The Gift of Motherhood (Guest: Mary Cuff)

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Motherhood is the most important job in the entire world, but it comes with struggles and suffering. One mother decided to look to another type of motherhood for advice on this important task. Hello, I'm Eric Sammons, your host. Aaron, chief of Crisis magazine the screen we talk about today. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to hit that like, button, subscribe to the channel, let other people know about what we're doing here. Also, you can go to crisismagazine.com, put in your email address, and you will get our article sent to your inbox every day. Also, you can subscribe. You can follow us on social media riceismag at all the major social media channels which are ever changing. So today we have Mary Cuff, who is a writer for Crisis magazine. I'll just lead with that when I talk about her bio, because that's obviously the most important thing that she does in the world, which is not actually true. But anyway, she is a homeschooling mom, independent scholar and writer. She holds a PhD in american literature and classical rhetoric from Catholic University of America and a proud alumni of both catholic homeschooling and the University of Dallas, which is. My daughter actually graduated from the University of Dallas, so I know it well. Her writing has appeared in Crisis magazine. Like I said, that's one that matters. Also modern age and law and liberty. And she's been a guest in Guadalupe radio and relevant radio. She and her husband are homesteading light in rural Pennsylvania, which I got to ask you about that because I feel like we're doing the same thing here in Ohio. Welcome to program, Mary. [00:01:36] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:01:38] Speaker A: So actually, let's just start with that. What do you mean by homesteading light? [00:01:43] Speaker B: It means that we can't possibly actually homestead. It basically means that we kind of do little bits around, you know, around the place. You know, we have seven acres, but it's mostly just forest that the kids run around in. We have twelve chickens. We have a beehive. I talked my husband into getting sheep next year, maybe, but nothing, nothing too crazy, right? We're not trying to go off the grid or raise all of our own food. We, we know we can't do that. We know it's not practical for us to do, but we want to. We want to have a little bit of. A little bit of that in our lives. [00:02:21] Speaker A: It sounds very similar to us. We have ten acres. Most of it is woods. Kids run around in it. We're not as into animals, though. We had quail for a while because it was easier and chickens. And that worked out nicely, but then it started not to be. It just didn't work out that great for us. And then we. We have a big garden, and so, yeah, you know, we have some cats and a bunny, but I would love to get animals at some point, but hasn't happened yet. So I feel the embarrassing thing is, I'm actually speaking at the catholic land movement conference in a couple weeks, and I'm gonna feel like a big poser when I'm there. So I'm not talking about homesteading. Like, you know, I'm not an expert in that, so I'm not gonna talk about that. So, anyway, so. Okay, so you seem to be incredibly overqualified to be a homeschooling mom. [00:03:11] Speaker B: So on the contrary, tell us the. [00:03:15] Speaker A: Background of, like, your education and kind of have you. Did you, immediately after getting your PhD, start homeschooling your kids? I mean, what kind of. What's your background when it comes to motherhood? Because that's we're going to talk about today is motherhood, right. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Well, my mom was a stay at home homeschooling mom. I'm one of six kids that's kind of like the framework that I grew up in. I went to graduate school because I wanted to be like my hero, junior Tolkien. I wanted to go and teach literature and mythology and language, and I still do that. In fact, I get to do that better now because I get to do it my way as opposed to some administrators way. But I don't know. I was coming home from teaching one day, and I started thinking about, yeah, I was kind of frustrated with my students. Every teacher is. Even Tolkien was. He would gripe about it all the time. So that comforts me. But I was coming home one day, and I was thinking, you know, how do you get kids excited about learning? Because so many people are just not excited about learning. By the time they get to college, it's kind of been beaten out of them. And I was thinking, well, how would you get them excited again? And I was thinking about my students initially, and then the more I thought about it, the more I was like, well, you kind of need to start really early. Like, I wish I could take a time machine and start these kids off on a better footing. And then I thought how cool it would be if you could, you know, do this, like, you know, live history a little bit and recreate it with your kids and get them all excited about, you know, all these cool things that I love and I wish that my students loved. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute, that's what my mom did with us, homeschooling. At the time, I had a two year old, and that was it. And I thought, wouldn't it be so cool to do that with her? And then I thought, well, if I want to do it the way that I feel like I really want to do it, I need to spend all the time doing it with her. I got home, I went in the front door, and I said to my husband, hey, would you mind if I just didn't go on the job market? We were in grad school at the time, and we were just starting that process, and I was like, can I just not go on the job market? And just, you go on the job market. And he said, you know, I was hoping you'd say that one day, but I didn't want to push you. And I said, yeah, I think I want to do what my mom did and just stay home and homeschool the kids. And, and that's kind of how I got to the place where I am. I, you know, finished my PhD, and I feel like I use my PhD a lot in homeschooling. I use it a lot all around the place. So it's kind of cool that, but it's still useful. It just wasn't useful the way I thought it was going to be useful. [00:05:54] Speaker A: Right. How old are your kids now? [00:05:56] Speaker B: I have an eight year old, eight year old, five and a half year old, just turned four year old, two year old and seven month old. