It’s difficult to think about anything but politics when it’s been such a big news week. But I wanted to say thanks to The Anchoress, to my co-hosts, Kathy Schiffer and Father Longenecker, and to all the wonderful readers for a great week. I have so enjoyed the thoughtful posts of my co-guest-bloggers, and the excellent commentary in the comboxes.

Before I sign off, I wanted to draw your attention to a book forthcoming in March from Our Sunday Visitor.

A little over a year ago, Hallie Lord of the inspirational blog, Betty Beguiles, conceived a book that would combine reflections from a number of Catholic Women on the different challenges and triumphs of being a Catholic Woman in the 21st Century. She assembled an excellent cast of writers to reflect on different topics, from motherhood, to sex, to single life, to married life, to culture, to style, and of course, spirituality. I’m humbled and honored to be a part of the book, writing on the topic of sex (God help my mother).

I don’t think you’ll want to miss Style, Sex, and Substance: Ten Catholic Women Consider the Things that Really Matter, due in March, but available for pre-order at Amazon.

The following writers contributed chapters to the book:

Simcha Fisher

Danielle Bean

Rachel Balducci

Elizabeth “Betty” Duffy

Jennifer Fulwiler

Rebecca Teti

Karen Edmisten

Anna Mitchell

Barbara Nicolosi

I organized my husband’s sock drawer yesterday. It had to be done, all those mismatched and threadbare tube socks emerging from the drawer making it impossible to close. I also went through his undershirts and put the dingy off-white ones in the washer with bleach. I might have made a bleachy paste to remove the underarm stains, if I knew how to do that. I could have looked on the internet for a bleachy paste recipe, but it seemed more prudent to stick to the task at hand until I saw it completed, and that would not happen if I allowed myself to drift off into internet never-land.

Not long ago, a friend of mine began reading The Devout Life by Francis de Sales, and I decided that I, too, would embark on the devout life, or at least on reading the book with her. Actually improving my soul is such a scary prospect.

Saint Theresa of Avila wrote, “I cannot understand what it is that makes people afraid of setting out on the road of perfection.” Well, Dear Saint, I think I might know. That way leads to eschewing fun on the internet for organizing the sock drawer.

Isn’t it exactly as I feared, that if I kept beating on that glass ceiling of my mediocrity, I’d one day burst through into the realm of holiness where all the holy people scrub the corners of their houses with toothbrushes and listen to classical music, and read only books written before 1945 with an imprimatur?

Isn’t what’s kept me from pursuing a more devout life, the mistaken (and arrogant) assumption that I must actually be terribly close to perfection, and that reaching that final benchmark, that cap where there’s no where else to grow, means spending the rest of my life in a grim martyrdom of boring quotidian tasks offered for all those people still stuck on the other side of the glass in mediocre-land, wasting their time browsing the web, flirting, reading fun books and listening to pop music?

Except deciding to organize my husband’s sock drawer wasn’t like that at all. One could argue that the impetus for the task was fifteen years in the making, as so many of those socks were older than our relationship, and even the most placid temperament must someday say, “Enough is enough. It’s time to close that drawer.” But it wasn’t that either.

Inch by inch, reading the book, doing about a meditation a week, saying the Rosary, showing up at Mass during the week—practicing devotion—the decision to organize the sock drawer was somehow a manifestation of a new freedom—freedom from my chronic “No.”

How many times have I passed that sock drawer, considered doing something about it, and argued with myself that it’s not even my drawer; those are not my socks; if I do it once, he’ll want me to match his socks all the time; and I barely even fold my own laundry. I might unwittingly become a slave to him. Well, I’m too smart for that, I say. I’m not going to organize his drawer; I’m just going to live with the chaos—Ha!

And as a consequence, I maintain an oppressive status quo—the slavery to my “No.”

The “road to perfection” sounds so binding and final. I get hung up on that word, “perfection” and overlook the fact that that’s just the name of the road. Hence, taking that road is actually an unbinding—the freedom to go a different way, not the habitual way—and it goes on for a really long time.

I wouldn’t write this post if I didn’t have other evidence of a personal unbinding, most of which are manifest in acts of huswifery because the house is my battle ground. At the same time, all of this is probably imperceptible to anyone but me.

We are at a time in our lives when it’s necessary to spend a lot of time sitting out in the yard doing nothing. The baby likes to be out there wandering around, and it’s good for him to do so. He has acres on which to wander, but there’s always a small chance that he’s going to go to that one place where he’s not allowed to play. It’s human nature after all, so I have to be on guard. I can’t read, because I’ll become too absorbed. I can’t laptop because my battery doesn’t work for long.

