This topic is of particular significance to me this year — not just because our Holy Father has raised our consciousness about its reality and implications for our culture, but also because I lost the person who most beautifully embodied these qualities in my life. My mother passed away in late August — and not a day goes by that I don’t find myself reflecting upon her unique gifts to me and my family.
My mother’s life — like many women — was not an easy one. She left college after her freshman year to marry my father — and found herself 18 years later abandoned with 4 children to care for and raise alone. With the help of a Cousin who was the Catholic Chaplain at Dartmouth College, she moved our family from Maine to safer ground and then worked every day to put bread on the table and keep our family together. As I look back on my childhood and how she courageously and deftly navigated the many challenges God placed in her life, I am convinced that there really is such a thing as “the feminine genius.”
Some of my favorite memories of my mother are those where she gave new meaning to the term “multi tasking” before it ever was ever mentioned as a common term. She could somehow multiply the hours in a day like the loaves and fishes — in order to complete the myriad of tasks assigned to her. She would cook, clean and organize, she would help with homework, grocery shop and mend broken toys as well as broken hearts — but always with a gentle smile that showed the joy she carried within her. It was that unmistakable joy that Mother Teresa looked for in all of her Sisters of Charity. The joy stemmed from her love of God and personal relationship with Jesus who inspired her faith and gave her hope against all odds.
My mother’s faith was unshakeable, her hope undaunted and her love was the leaven that raised all of her children to accept suffering as an invitation to greater grace in our life.
And so, when asked to identify just one phrase that most accurately captures the very essence of the Feminine Genius, I would choose the term “Practical Idealist.”
We all know idealists who have inspired visions of how much better the world could be — but they often lack the practical skills or awareness to put those values to work.
We also know plenty of practical folks — who have all the pragmatic tools to implement any scheme — but they lack the enlightened values or ideals to inform and inspire those techniques toward a greater good.
To apply what this term “Practical Idealist” means to me, it is easiest to turn to the work that has been the focus of my time and energy for over 30 years: The Nurturing Network.
Nurturing Network reflects the idea of practical idealism in its very name — a name that quite literally came to me in a dream about three months after losing our first child in a third trimester miscarriage: Nurturing is the ideal and Networking is the practical way of bringing the ideal into reality.
My friend and spiritual director the late Cardinal John O’Connor often would admonish well-intentioned Catholics, “ It is not enough to say you are “pro-life” if you are not prepared to roll up your sleeves and DO something about it.”
TNN does something about it. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about it — (although there is surely a place for that), but instead, our volunteers quietly and effectively roll up our collective sleeves and
provide the safe haven,
offer the medical care,
give the effective counseling,
accomplish the expedited transfer,
find the new job opportunity – that will actually make the difference between a hopeful choice for life – and abortion.
In fact, over the past 29 years, our 52K volunteer members have served the urgent and practical needs of over 25K women and their children.
How do we do this? In the most practical ways we place our values into action:
The Network is made up of the resources that women desperately need when they find themselves pregnant at the most inconvenient time in their life. The majority of our clients are college women or women in their 20s who are just out of college, living with a boyfriend and hoping that he might take seriously and share the consequences if she should become pregnant. Too often her crisis is compounded by betrayal and abandonment – or worse, by impossible tradeoffs that sound a lot like:
It’s our relationship or the baby.
It’s your reputation or standing socially or the baby.
It’s your job or the baby.
Into this crucible steps TNN gently offering no lectures but whatever would make that pregnancy viable. Whenever I am talking with a mother faced with difficult choices, I hold the phone in one hand -- and the rosary in the other. I wait and listen very carefully. I hear with my heart as well as my mind. And then I wait patiently for the nudge to offer whatever she needs:
A Nurturing Home
A Doctor free of charge
As much Counseling as needed - free of charge
An Employment opportunity
An Education opportunity
This reflection of the Feminine Genius at work was not the result of some grand strategic plan as much as a gift of discernment given to me in the midst of profound suffering caused by the loss of my first child, Angela Grace. It was through prayer more than analysis that I saw the rough outline of an apostolate that would eventually accomplish what I heard as clearly as you can hear my voice today: “Out of the death of one will be saved the lives of many.” And so was born the Nurturing Network.