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Congratulations on all of them. But, yeah. So you're really getting started on the whole. Yeah. One of the things when we start, we have, our kids are 18 years apart, and so we realized at one point we're going to have, like, more in 35 years. My wife's going to be teaching them because we started the oldest when she was in second grade, and then we're going all the way through, you know, to our young. And my oldest is the one who graduated from University of Dallas. And so, yeah, so it's a long time. And, boy, I mean, I'm big support. Homeschooling is what I'll say. That's the understatement. So it's been great for us as well. We want to talk a bit about motherhood because you wrote a book and it's called within all your time of, like, you know, which, you know, every home, every stay at home mom has plenty of time with fight. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Loads of time. [00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, just, you got time all over the place. I'm sure my wife had a book come out last year. And so I understand how you get snippets in here and there. You find time, maybe five in the morning or whatever it is. You wrote this book mother to mother from Tan books. Spiritual and practical wisdom from the cloister to the home. Now, I'm going to say something that you don't have to say. You know, I mentioned you beforehand, but it's a warning to everybody who's listening. If you know about like mommy blogs and you don't like them, keep listening. This is not them. So I just say that because I can say it. You know, my wife is not a fan of mommy blogs and. But I'm going to recommend this book to her after reading because it's like very different. It's a. So anyway, why don't you, okay, the thing you're not supposed to do when you interview somebody about you mention a book, you don't say, oh, why did you write this book? I never do, but I am this time because. Tell us about the Genesis book, because it's so intriguing. When I heard about this, I was like, oh, my gosh, I have talked to Mary about this because this is not just you spouting off about what you think about motherhood. This is something very, and in fact, who you went to to find out about motherhood is very, I mean, it's just genius, I think. But I want to know how you came to this idea. Okay. I'm going to write this book and tell us what kind of, what the crux is. I don't want to spoil it for you. [00:08:13] Speaker B: So I mentioned in the introduction to the book sort of the moment where it jumped into my head. I was at a playground having a playdate with a bunch of other moms, and a capuchin nun was there. And at least in my neck of the woods, you never see a capuchin nun in a playground. I have a feeling that probably in most people's neck of the woods, you don't typically see contemplative nuns at a playground. So obviously I went over to say hi to her and we started talking. And at one point she says, you know, contemplative nuns are the stay at home moms of the religious vocation. And I thought to myself, oh, my goodness, I never thought of that before. And it's absolutely true. And that got me thinking, like, well, what else do we have in common? And more importantly, what can I learn from their experience of being moms? Right. And specific to me stay at home moms. And so I started thinking about it. I started coming up with a bunch of questions that if I ever got the chance, I would like to ask a contemplative nun about motherhood. The sort of things that we have in common, ways that maybe their perspective could shed light on my situation. Then I started polling other moms and say, like, hey, if you got to ask a contemplative nun a question about motherhood, what would it be? And then I ended up getting five different monasteries involved. The Gower benedictines from Gower, Missouri, with mother Wilhelmina, the incorrupt foundress. I was very excited to get them, actually, I got them before they exhumed her. And then in the middle of the project, they wrote me, and they were like, our responses are going to take a while. We have an incorrupt foundress on our hands. And I was like, oh, yeah, don't mind me. I think you got something more important to do right now. But they got it in somehow because they're busy women, too. By the Gower benedictines, I had byzantine Carmelites from the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. I got the capuchins over here in Pennsylvania as well. I got the Roswell poor Claire's, and I got the Cistercians up in Wisconsin. They all got involved in the project. And basically what I do is I'd write them and I would include questions, you know, the questions that I'd come up with, and they would send back their. Their answers, their reflections. And that's really what the book is. It's a question and answer with nuns about common topics relating to all of us mothers, contemplative and laydena, how did. [00:10:53] Speaker A: You narrow it down to those five? Like, why did you, did you reach out to other ones? Or it was that. Was there a certain, like, standard you thought, okay, I want to ask this type of obviously contemplative. You said you wanted to ask them, or is that maybe the only five contemplative orders in the country? I don't know. [00:11:07] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no. There's. There's thousands and thousands. And I came up a lit. With a list of. I kind of researched monastic communities, and I came up with a list of, like, if I could just, you know, snap my fingers, and they'd be in the book. These are the ones that would be in the book. And it was. It was a lot larger. There's a lot of really cool monasteries, and I wrote them all, and some of them just didn't have time for it. Some of them, you know, one monastery, they said, you know, we're really old and, and we're short of hands, and we don't think we can do this. So these were the ones that, that had time and were interested in the project. From the list that I had created. There were others that, you know, round two. I'd like to throw them in the. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Book, too, but I did not know there was a byzantine carmelite order. That was amazing. When I saw that, I was like, holy cow, that isn't. And that's in Pennsylvania, you said in the Pocono mountains? [00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah. They're the only one in the world. They've got an amazing creation story. Actually took a, took a seven month old, and the two of us drove there in the middle of a blizzard. It didn't start as a blizzard, but it ended as a blizzard and spent the weekend with them. And they're incredible. I love them. I want to go back there and hang out with them again. [00:12:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Do they take visitors? Like, they have, like a. Yeah, they. [00:12:29] Speaker B: Have a guest house. Last year and the year before, they actually had, like, a pilgrimage for the feast of St. Therese of Le Sioux. And I guess a lot of people went to that. I tried to go and ended up having a conflict, so I couldn't go. But, yeah, they've got this beautiful little monastery there. It's sort of like east meets west. So they follow a lot of the eastern traditions, but they're still carmelites, which is a western tradition. They take a lot from the Trappists in their sort of spirituality, because monasticism was the eastern desert fathers and desert mothers, and then the western monastics, Benedict and all that, they came and learned from the eastern fathers. And so they're trying to sort of bridge that again and live the bridge, I guess, is what I would say. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I have three daughters still at home. And so we took them out to Gower, actually, earlier this year, which was amazing. And we liked them. We liked to visit a few other places, but that place, I was like, wow, I got to get there. Sounds awesome now. Okay, so we both know in the kind of the eyes of the world, the idea of a celibate woman living with a bunch of other women would know nothing about motherhood. Would. I mean, what in the world could somebody like that say about who somebody could say about motherhood? So what is kind of the common denominator? Why is it that you look to them for advice on motherhood? Like, what brings together you as a, as a. For lack of better term, physical mother and them as spiritual mothers. [00:14:09] Speaker B: So I think the important thing to remember is that when we call them spiritual mothers, when a sister in the monastery refers to her mother superior as mother, this isn't just a cute term of endearment. It's real, and they really mean it seriously. One thing that's beautiful about all the orders that I. That I worked with is that they. They reflect often about the home life at Nazareth. So they think of themselves very much as called to emulate and to model Nazareth, you know, the domestic church of Christ and our lady and Joseph at Nazareth. So it turns out that there ends up being a lot in common between a lay mother and a spiritual mother first. And I think most important, the sort of the thread that runs throughout is that both of us derive our vocations from our lady. And so we are called to emulate our lady in our vocations. And with that as our common goal, we end up having a lot to talk about. You know, nuns are called to emulate our lady in that she's the first nun, perpetual virginity, contemplating Christ in the silence of her heart. That's a definition of a nun. Right. And our lady did it first and did it best. She also was literally, physically the mother of God. Right. The theotokos. And we are called, you know, lay christian mothers. We are called to be the mother of the children of God, right. That, you know, are our children, are God's children. And, you know, there is, you know, we are supposed to see Christ in them, and we are supposed to model the motherhood of our lady in serving our children and serving our communities as mothers. Right? So we have our lady as our common goal. Nuns are also supposed to model her motherhood. And I think lay mothers often forget that. We are also supposed to contemplate Christ in our hearts, in the silence of our hearts as well. So we emphasize one aspect of her more literally than nuns do, and nuns emphasize the other aspect of her more literally than lay mothers do. But both of us are supposed to emulate both parts of her insofar as our vocations emphasize that. So obviously, lots of confluence there. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah, right. How would you say, though, like, besides the obvious, that they don't have physical children? What would you say are the differences, though, like, between the motherhood that you practice and the motherhood of a mother superior, even, because even a sister, in a certain sense, is a mother who's not the mother Superior. So how would you say they're really different as well? [00:17:00] Speaker B: Well, there's the obvious differences, right? But I think some of the differences is that some of the differences that we are called to do is that nuns have a more literal stripping away of the world than is possible for lay mothers. Right? So in a chapter of my book, I talk about sacrifice and the concept of martyrdom. And actually, the medieval church sort of split what we call white martyrdom into two separate categories, which I think really shows the differences between the. The motherhood of a nun and the motherhood of a lay mother. There's. They call it. Obviously, we know what red martyrdom is, but white martyrdom is when you're not literally being fed to the lions, but you are sacrificing yourself to the will of God in a. In a death to self and death to world. Right? The nuns in the medieval concept are the white martyrs. They separate themselves from the world to practice a radicalness that is not possible or even prudent for a layperson to try to emulate. So they are called to be the white martyrs, separating themselves radically from the world for the pursuit of Christ. And lay people in the medieval construction have what's called either blue martyrdom or green martyrdom comes from a homily, an irish homily, and they didn't have a distinct difference between those two colors. So. But we are supposed to die to ourselves within the world, right? And so there is that radical difference where we talk about poverty, we talk about silence, we talk about isolation in the book and nun's call to radical poverty and my call to poverty are going to be different. They have to be different. Doesn't mean we can't learn from each other there. They reflect upon the concept of poverty in a more spiritual way than I do, and therefore, they have more that they can say to me about poverty that I can then use to emulate insofar as it is part of my calling as a mother. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's always been true that the monks and the contemplative nuns, people take this extreme vow of poverty. It is supposed to be an example to all of us. Not that we're supposed to emulate it, exactly, but we are supposed to look that and say, yeah, we're supposed to die to the world. They're dying to the world as literally as possible, and we're also supposed to die of the world. Now, we might end up because of, like, just having to care for our families like that. We might have more material goods and things like that, but it always. It kind of should prick our conscience when we see them, how they live, like, oh, I probably should go a little bit closer to them than. Okay, I just did my latest Amazon order, you know, or something like that, so. [00:20:03] Speaker B: Right, exactly. [00:20:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So now, you know, we're all called to holiness. We're all called to this discipleship, to this kind of a type of martyrdom, in fact. But what's specifically, though, about motherhood or what's specific to motherhood in living that out, that, for example, I wouldn't have as a husband and father or even a woman who's not a lay woman who's not married, what is it specific to motherhood that are kind of the challenges and the ways in which a mother can grow in holiness and grow closer to Christ. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Right. So I think that the uniqueness with motherhood, and it's. Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint exactly because, you know, you say, well, mothers are called to do this. And then, you know, all the men in the room are like, we can do that too. And it's like, yes. You know, like, for instance, you say like, a mother is called to nurture. Men can nurture too. But, but obviously and deeply, we can instinctively sense the difference if it's done right by a mother versus a father. Right. A father's nurturing has this masculinity to it that a mother can't and shouldn't try to. [00:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah. We, we throw the boy up in the air and catch them, you know? [00:21:18] Speaker B: Exactly. Way high up in the air. [00:21:20] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah. The tough love, the, you know, wipe some dirt on it sort of thing. And moms do that too. And moms need to do that too. There's nothing worse than an overly stuffy mom who's like, ooh, too much, right. And create weak adults from that sort of motherhood. But there is this soft nurturingness that only a mother can provide. Right. You know, it's, you know, there's like the healthy extension of the concept of being in the womb. Right. That comforting home that it's instinctual. Right. It's so like surrounding. Right. Like an embrace. Right. Our lady provides that for the church. And lay mothers and spiritual mothers are supposed to provide that as well. Right. That sort of the surrounds that provide a sort of warmth of a sense of belonging, a sense of place for our children, for the children of God in the church. So only a mother can really do that in a feminine way. Part of my book, I reference a theologian who sort of, he splits and he says, don't split it too radically or too literally, but like men sort of stand for the doctrinal aspect of the church, the teaching, logo centric aspect of, you know, of the church. And women are much more like the tradition. Right. And tradition people, you know, especially these days, don't quite understand the purpose of tradition. Tradition is our sense of belonging, our sense that we are at home. Right. As opposed to we are at a place. There's a distinct difference between a daycare and a home. Right. A living room and a home. Right. We can feel it. We can feel the difference. And that difference is a mother. Right. That surrounding, almost like the oxygen in the room, is what mothers are called to provide. