Be confident! And peek into the bread and garden corners, and read some links!
Last week I was in Colorado to give a speech for the Restore Tradition women's conference, and I got to visit with Suki and family for a few days.
The conference went really well, and I say that as someone who doesn't really love such events for some reason* — it's a lovely, lively gathering of women; lots of babies, and the priests are so supportive, as are the organizers!
It has the virtue of being in a hall next to the church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Littleton — do check it out), so the beautiful Masses are right there. I discovered that our friend David Hughes, amazing organist and choir master, is there! The music was heavenly. I hope to soon share the link where the recording of talks is available.
During that time, and pondering the comments on the last couple of posts here, I wanted to just to follow up on my homeschooling advice and give a note about having confidence in general.
We women have, as sort of the darkish underside or obverse of our beautiful nature of nurturing and relating to others, a tendency to doubt ourselves and to seek affirmation from anyone and everyone.
Whether it's thinking about your relationship with your husband or running your household or educating and disciplining your children, I would love for you to remember that everyone is on a path that takes them through the universal three-fold pattern of discovery, figuring things out, and glimpses of wonder, peace, and happiness.
Discovery entails things we would rather not confront: frustration, vexation, sorrow, a sense of desolation even (“I cannot do this! I'm not good enough! I've made so many mistakes!).
Figuring things out in the sense of pondering them in order to internalize understanding can feel like work we'd rather avoid, though it is accompanied by hope (“maybe I can do it! Now I see!”).
The glimpses of joy and wonder and their possession are gifts. You can't force them. They will come! You can't hold onto them…
Wisdom is realizing that this pattern repeats and will repeat for as long as we live and we have to take responsibility for it. It's the universal pattern of life.
The spiritual masters called it Purgation, Illumination, and Union. Sometimes we can get the idea that it's a once-and-for all three-step mastery program, but no.
It's just a recurring, hopefully upwards spiraling (but not always), rhythm of life. It's how we learn and grow — and pick ourselves up after a setback — and it's everywhere and in everything in this world of ours. It's God's plan to bring us, ultimately, to Him!
Anyway, if you can understand this pattern, I hope you will find confidence.
A wife and mother is truly the queen of her realm, the household. She doesn't automatically know everything. She works hard and thinks very hard about things so she can figure out what she needs to do and how she can meet others' needs. She does philosophize, even if it's at the kitchen sink or late at night while feeding the baby, and not in an ivory tower (but remember, the Blessed Virgin is called “Tower of Ivory” though she was a mere mother in her home).
She has confidence in her grace of state — in other words, that the “office” of “queen” brings a supernatural power (grace) that meets her effort and raises it.
You can have confidence in the rightness of your vocation and its ultimate goal, keeping a home and helping those in it to be virtuous and loving; the rest will fall into place, even in great difficulty and seeming failure.
You don't need someone to tell you every single thing!
Well, sometimes it helps for someone to say, “Try this” or “I wouldn't do that.” Listening is a good skill to have. Absorb the good things and make them your own, rather than try to turn over this inner wisdom to others.
No one can live your life for you, however expert they seem to be. Don't let that defeat you, but see it as the call to true personhood. You have the capacity to live your own life very well!
It's a paradox, because the more confidence you have in your position, the more open you are to improving; contrariwise, the more doubt you have, the less able to make use of help you will be.
If you have confidence that nursing the baby is the right thing to do, you'll find a way to do it and not be swayed by the expectations of those who reject it. You'll absorb others' good advice and learn to do it your own way.
If you have confidence that your husband will provide and protect your family if he knows he has your unconditional affirmation and wise counsel, you won't be discouraged by lean times or apparent failure.
If you have confidence it's your duty to educate your children (in the broad sense, where you delegate part of the task to others, or in the particular sense, where you undertake the bulk of it at home), you will be patient and resourceful in figuring out what your children need and want.
We can learn a lot from what others are doing; many people have fantastic ideas. We need to remember to have the confidence to identify and reject silly or harmful things.
Have the confidence to stay away from what shakes your peace when you have a clear conscience. There's a difference between someone validly making you examine yourself and someone just disturbing you with novel thoughts when you know you're pursuing the good.
Gravitate towards people and “content” — books, articles, and what have you — that build your sense of freedom to follow what you know to be good and true and not discourage you in apparent setbacks, but encourage you in cheerfulness.
Be bold, be confident! Trust God.
*One reason I don't often enjoy conferences has to do with being terminally outgoing and consequently stressed by having so many people to interact with — a sort of inverse of being an introvert, as if I'm so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that I end up meeting up with all the recluses!
