If you would like to read the other parts of this series on What it Means to be a Woman, here are the links:
1. Lenten Reading Suggestions
2. Equality is not the deepest thing
3. In the beginning…
The last time I ever went to my beloved camp deep in the North Carolina wilderness, I think I was about twelve.
I didn’t go there as a camper –it’s a boys’ camp (very posh now, it seems to me; it was quite humble back then, or maybe I didn’t know about such things). I begged and pleaded until my dad took me for their yearly family camping weekend; we hadn’t gone there for so long, but it was a place that moved me with the love that only a child has for the places of childhood.
The deep woods, the cabins, the beautiful lake with the rope swing off the second storey of the dock, the icy plunge into the clear waters – canoeing, kayaking, even hiking which I was in no way suited for, being too scrawny to handle climbing and carrying a pack – I loved it all. Most of all the horses. The girls’ camp down the road had many horses, but this one had a few, and if you could find someone to take you, you could go on a trail with a lunch basket, riding. That was just bliss for this city girl.
Even though the counselors were too cool to notice me (and, truth to tell, probably too pre-occupied and tired at the end of summer to think much about these pesky people who kept them from going home), I revered them. They were so rugged. So knowing. So youthfully old.
The first night, as always, we were greeted with a hay-ride up to the top of the mountain for a fried-chicken picnic. I don’t remember the meal or very much else. I only remember one thing.
A woman was there with her six children.
Six. Children.
I think I had never met such a large family in person.
When I became aware of their presence at the family camp, I instantly gravitated towards them, and once I had gotten a clear look at them all in their vastness, I promptly fell passionately in love.
The mother seemed to me to be lovely: slender, pretty, with a very kind expression. Her children were all a blur as far as I was concerned, but they were shyly cheerful. They flocked around her like little chicks. On the hay-ride they nestled in together, her arms around several of them. They talked to each other; they might have made friends with other campers.
They completely and utterly ignored me, even the little girl who was my age. I could have been invisible, for all the notice they took of me, despite my best efforts to materialize in their consciousness somehow.
Yet, probably for the first and possibly only time ever, someone’s inattention to me didn’t make me feel rejected or sullenly hateful. I felt that they were perfect – just perfect – in themselves, regardless of how much they failed to notice me. I felt – again, most unusually – that they were indeed justified in acting as if I simply wasn’t in their world, because I was truly not worthy to be one of them, however much I longed to be.
I think they left after the first day. I didn’t see them again. I’m not sure what makes me remember them, except for the vision I had been left with.
Here I was, a little bundle of contradictions, all tied up in knots inside, no fun to myself or anyone else. I had a strong attachment to my mother and to my father, but things were complicated. I was getting stuffed to the gills with the kind of anger you encountered back then in the places I inhabited: protests, zero population growth, women’s rights, abortion, contraception, free love, God is dead, relativism, on and on and on.
They were vibrations that penetrated me all the time. I was too young to evaluate. I simply absorbed.
At the same time, I read constantly, almost obsessively, perhaps as a defense against this barrage of destruction. Unlike today, the destroyers of culture had not yet realized that it damages their efforts to leave the old books around for a child to find (now they simply remove them). So I read old books. There wasn’t much else to read!
In those books I encountered one particular doctrine that helped me along my path to finding God, and that is the irrefutable notion that good and evil exist and can be known, often through the wonder inspired by beauty (even though beauty is not always the most trustworthy guide. Still.)
It’s through contact with (I won’t say understanding of) this doctrine and its effects that I experienced an uncovering of faith, which took place after a certain point in my development when my mind was awakened to logic; and every step of the reasoning out of the existence of good – the Good God – was like a new layer of truth exposed for me.
And the vision that I had on that evening by a mountain lake, climbing into a truck full of hay, was of motherhood in all its tender glory. That vision fed a secret desire that I would never admit to all the career-demanding, family-scorning folks around me in those days, which was to become that person.
So, many years later, when somehow I was a wife and mother and unfit follower of God, it was with a sense of quiet recognition that I read John Paul’s explanation of the second chapter of Genesis. Not that I had had this knowledge before, but the gaining of it was a confirmation and a fulfillment.
Did you ever wonder why there are two accounts of creation? You are probably a more careful reader than I. I tend to assume that anomalies are apparent rather than real when it comes to Scripture, and don’t have the patience, very often, to weigh them. I’m sure that they can be explained, so I don’t take time to explain them myself. In any case, I hadn’t lingered on this one.