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's beautiful. That's very true. Now, when it comes to you, ask these mother superiors about some specific topics, which I thought were very good, and I wanted to go through a few of them, obviously recommend the book mother to mother to get more in depth, but I kind of wanted to get some of their, because I thought it was very good, some of the insights they had and applying them to lay mothers. Um, the first is just like the relationship between work and prayer, because we kind of joked about it earlier, like, you wrote a book while being a stay at home mom with. It was five. Right? Five kids. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Yes, five kids. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah, five kids. Eight and under. And so we're not talking, you know, that, you know, been there. That is not a. That is a challenge to find time. So we kind of think of contemplative nouns. Well, their work is prayer. So what insights did they give, though, to you about how a lay mother can balance that work and prayer and integrate them in their. In their life? [00:24:37] Speaker B: First of all, nuns do a lot of work. They very much are the homemakers of the monastery. One nun said, you know, this is Christ's home. It's his house. We want to make sure that it's nice and clean for him. So they end up doing a lot of chores around the house. It takes a lot to keep a monastery afloat, so they're not just always in the chapel praying. They do that a lot, but they also have lots of work that. That they. That they have to do. And especially a mother superior, because she kind of has this added layer where she is, you know, orchestrating the whole thing and. And taking care of her spiritual daughters, how to balance prayer and work. The nuns had a lot of really great suggestions that I've been incorporating in my own life. First of all, they emphasize that you can pray in moments where you wouldn't necessarily think to pray and in ways that I didn't necessarily think of as prayer. So it's sort of a cracking open the box of prayer so you can have something they called holy gratitude. It's practicing holy gratitude in the busyness of your life, right? So you're, you know, handling this kid while trying to do the laundry, while trying to teach math, while trying to do this, that the other thing, cultivating a holy gratitude is a form of prayer. It can be like a wordless prayer, right? A sort of an entering into the presence of God in that moment because it's a moment that he wants you to be in. That was another cool emphasis that they had, was that think of every moment that you are working in your vocation, in your family life, as an aspect of your vocation. It's a moment that God gave to you to fulfill your vocation in. And because you were doing God's work in that moment, even though you might have forgotten that doing the laundry and being nice to the two year old who's been having a tantrum all day is your vocation. Like, yes, it is your vocation. It is the will of God for you in that moment. You can use those moments to pray, right? Using gratitude to God, praising him through your actions as you encounter the work that he's giving you in that moment. So all of that can be part of prayer. So work can be transformed and be holy. Kind of the idea that St. Therese, the little flower, had, where you're picking up a pin out of love of God, can be, can be a great act for God's glory. So they had all these great tips about just sort of refocusing how we think about what it is we do and gearing it towards prayer, which I have found very helpful, personally. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And I wanted to also back agree with, like, the fact that they work a lot. When I was, when we visited gower. Have you been there? [00:27:49] Speaker B: No. I keep meaning to go. Yeah. [00:27:51] Speaker A: Oh, you gotta go. You gotta go. But we were there for just a day and we could see, like, while we were there, you can't go back, but you can see from one part, you can see behind the convent where their garden is, stuff like that. And so we see the sisters, they're working hard. I think at one point dragging a tree that they had cut down or something like that. Then later, all sudden, like, the riding mower goes by and one of the, one of the sisters is on it. Right. You know, mowing the grass and everything. And, like, I realized they had to keep up. I mean, I don't know how big their, their property is, but it's acres and acres. They have a garden, and so it's like, you know, a lot of crops there. And so like that, I know from my own house how much work it is, and I have a lot less than they do. So, I mean, it's a lot of work, and they. And then. Yet they do. They are contemplative. None. So they do. Their primary vocation is to pray, of course. But I think that's great that the idea of they integrate it and anybody can, we all should do that. But those are good insights. I want to bring up the radioactive issue when it comes to mothers and wives, which is obedience, because this is something everybody agrees that, you know, there's a. The vow of obedience for religious is a great thing, and it's pretty absolute. I mean, St. Thomas says, no obedience to another human being is absolute. It's only to God. But essentially, there better be a really good reason that you wouldn't obey a religious superior. Lay people, of course, don't have that same level of obedience. Yet St. Paul talks about, you know, the wise being obedient to their husbands. So you have a whole chapter on this, which is great. So how did you, what did you kind of learn from their practice of obedience? How it then transfers or helps you understand the wife's call to obedience. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Right. So that chapter actually was one of my favorite chapters because of the things that the nun said in it. And, yeah, it is the radioactive topic, isn't it? But it doesn't need to be. And that's kind of what they kept emphasizing. They were like, yeah, everyone's so scared of obedience these days. Oh, it's got such a naughty word. Everyone thinks that if you obey someone, then you are under them, which means you are less important than them. And one of my favorite comments that one of the nuns said was Christ in the New Testament, after they find him in the temple, he returns with his parents home and is obedient to them. Obviously, Christ is the most important, most, you know, highest being in and out of the cosmos. Right. And he is obedient under humans. Right. And not even just our lady, who's the most perfect of all humans that he has made. I mean, still the uncreated God is underneath a human that he has made, but also Saint Joseph, who's not even immaculate. Right. St. Joseph, good for us. Right. I'm sure, you know, he was the only person in that nice little house that was ever at fault. Right. And yet Christ is obedient to him, too. And as the head of the house, he's you know, more obedient to his father, right? His father, foster father, the father that he has chosen for himself. And, and so obedience does not mean that you are less than that you are inferior to. And Christ put himself in humble obedience to these two humans to show us the great beauty of obedience. And that just blew my mind. It's like, wow. Yeah, that's true, right? There's nothing offensive about being called in obedience to someone else, because, you know, the church has this great tradition of holy obedience being what God is calling us to do, right? Obeying the proper authority, wives obeying our husbands, children obeying their parents, us obeying, you know, the hierarchy of the church, you know, in, in the proper ways, is us obeying goddess. That can't be offensive, right? That can't be. I know. How dare you? You know, you know, you think you know better than, no, you know, in the proper ways, we are called to obey God, and we are obeying God through the person who has been set for us as the channel by which we can obey God. And the humility that we are called to, um, cultivate in that call to obedience will make us holier people, right? Will bring us closer to God. And that's what this is all about. Right? And is it hard to do? Yes, of course it's hard to do. Um, but God didn't promise us the easy way to heaven, right? If you found an easy way to do it, you're probably doing it wrong. Um, and and yet the nuns kept emphasizing sort of the joy of holy obedience, too, right? When you know that by humbling yourself, by obeying, by saying, not my will but yours, they are drawing closer to God. They are fulfilling their vocation. They're doing what it was that they were set on this earth to do. There is a joy and there is a freedom, and there's a dignity to that, which is very important to remember. I kind of find too often when lay christians attempt to sort of wade into the obedience battle, they keep talking about, like, the hard structure of it, like, obey, obey, obey, obey. Why can't we emphasize the joy and the freedom aspect of it, too, hand in hand with that, right? Because it is a beautiful thing. It's a loving thing. Another nun said, when we fall in love, we desire to fulfill the desire of the other. That's obedience, right? So when we fall in love, we want to do the will of the beloved. And when the beloved is ultimately God, working through the person that he has put in our life to serve as a conduit towards that. That is a joyful thing and a loving thing to do. [00:34:26] Speaker A: What about. So, like, I'm sure your husband's great, by the way, but like, he has. [00:34:33] Speaker B: A. [00:34:36] Speaker A: But like, you know, there's a lot of situations where we're talking about obedience and the joy of it, and that's all. And I, you know, absolutely. To get insight. So for, like, there are situations where the wife, the mother, maybe she converted or kind of reverted to her faith after they got married. And the husband's not Catholic or he's not practicing Catholic. He's not really on board with a lot, a lot of the faith. What about those situations? Like, was there any insight you gained, like, to help mothers because those are difficult situations and, you know, what would you say to them? [00:35:11] Speaker B: Well, first I would say that I think a lot of people in the modern world, and I'm sure that we did this before the modern world. So I don't want to just say it's just us, but we often look at the exceptions to the rule and then want to destroy the rule or say, well, it's a bad rule because there's exceptions to the rule. Right. You know, you shouldn't have a joint bank account with your spouse because what if they are stealing all of your money? Okay, well, that's an exception. That's not the rule. Right. You shouldn't trust people ever because what if they're untrustworthy? So there's the standard. There's what we strive for, and then there's the exceptions. Right. And I do believe that the exceptions do not undermine the rule in most cases. Right. Those exceptions, I think, need to be a more case by case basis. Right. And obviously, in situations that are like that, especially if it's someone who has taken their faith significantly more seriously than their spouse, and their spouse is not living up to the role that they are called to have, then I would say get a spiritual director involved. Don't go at it yourself. Get a spiritual director who understands and who respects the standard as opposed to someone who's just helping you kind of ditch the standard because we are still called to that vow. Right. Nuns can have a bad superior. They still have that vow of obedience. So they have to sort of walk a very fine line where they uphold that vow of obedience but are also attempting to do the will of God when maybe the superior is not living up to the role that they have been given by God. And we all encounter that from time to time. And I think that part of holy