Sourdough Bread Corner
Because I care deeply about you and am continually embarrassed by my inability to provide detailed instructions and recipes due to having made bread for more than forty years and so have morphed into this absurdly intuitive baker who is no help at all–
And because I must, for your sake, overcome the thought that myriad experts who do nothing BUT bake bread have offered you detailed instructions all over the internet so why would you come to me for any of it–
And because, truth be told, busy moms with lots of kids simply cannot and should not make one measly loaf of bread at a time, so maybe I do have something to offer–
And even though I got my starter from Suki years ago, so I have not been in the position of answering the burning question of how to get one going–
I have made a new starter from scratch and kept careful notes, or what passes for careful notes for me.
And I baked some bread with it!
I'm not ready to take you through step-by-step (of course I'm not! but in my defense I wanted to talk about Confidence), but if you are thinking you want this sort of info from me, stay tuned.
Get your kids settled into their school routine and mentally prepare yourself to bake sourdough the Like Mother, Like Daughter, Large Batch, Save-A-Step, Low or No Discard, Mostly Foolproof, All Kinds, Hasty Yet Demanding Way.
Gardening Corner
As usual, my garden has gone directly from “mildly photogenic” to “hopeless jungle” but I have a nice tomato harvest!
Every day I bring in this amount, and while I was gone, the Chief did it! — and now my freezer has about 30-40 lbs of cooking tomatoes and the Amish Paste and San Marzanos haven't even really hit their stride.
That's my current method: I chuck the ripe ones into ziplocks and throw them in the freezer. The less-ripe ones I leave to ripen on the counter.
Soon I will make and can some sauce!
How about you? How's the garden coming?
bits & pieces
On the subject of having confidence in your husband, and if you are into watching something a bit edgy, I recommend the Chef's Table episode about Ivan Orkin. The whole time I alternated between feeling sorry for him for his lack of affirmation from his family and disgusted by his jerky behavior, honestly. But wow, he gets it: it's his wife who saved him by dint of her admiration and faith in his ability when things seemed pretty bad. I wonder what her family and friends thought of him in the seemingly endless times of failure and how often they recommended that she just ditch him? I think I'd have been tempted! Can we be as confident as she?
This article, An Incredible Family of Saints and the Secret of Their Homeschooling Program is not about St. Thérèse of Lisieux as you might think at first, but about “eight saints, one of whom is a Doctor of the Church, Basil the Great – all belonging to the same family. As I said from the beginning, it is impossible to know this family of saints without wondering what their “secret” was. This question is crucial, especially for those of us who are parents and grandparents. I will return to this question. For now, I draw attention to an equally astonishing fact. The homeschooling program for educating Basil and Gregory was created by their educator and inspirer, their sister, Saint Macrina.”
Rob Marco touches on the value of having children, even in a hostile world.
Mary Jo Anderson analyzes the 10 battlegrounds in the abortion fight in the states. Now is the time to engage politically if you live in one of them!(Florida is especially acute.)
Robert Keim on why rhetoric matters and must be rooted in truth: “An Art Which Leads the Soul by Words”: Sacred Rhetoric in the Roman Liturgy
from the archives
Three things you need for eating dinner together!
Encourage good conversational habits in children.
To prepare for our sourdough school coming up (see above), get out a trusty cookbook and make yeast sandwich bread as many times as you can. (Or go here or here. You can double the recipe without doubling the yeast, and make two loaves.) But — greatly enhance its slicing ability and sturdiness by braiding that same dough! Here's my tutorial from back in the old days when the pictures were not as good!
liturgical living
Saints Joseph Arimathea and Nicodemus and St. Raymond Nonnatus
follow us everywhere! share us with your friends!
Here is my affiliate link to my Amazon page — the only affiliate thing that goes on here on LMLD, which is why the page loads quickly and you don’t have to keep closing pop-ups etc! Thank you for opening it and shopping if you are so minded — as some have asked me. If not, don’t worry one bit!
My book, The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is available from Sophia Press! Also in paperback now! All the thoughts from this blog collected into three volumes, beautifully presented with illustrations from Deirdre, an index in each volume, and ribbons!
My “random thoughts no pictures” blog, Happy Despite Them has moved over to Substack! — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing! The old one is still up if you want to look at the comments on past posts. It will take me a while to get things organized, but you'll be patient, I know!
There you will find the weekly podcast done by Phil and me, called On the Home Front. Do let us know what you think!
My podcast, The Home Truths Society, can be found on the Restoration of Christian Culture website (and you can find it where you listen to such things) — be sure to check out the other offerings there!
Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:
Consider subscribing to this blog by email. We would love to pop into your inbox! The subscription box is on this page on the sidebar!
We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram, Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.
Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)
The boards of the others: Rosie’s Pinterest. Sukie’s Pinterest. Deirdre’s Pinterest. Habou’s Pinterest
The post Be confident! And peek into the bread and garden corners, and read some links! appeared first on Like Mother, Like Daughter.
