Up to my Neck in σκύβαλα
Woman is not an interchangeable worker in the machine of progress, but the very ground on which we become human
In 1997 Dr Richard Carlson wrote a book called ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’ teaching people to live more peacefully by not overreacting to minor daily annoyances. I’m guessing Dr Richard never woke up to an incontinent Labrador, a blocked waste pipe, exploding toilet and a broken front door all on the same morning. As I reflect on my 40’s I would say that it has been the decade of the small stuff, and the small stuff is hard.
As a teen I watched my mum suffer with Cancer, as I turned 20 she died, by 26 I was divorced, when I was 28 my twin babies died in utero, at 29 my dad had a heart attack, Between 30-40 I was having babies and from 40 onwards my life has been one of maintenance, and, despite everything, the maintenance years may be the hardest yet.
Having received life, my own and others, I do my best to keep the family (including those pesky dogs) alive at a minimum, flourishing at best. I clean toilets, pack lunches, mop floors, fold laundry, make meals, wash dishes, nag a fair amount, walk the dogs, shop for groceries. I make time to talk with each person, offer any words of wisdom that I can, but more often than not, just offer a hug. I judge moods, keep the peace, intervene, keep a distance. I remain always vigilant about what they encounter through screens, in schools, in the wider London metropolis, without being overly heavy handed and smothering. I cherish, love, watch them grow and endure the painful loneliness that only a woman knows as the sword pierces her heart.
All of this must be done whatever my mood, whether I am having a good day or a bad day, whether I feel happy or sad, whether I am shouted at or spoken to nicely, whether I have money or nothing, a full tank or running on empty. If I opt out of being woman, things simply unravel and then fall apart. This is not a fairytale. Every day is an act of will. Love is an act of the will.
One of the greatest mistakes we have made as a society is to undervalue women as women. Modernity has tried to justify woman almost exclusively by what she achieves outside of the domestic sphere: her productivity, her economic output, her professional visibility, her utility within systems designed by and for masculine modes of being. In doing so, it has quietly denied something far more fundamental, which is woman’s ontological significance.
Woman is not primarily a ‘function’ but a form of meaning. The meaning of woman is always Bride and Mother, whether she is married and has children or not. The female is the physical embodiment of the feminine principle, her body is ordered towards gestation (in a way the male body is not) signifying something of her metaphysical form. The feminine is the space into which meaning flows. She is the Ark of the Covenant, the dwelling place of the Shekinah, she is the path, the road, the vessel, the Church, the womb, the Amen. She is the home, the domestic, the quiet, the mystery. She is Helena whispering in the ear of Constantine, she is Monica praying for Augustine, she is Mary’s yes to life. She gives body to what would otherwise remain abstract - love, order, sacrifice, culture, faith and life itself.
With woman stripped of her ontological significance and metaphysical form is it any wonder that we find ourselves drowning in a sea without boundaries, without limits, without borders? How can we boundary our nation if we can’t even boundary our own families? Women marrying women, men marrying men, babies grown in one woman and given to another, mens seed mixed and sold and implanted, progeny mingled and muddled, family distorted and meaningless, confusion reigns! Where is woman? Quo vadis, mulier?
As Gertrude von le Fort writes with characteristic clarity: “Woman is the guardian of being, not through power but through presence”
But women are no longer present as women. To remove woman from her role, or to persuade her that it is insignificant is to hollow out culture at it’s core.
A woman has an obligation toward her femininity, which remains above and beyond her, inviolate and inviolable, even when she no longer recognises her own meaning, or when she has gone so far as to reject or deny it. In every walk of life we know what to expect when someone fails in their obligations; a doctor, a bus driver, a football coach, why should we expect anything different when a woman fails in her obligation to be woman? Is not our culture hollowed out at its core?
The words ‘Bride’ and ‘Mother’ have been aggressively flattened in modern discourse. They are treated either as optional lifestyle choices or as biological accidents. A woman is Bride not merely because she marries but because her being is ordered toward reception and relation. She is mother, not merely because she bears children, but because her presence is life giving, spiritually, humanly and yes, culturally.
Alive von Hildebrand insists on this distinction:
“Woman’s dignity does not depend on what she does, but on who she is”
This is why even the unmarried woman, the consecrated woman, the elderly woman, the childless woman fully embodies feminine meaning and has (by nature) the capacity for sheltering, forming, giving life to and sustaining the life of another - in her womb, in her home, in her community, in her nation. Woman reminds the world of this important truth simply by existing rightly; “you are loved before you perform, you matter before you succeed, your value doesn’t begin and end with your utility.”
Any culture that loses reverence for woman as woman becomes restless, brittle and eventually brutal.
The modern world is exhausted, drowning in activity, starved of meaning, and it cannot recover unless it relearns what it has tried so hard to unlearn: that woman is not an interchangeable worker in the machine of progress, but the very ground on which we become human. Every civilisation that wishes to endure must honour women as women and not simply as replicas of men.
In the words of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen:
“To a great extent the level of any civilisation is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilisation could actually be written in terms of the level of its women”
The small stuff that Dr Richard Carlson told us not to sweat may actually be the very big stuff keeping the show on the road. The small, everyday, hidden stuff. Growing babies, giving birth, breastfeeding, making home, making meals, rocking safely to sleep, singing softly, praying daily, reassuring and encouraging, forgiving and letting go, soothing scraped knees and emotional wounds…staying.
Raising children and keeping home is the most challenging, rewarding, painful yet meaningful aspect of my life. It has required making a number of sacrifices along the way and is an intensely difficult path in a world that offers comfort and values the material. When the late, great actress Catherine O’Hara was asked what role she wanted to be remembered for, she said ‘the mother of my children’.