obedience is that we can call out our superior in a loving way. Right. We see this throughout church history that people have had the. Have had to do that, right? Is it St. Catherine of Siena going to the pope and saying, hey, you're doing this wrong. She wasn't even a full nun. She was like a lay sister, right. So she's, you know, in some ways the lowest of the low, if you will. Right. And, you know, a woman in the middle ages, and people didn't do that, right. And yet she did. And that wasn't a bad thing. She was called by God to do that. She did it in a loving, respectful, obedient way. She's calling him to his obedience. Right. Reminding him, her spiritual father, of her. Of his obedience to God. And that's very important, I think, is that when we are called to correct them, whom we owe obedience to, that we are calling them to their obedience so that we can obey them better. So. So, yeah, that I think that's kind of. [00:38:26] Speaker A: I especially think the idea of each individual case has to be taken care of individually because you just, you know, with somebody who knows the people in the situation very well. Another topic you address which I think is particularly directed towards stay at home moms, and that's isolation. I know, like, from just talking to my wife and, you know, her friends and be like that, especially early on when the kids you're not having adult conversations with, you know, a three year old. And so you might literally not have an adult conversation all day. And maybe if your husband works outside the home, he gets home and he frankly doesn't have no energy to have a. A long, drawn out conversation, it can feel very isolating, and you have a whole chapter dedicated to that. And so what did the mother superiors, what was their advice for mothers who struggle with isolation? [00:39:21] Speaker B: So part of it, so they gave tough love and they gave understanding, sympathy, because nuns can also struggle from isolation. You know, they're in a community together, but they are very much misunderstood, by the way world in many respects. A lot of them are misunderstood by their families, who weren't entirely sure that they did the right thing by entering a monastery. And, you know, even within the monastery, sometimes, you know, isolation is something that people struggle with. And so the tough love was, you know, they said, you know, maybe make sure that we're not throwing ourselves a pity part. Right. That part of this is part of our vocation, and we are called to self sacrifice. You know, something that the modern world, I find, is also kind of scared of where they're like, you know, if it's like, you know, don't throw yourself a pity party. They're like, oh, no, no. You need self care. You need self care. We do need self care, but sometimes we can think that we need more self care than we actually need. Right? So they said, be careful not to feel sorry for yourself in situations like that when maybe you need to embrace the sacrifice. And, you know, that's hard to hear, but I think it's important to hear that part of this is something that we are called to offer up in sacrifice. But then part of it. Part of it is not part of. It's the real human need for a community. And especially, I think, in today's world, a lot of women don't have the village that we used to have, and that can be hard. Right? So cultivating spiritual friendships can be an important way out of this. One of the nuns said that she has a friend in heaven that she talks to when she is feeling alone or she is feeling overwhelmed. And, you know, it's another nun from her order who died, you know, 100 years ago. They never actually met, but she said she considers her a spiritual friend that she turns to in those moments of isolation. And I actually included at the end of the book two of my own spiritual friends because I've tried to cultivate that as well. And they're two saints who were nuns. I picked them because they, you know, they sort of embody the sorts of mothers I was talking to throughout the book. And they're two saintly nuns that I've just kind of grown close to throughout the years. St. Hilda Whitby, long, long, long ago, and mother Mara Vilas de Jesus, who was very recently canonized, I believe, by John Paul II. And, you know, when I'm having a day that I just haven't had an adult conversation, I really need one. I turn to them and I pray, but it's in a sort of like a mom chat sort of format in my head, you know, doing the dishes and just sort of like, sometimes it's a rant, but, you know, if you think about, like, a phone call with a friend when you're just like, I just need to talk to someone, but there's no one to talk to. I call them up, as it were. [00:42:40] Speaker A: Right. I. Yeah, I think that's, that's, we need to have, it's like imaginary friends, but real. [00:42:46] Speaker B: Real, you can actually, really help, actually. [00:42:49] Speaker A: More real in some ways than the people we interact with because they're in heaven. And so they, they're very real. They've got complete realness. One last thing I just kind of want to talk about was one of the things just in general, I think that is a problem today in the catholic world is we really don't have interaction with sisters, with nuns. I think that, like, I'm very fortunate. In my parish, we have an order of nuns, Carmelites, who basically they. Their convents right next door to the parish. And so they teach catechism. They're at mass every week. They're, they're around and, you know, they're always involved in our activities of the parish. And I've noticed that it's such a difference from other parishes I've been in because they give that kind of feminine touch for, you know, motherly aspect, because you always have your priests. They're the fathers, they're doing their job, and so you have, which is good. But it does seem like, you know, we're