In my “no” phase, I might have been annoyed with the situation, because there’s a load of work to be done inside, and if I’m doing nothing, I at least want to do nothing on the internet. But the freedom to do nothing–nothing but feeling the breeze, roasting in the sun, watching the leaves and the putterings of a little boy who doesn’t need to be convinced that doing nothing is really wonderful–is really wonderful.

But from the outside, I imagine this internal shift just looks to others like a woman sitting around doing nothing, which is, of course, exactly what it is. The great relief and surprise about the devout life, is that it looks similar to the not so devout life I was living last week, except that I am more free, no longer divided by the concepts of myself that I have created.

I just finished reading “The Edge of Sadness” by Edwin O’Connor. It’s the best novel I’ve read in a long time, about a priest who’s been through a period of spiritual aridity and finds at the end of it, the freedom to embrace the life he’s been living as opposed to the life he always thought he wanted. When Father Kennedy finally acknowledges that what he wants is not the warmth and regard of other people, but love and truer devotion to God, his conversion works out like this:

“The mighty changes, of course, did not take place—or if they did they remained invisible to me. Which was natural enough…since a slight increase in the zeal of one man produces no miracles—unless the one man is himself one of the extraordinary few who can and do change history. But nothing like that was involved here. I did my work, time went by…”

And so it does.

I knew if I spoke critically of the “The  Manosphere” I would encounter some angry men. My column today at Patheos, “Complementarity, Not Competition” has already brought out a few to make my point for me.

Here’s a taste:

There is a corner of the internet known as the “manosphere.”  In a backlash to perceived cultural bias against men due to the mainstreaming of feminist principles, some men, feeling oppressed and trampled into submission by strong women, are pushing back by schooling one another in masculinity. They write advice blogs on mastering the “Venusian arts” or the art of seducing women, by asserting their authority, physical strength, attractiveness, and intelligence, in order to acquire “Alpha” status in comparison to their male peers.

Some personalities in the manosphere write mainly to other single men, but there are some married proponents as well, who suggest that becoming more of an Alpha male will improve their marriage. I don’t disagree. Husbands should know how to lure their wives happily to bed. They should know how to lead a family with authority and respect. They should understand women’s hormonal cycles and respond accordingly, or refuse to respond with alarm, as is often a more appropriate course of action. And above all, they should be happy about being men.

The married portion of the manosphere has gained traction among some Christian and Catholic men, who perhaps raised in broken homes, are looking for male role models as they strive to build a marriage and a family that will last.

So what’s wrong with the manosphere?

Read the rest…

Up to date on the news as usual, I’m here to comment on Jen Fulwiler’s post at the Register last December, “Why are there no Catholic Mom Bloggers on this Top 100 List?” The article references Babble’s Top 100 Mommy Bloggers.

The question has been puzzling me, this long wintry month, as almost all of the blogs I read are written by Catholic women who are mothers but who elude the title  ”Mommy Blogger” for a number of reasons, as Fulwiler herself does.

While several of my favorite bloggers have written books (I’m honored to have contributed to this one), none have placed buttons on their sites so that fans can shop for blog related merchandise. While many operate a business through their blogs, none of them are selling themselves. While all of them have children, they’ve long since given up justifying their reasons for doing so.

Most Catholic married women expect to be mothers, so there’s no need to fetishize their choices or even to identify with them overmuch. They are mothers, who by and large enjoy being mothers and who make great investment in their children, but “Mommy” is not their persona.

Rather, they’re talking about Brahms, they’re reading the complete works of Shakespeare, they’re writing novels, reviewing books, and blogging the Wasteland. Some love fashion, but I suspect most would have scruples with becoming a fashionista, or an anything-ista. Almost all of them reference Christ, or aspects of their faith with regularity, or if they don’t talk openly about Christ, he is the hidden center of their thought.

A few things they are not doing:

1. Taking celebrity-style portraits of themselves.

2. Live blogging their divorce.

3. Bringing their whole families into the blog business.

4. Fabricating desire for their lifestyle.

In short, they do not fetishize or commodify themselves, their lives, their families or their motherhood. And if there were anything they wanted you to get out of reading their blogs, aside from some insight into how Catholics live, it would be Christ himself. He’s always been a difficult sell.