Which leads me to a realization that came only last night as I was reflecting upon how I might shed some light on the topic of the Feminine Genius with you today. It should come as no surprise to any of us as Catholic women that the unique charisms reflected in the Feminine Genius correspond directly to the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because our time is limited, I will only illustrate a few of these gifts that confirm this discovery:
First, let’s consider Piety and Fear of the Lord. Both of these graces or gifts are rooted in a profoundly feminine form of Humility. It could be argued that these spiritual gifts are merely cultural given the oppression that women have experienced throughout history. But I don’t think that this explanation tells the whole story.
We need only look at regular attendance at daily Mass and note the proportion of women who are in those pews to be convinced that there is something distinctly feminine in the manifestation of this gift of the spirit.
For additional clues about how this gift of the Spirit operates in our lives as women, let’s consider how Piety gives rise to another charism that is an integral part of the Feminine Genius: I am speaking of Compassion. That unmistakably feminine ability to “see with one’s heart”: This is precisely what the Holy Father is asking of us when he calls out for a Church that does more than just feel sorry for the poor; he is asking for a Church that identifies with and cares for the poor.
It is this compassion and heartfelt empathy for the least of these” — this unmistakable feminine sensitivity that ushers in a woman’s heroic ability:
to forgive against all odds;
to champion the underdog instead of teaming up with an obvious winner;
to preserve in keeping a family together even when a more rational or pragmatic approach might suggest a far easier or more expedient strategy.
The second gift of the Spirit that is so closely allied with the Feminine Genius is WISDOM: Even the secular world seems willing to grant us this one — for how often have we heard the term “female intuition” used to explain our ability to cut through even the most complicated set of circumstances in order to come up with a workable — and sometimes even a brilliant solution.
This gift of the spirit gives rise to a form of Discernment that goes well beyond any rational explanation for how we know what to do when faced with seemingly impossible problems. How often I have hear myself inwardly praying when faced with a very difficult situation, “Mary seat of wisdom — pray for us.” How confirming it is to discover that the word “wisdom” or “Sophia” is in the feminine gender in the original text of Sacred Scripture.
One of my favorite scriptural passages captures the very essence of this dimension of the Feminine genius in the person of The Blessed Mother after finding her Son in the temple following days of upset and worry: “And Mary pondered all these things in her heart.”
This reflective instinct that prefers to “pray about it” before putting any plan of action into motion is at the very feminine heart of this gift of the spirit that has so generously been bestowed upon women.
Which brings me to a third gift of the Spirit that is powerfully manifested in the Feminine Genius: Fortitude. Fortitude is all about courage and perseverance.
I believe that this gift of the Spirit is rooted in our God-given biology. Some might refer to us as the “weaker” gender — but my experience tells me quite the opposite. Let’s return for a moment to the Creation story in which we are simply told, “Man and woman He created them.” Presumably God acts with a purpose and so it is reasonable to assume that the creation act that involved a deliberate differentiation must have been done for a good reason. The inherent receptivity of the female body has profound implications for how we think and feel and behave.
There can be no greater example of this uniquely feminine gift of fortitude than the graces we witness in motherhood. Every woman in this room could site countless examples of times when we have been required to find an inner strength to persevere beyond any reasonable norm or expectation — and we have found this inner strength to be there ready and waiting for us. This is a gift of the Spirit and it is just as real and vibrant in spiritual or adopted motherhood — as the women religious in our midst can attest with keen insight.
In Closing:
Let us call upon the most perfect model of the Feminine Genius, Our Blessed Mother, and ask for her intercession and guidance as we each go about living the qualities uniquely given to us as women in a world that yearns for this gentle, compassionate, wise strength:
Hail Mary Full of Grace…