living in a single parent, you know, parishes or family or something, like, often because the nuns are all gone. And so, like, I just kind of wanted to get your perspective on kind of interacting with them. I know you don't have them right there with you, but, like, interacting with them, what do they bring kind of to the catholic community? Like, we think of them as the prayer warriors. I get that, but I feel like there's so much more than that. Like, I think they can give us real spiritual direction, which is what they're doing in this book. So I just bring that because it may talking you made me think about. I just want to get your, your thoughts on that as well. [00:44:24] Speaker B: I think what you said that we live in single parenthood parishes is very true. That maternal aspect is largely missing from most parishes. And it's sad because we feel the lack. A lot of times we don't realize that that's what's missing. Right. It's those nuns that traditionally have been attached to parishes that have done stuff. A lot of those are the active orders. Right. But we used to have a lot of contemplative nuns closer at hand, and people would go to them for spiritual direction. Sometimes a woman needs to speak to a wise spiritual mother about topics that are more common to women, that men just can't really give as much or the same type of insight, too. And a lot of that is missing in the world, which is part of why I wrote the book. I wanted to sort of bring the monasteries closer to mothers so that mothers could, you know, have conversations with these nuns via. Via reading this book. I think, too, that when Catholics are more aware of contemplative monastics and what they can actually give to us and help us with. We can seek them out a little bit more. It turns out that there are more monasteries around us than you might think. I live in a very rural area, a bunch of tiny, little, small towns, and there are two contemplative monasteries 20 minutes away from me. I didn't know that until I started thinking, are there any nearby me? And it turns out there's two. Right? And you can go there, you can go to mass, you can talk to the nuns, you can, you know, I've had some wonderful conversations with the, with the local contemplative nuns, but I didn't even think to look for them until after I had written this, you know, this book. And I think that if Catholics are more aware of what contemplatives can, can do for us, we might start looking them up in our own zip codes. And you can go to monasteries, you can talk to the monastics, you can. They want to talk to us. They, you know, we are their spiritual children. They would like a visit from their spiritual children. They have a lot to offer us. [00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's great advice to try to find, see if there are contemplative monasteries nearby. One thing I know people might feel a little, think it's a little funny to talk about spiritual direction from a woman, but this is actually very traditional that nuns, you know, gave spiritual direction. They have done that for centuries. It's not something some modernist thing like, I'm not a big fan of the lay spiritual direction, to be honest. I admit it. I know that's kind of become a thing because there's been such a dearth. There's no spiritual direction available for most people. It's very difficult to find spiritual director. But the reality is, is that nuns have supplied that. And like you said, they give, especially when they're directing a woman, they can give certain insights that only a woman can understand. And so, yeah, I'll second that. If you look around, see maybe there's a, there's a monastery nearby, and, and if nothing else, maybe make it a effort to visit one like we did this year. We made it part of our vacation. We were going to a couple different, like, we're going to go our way, make sure we stop at Gower. And that was my personal, my favorite day of the vacation was just being there all day. And my, my daughter's got to talk to some of the nuns. You know, we got to go to mass and things like that. So. And, of course, see Sister Wilhelmina. So anyway, so the book is again, mother to mother, spiritual and practical wisdom from the cloister to the home, from Tan Publishing. I will put a link to it in the show notes so people know exactly how to find it and to buy it directly from tan. You can buy it at the other place. But, you know, let's. Let's buy it from Tan directly from the publisher as much as possible. Is there. I mean, are you. Are we able to buy directly from you or should we just buy it from Tanzan? [00:48:33] Speaker B: I should ask better. [00:48:35] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, great. Okay, perfect. Is there any other way we can find out about stuff you're doing? I mean, riot crisis or anything? Like, do you have a website or just. Basically, just kind of find you by googling? [00:48:45] Speaker B: I have a brand new website. My father in law helped me come up with it. So it's called marycuff.com. [00:48:52] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. I will put that. I'm gonna put a link to that as well so people can go to it. I didn't. I didn't see that. So I'm glad that you told me about it. So we'll make sure. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Brand new. It just showed up. [00:49:04] Speaker A: Perfect. Perfect. Just in time. So. Well, Mary, I really appreciate this conversation. Like I said, I am my, as soon as we get finished with it, I'm probably going to go take this book to my wife and tell her this. You know, I know you hate these last mommy stuff, but, like, this is one that I think you're going to like. So I appreciate you writing it. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Good to know. Good to know. Thank you very much. [00:49:23] Speaker A: Okay, everybody, until next time. God love.