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| Memorial to Etheldreda |
I have been writing and trying to create community for over 15 years in this area and in other areas.
Today, I had an epiphany as to why communities of Catholic simply may not happen.
One reason: the disappearance of the pioneer spirit.
What do I mean by the pioneer spirit and its disappearance?
Many of us were raised to cook, can, have vegetable as well as flower gardens, bake bread, wash clothes, iron, sew, knit, crochet, embrooider, raise children by taking care of brothers and sisters as babies, clean, organize, even build things.
We built play houses, doll houses, trains out of wood which we painted rather badly, go-carts, etc.
We organize neighborhood circuses, plays, sports games of all sorts.
We got paid for summer jobs, like baby sitting, cutting grass, weeding and so on.
We had grandmothers who could literally do anything, and some who not only could do all things physical, but stood in the kitchen talking of history, religion, music, art. Women in my family sang, play piano and other instruments in the home, as well as being in choirs in the Church.
My great-grandmother wrote and published the first Czech magazine for women in America, while having six children and keeping house for a famous husband, who entertained Benes and Masaryk in the kitchen.
Hey, all stay-at-home moms.....
But, they were only some of millions of American women who came from both poor and wealthy families and settled in the prairies, starting many times from scratch, new homes, new lives.
They could organize other people, sell things, and raise productive children. They knew how community was built by going to Church and having people in , by helping neighbor women have their babies, and by having wakes for the dead in their homes, dressing the dead after taking care of the old, the sick and the dying.
What happened? We keep talking about the emasculation of men, but we forget that strong, independent capable women tamed the prairies along with those now missing strong men.
Women's roles have been dumbed down and marginalized. The opposite to what most feminists think happened and the results are tragic.
I was raised to organize a house, a family, people. Women did that in the sphere of their home life.
They were not wimps. They took authority given to them by the fact that they were mothers and wives, aunts and sisters.
Community starts in the home with good marriages, but also with women who know the role they have in the society and in the Church.
Too many women have become wimpy, subservient to the point of losing sight of what God has called them to do.
I do not know about other families, but the women in mine down to my generation, and even the next were and are strong and capable.
Too many TLM men chain their wives to the duties do to the men only and not to the larger organization.
Why? Is this fear? Women organized women, the sacristy clubs, the Forty Hours devotions, the making of baskets for the poor, the child care groups, and in my younger days, home schooling coops.
What has happened?
Women were called by God to do great things in the sphere of their influence. They no longer to these things.
Community comes from strong women as well as strong men. I have met no weak women in the Bruderhof.
None.
Quite the opposite. Do you think Margaret Clitherow or Ann Line were wimps? Do you think Etheldreda and Hildegard of Bingen were namby-pambies?
Until lay men and lay women grow up and take authority over the lay spheres of influence, the homes, the culture, the society, we shall continue to slide into decay. And, there will no longer be any hope for communities.
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Speeds_plan_of_Ely_1610_from_Dorman_1986.jpg |
There is a huge misunderstanding in some trad circles as to the role of women. Some think women are like children, needing to be dependent on their husbands.
That is a sick way of looking at marriage, which is the mutual interdependence of two adults, who each have a character of their own and can do things in their spheres of influence.
Think about this....can we have communities today, or has the time passed? Until women learn to grow up and be women and not children in Catholic families, community will not be possible.
A note: St. Etheldreda was in charge of one of the largest monasteries ever seen on British soil It was a double monastery, and her charge included Ely Place in London. Her monastery lasted 200 years.
A great saint, a great lady, a strong lady....