As we saw last time, the first account reveals the goodness of creation and the forming of man and woman in the image of God – a reality that bears much contemplation. So much so that, as John Paul says (starting in the third paragraph of Chapter III of The Dignity and Vocation of Women), the second account (Gen 2: 18-25) seems to provide an extended meditation on what exactly this can mean.
Because there we read that man was alone. Alone.
With all the uncorrupted beauty of the unspoiled, fresh, lovely world at his disposal to do with what he would (and remember, he had no bad thoughts as yet, so any idea that came to him would be a fitting, wonderful, and delightful one), he was alone, and God saw this.
Almost to drive the aloneness point home, God brings each and every creature to Adam for naming. Just think! Any account you’ve ever heard of the bond between man and beast pales before this opportunity for Adam to commune with nature, to embrace even a lion, never mind a dog or cat, as a bosom friend. To name; to give each thing its own identity – I think from our vantage point of disappointment and shame in the weariness of the world, this represents an astounding chance.
“But for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.” Something is missing in all this perfection. Something…something…what could it be? Adam wants to give of himself, and there is no one to give this gift to!
So God takes Adam back to a state of pre-Creation. John Paul goes much more into depth on this passage in The Theology Of The Body. He explains that by “God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept”, Scripture intends us to know that Adam, generic man (for Hebrew has such a word, where English has “man” for both the generic and the specific), is called into existence anew, as ish and isha – male and female, man and woman.
From all eternity God knew that there would come a day – our day – when people would get confused about what it means to be a man and a woman. So (among other reasons; I’m not so silly as to think this is the final word) He put this other account in the Bible to express this deep meaning about how it came to be that the human being would have two essential (as opposed to contextual, conditioned, arbitrary, imposed, or cultural) forms: male and female.
And when Adam emerges from this state, in which God forms Eve from his rib, he makes a significant statement in the form of his cry, “this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” – in other words, he says, “At last, I am not alone. Here is one like me, also made in the image of God.”
You see, we are taken, step by step, through the process of confronting the loneliness of man in a perfect world that yet does not contain another who is like and yet — other. By himself he experiences aloneness. With the beasts he experiences aloneness. But with Woman he experiences “a fit helper” – a soul mate, if you will.
{And notice further what others have pointed out, that she comes from his side, to be at his side. Not his foot, to be beneath him, nor his head, to rule over him, but under his arm, to share in his task and to be protected by him.}
And they shall be one flesh. Here, at the beginning, we have the whole program of marriage, and we know it’s what God actually wanted, since it’s before the Fall: a man will leave his father and mother and become a unity of the two with his wife, and this is how they will make love manifest – being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth – with another person, the child, the only possible fulfillment of this solution to the problem of loneliness.
I knew there was something fundamental and refreshingly pure at the heart of it all. I had known it all along. I had seen it in a vision. But we’re not done. We’re only halfway there.
Rachel says
What I love is God wasn't done w/ The Creation until woman was created. It makes me feel special and gives me an inherent purpose. Its not about what place society has put on me at all. I know I'm doing what I need to be doing by raising children at this time. Thank you for this post.
Deborah says
Dear Leila,An even lovelier post than usual; you surpass yourself. I eagerly await your memoirs- seriously!One small quibble: the words for man and woman are "'ish" and "'isha," not as you have transliterated above. There is a lovely saying pointing out that the two letters common to both words, aleph and shin, spell the word "esh"- fire. The remaining letter, hay, is a letter standing for God. So, when a husband and wife have God between them, there is a holy fire; take away God, and all that remains is- fire!Love,Debbie
Leila says
Rachel, I agree…it's such a privilege to be last ;)Debbie, you are so kind. I used the transliteration that appears in my copy of Dignity. In doing so, I paused…being familiar with another transliterated language, I know that there are pitfalls…and I know that there are Hebrew scholars lurking here!! :)Sigh.I'll change it, though — thanks!
emily says
Beautiful post, Leila. My husband and I were both blessed by reading it. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us!I had a similar experience as yours, regarding the vision of motherhood, only mine was during a visit to an Amish family some years ago. I remember driving away after the weekend and remarking to my husband that there was this remarkable (and yet very familiar–maybe as chicks, like you said?) way that the children all hung together near their mother when meeting us, looking content and very much protected. It was just lovely and so very serene. -emily
Anonymous says
Thank you Leila. Lovely. (Linda)
Sue says
Beautifully said!I got that vision, too, but from my own mother. Ironically, I was born 10 years and more after my brother and three sisters, and I was the one daughter my mother (having been "enlightened" during that 10 year gap) taught to be ambitious for an education and career. From a young age she insisted that I would go to college and have a grand career. I'm not saying that college for women is a bad thing, mind you, just making the point that none of my sisters excelled in school or went on to college, and I think she regretted not having pushed them more. Thus, she was determined to do things differently with me. She envisioned me as a TV news anchor. I do love to talk, after all. Somehow, though, I caught the vision of marriage and motherhood from her actual life in spite of her words. I did not envy my sisters as they put their children into daycare at 6 weeks old to go back to work. I was attracted to their married life and motherhood, though! I am so thankful that God gave me that vision and desire at a young age, in spite of the messages I received from family and society growing up.
