brothers and sisters can and do help us to get in
touch with these essentials of a conscious spiritual life. Deo
gratias.
Family spirituality is also helped by a trusting relationship with
more experienced families. In the early years of marriage, I was fortunate to
meet a woman almost 20 years older than I who, with her husband, was raising a
family of 10 children. What was striking about this family was the intentional
spirituality that clearly oriented their individual lives and their common
life, and the creativity that seemed to burst forth from the family.
The parents had great respect for their children, and so the boy
who was gifted at carpentry (and who made that his career), and the daughter
who was a poet, were valued equally for their uniqueness. Art, politics, social
concerns, homemaking, history, liturgy, church renewal -- all were topics for
animated conversation within the household. The vitality of that family spilled
out onto others. Younger families saw how a common life might be organized
around profound trust in God. One specific memory stands out for me.
The Maria Montessori early childhood educational methods had taken
hold in our region. Parents were starting cooperative schools, books were
passed around, seminars were conducted. I was sold on the method.
Then came the moment when parents like myself, who had been in a
preparatory study group, needed to contribute a certain amount of money to
launch the new school. My husband and I realized we didnt have the cash.
Our firstborn child, a daughter, would not be able to attend. I was
heartbroken.
By coincidence I met my mentor, the mother of 10, in a nearby shop
one Saturday and poured out my disappointment to her. She clasped both my
hands, looked into my eyes (and maybe my soul) and said, Surely you
dont believe that the good God who breathed life into your child means
for her destiny to be linked with whether or not she can attend a Montessori
school!
She suggested I use the methods at home. The combination of her
faith and her practicality provided a lesson that has held up over time.
So saints and monasteries, mentors and peers have all helped me
and my family to adhere to a spiritual pathway, often with tough ascents and
steep declines, with meanderings and fatigue and the constant temptation to
give up. But these companions, a cloud of witnesses, do not give up, a reminder
that we are not meant to travel alone.
Dolores Leckey, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological
Center, is former executive director of the U.S. bishops Secretariat on Family,
Laity, Women and Youth.
National Catholic Reporter, September 4,
1998
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