Leila says
Emily, so sweet…You're welcome, Linda…Sue, ah, daycare, yes, there's the rub…And Debbie again: I think that holy fire/fire is indeed a wonderful and lively image! So very true. I'm glad I found that out, the more I think about it!
Betsy says
I know that this is repetitious but that was a lovely post. Thanks. Oh, on a side note, I was telling my sister about your blog and how wonderful it is and she said, "Lawler?" as in Philip Lawler's wife maybe?" I said, "Yes, I think so, Why would you know that?" (I have only in the past few years started really actively learning AGAIN about my Catholic faith but she is fairly well read.) Anyway, she is a fan of your husbands writing, and she commented that it would figure that a very smart, well spoken gentleman would have a very smart, well spoken wife. I agree.
LJtravelsTHEworld says
That's one of my favorite phrases in the whole Bible, "bone of my bone". Thank you, Auntie Leila… so beautiful!:)
seashoreknits says
Dear Leila:You write very beautifully of this moment in time (with it's enduring impressions) from your childhood. And far from being troubling when I read the account of how that family made you feel, I understood exactly what you were speaking of. Isn't it a good feeling to contemplate the good? Isn't that why we love the saints? Your childlike humility understood that then. And you recongize this today. Very beautiful.And love your statement about here, at the beginning, we have the whole program of marriage and we know it is what God actually wanted, since it's before the Fall….No profound thoughts here from me – just a reader who wanted to let you know what struck me (among many good things from your reflections). Thank you for sharing with us.Teresa
Mrs Bossy says
WOMANHOOD – I figured it out in third grade (finally!) …that it was better to be a girl than a boy 'cause girls could wear pants AND dresses, and boys could only wear pants.I had no particular attachment to children as I was the oldest gal of 8 children. After I married, God molded me some more, and VIOLA! I have had a new vocation for the past 28 years; marriage and mommyhood are so much richer than my 'fabulous career.' No regrets. And I still get to wear pants & dresses 🙂
Lucy says
Hi!This isn't a comment about your post per se, so you don't need to publish it. I just wanted to invite you to "Kids say the darndest things Friday" blog hop at:http://mysticalrosedesign.blogspot.com/2010/03/post-signature_19.html We’d love to have you join the fun and share your stories. I’m sure that you have some real gems! We are also hosting Pro-Life Tuesdays!In Christ,Lucy
Eternal Optimist says
Delightful and insightful.
Meredith says
I know that those of us who did not grow up with a storybook family appreciate the childhood vision you shared. It takes a lot of faith to believe that one can overcome one's roots.I just finished the Pieper book and am beginning to understand from where your touchstones of order and wonder came.
Nori Coleman says
Thank you for sharing this it really means alot to me.My best friend and sponsor into the a Catholic andIare no longer speaking because of this very issue. I have seven childrenand I can see the beauty of God in His creation of them and our family.Because we are not wellof she says we are irresponsible due to my last pregnancy which I ended up misccarrying. My baby non the less touched our family and was a witness to the preciousness of human life. We got to bury him and have a commital service.I think we are too caughtup into wordly sucess and we forget the purpose of our lives and marriages. Thank you for reaffirming our vocations as wives and mothers.
woolnest says
Hmmm… your account of meeting the family reminds me of my own early encounters with the Lawler clan!
Maria says
I followed a rabbit trail of links back to this post, and I'm glad I did. It's just lovely, and I do know so very well what you mean about the old books and the struggle of good vs. evil preparing your heart to believe in God. I happened to be raised in a Roman Catholic family, but I had to discover God for myself as a young adult anyway. And I do appreciate your reminders about the priority of the relationship between husband and wife, because so often it is easy to neglect this and to forget that it is the foundation of that happy family we are striving for.
Margaret says
I just read this post for the first time. My goodness, this is powerful and beautiful. I love your description of the large family you saw.