Mothering, Public Leadership, and Women’s Life Writing

Front matter

Mothering, Public Leadership, and Women’s Life Writing

Explorations in Spirituality Studies and Practical Theology

Claire E. Wolfteich

Contents

Acknowledgments 1x 1 Introduction 1 PART 1 Case Studies in Spirituality

2 Mothering, Mysticism, and Public Voice: Margery Kempe and Jarena Lee 29

3 Maternal Wisdom and an Ordinary Spiritual Theology: Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales 49

PART 2 Theological Analysis

6 Seeking Sabbath: Time Poverty, Women’s Labor, and Spiritual Renewal 125

7 Spiritual Travail and Sacred Tales 151 Bibliography 177

Index of Names 195 Index of Subjects 200

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to many who have supported me in this project. The Louisville Institute provided a Sabbatical Grant for Researchers, which was instrumental in laying the groundwork for this book. The Center for Practical Theology at Boston University School of Theology assisted with research support and provided a forum for discussion on this topic. I extend thanks to students and colleagues at the School of Theology for their reflections along the way, and particular appreciation to several doctoral students who worked on research or manuscript preparation: Diana Ventura, Holly Benzenhafer, Laura Chevalier, Kate Common, and Jonathan Resmini. Portions of the book in progress were presented in various lecture, papers, and presentations — particular thanks to colleagues in the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality for their useful feedback. In addition, I commend the excellent work of the Brill editorial staff and Theology in Practice series editors. Finally, of course, this book would not have been written without the support of family, for whom I am deeply grateful, with very special thanks to my husband Jack and our three children.

Introduction

In studying and teaching Christian spirituality for the past two decades, I have found it difficult to locate mothering in the field of Christian spirituality, particularly within the “classic” texts of Catholic spirituality, my own heritage and spiritual home. The history of Christian spirituality is filled with extraordinary models of holiness, tantalizingly different from contemporary everyday contexts — desert fathers who sit on pillars far from civilization, medieval women who find Jesus in an anchorage, Russian pilgrims who wander endlessly to learn how to pray, young women who flee their comfortable homes to enter convents and then levitate amidst a soul-searing, heart-piercing union with God. I love to read and teach these classics, and as a practical theologian I seek to engage them in transformative and life-giving ways. But I wrestle with the gaps between these texts and everyday practices of mothering. Amidst these saints of Christian tradition, where do mothers find ourselves — those of us whose spiritual landscapes are not deserts or convents, our primary practices not pilgrimages or retreats? Noticing how few mothers fill these texts, noticing the near absence of children in these spiritual itineraries, I wonder: How can Christian spirituality speak more clearly into mothers’ spiritual journeys? How can we articulate more fully the complexity of mothering as a spiritual practice? How might we better identify and critically engage maternal spiritual wisdom from Christian traditions?

Similarly, as I have taught courses on theologies of work, vocation, and Sabbath, I have found little reference to the lived realities of mothers and mothering. Few theologies of work are written by women and few give sustained attention to the particular spiritual issues and narratives of mothers. Women’s domestic labor remains a marginal topic. How do we move theologically beyond a dichotomy between domestic and public work to see instead the subtle interrelationships among women’s multiple spheres of vocation? How can we conceptualize vocation and discernment vis-a-vis the dynamic life of mothers and their various seasons of calling, taking into account also vocations that are denied, interrupted, overlooked, or misinterpreted? How do we account for the impact of time poverty on the shape of women’s vocations and spiritual practice?

This book argues that mothering is a significant topic for spirituality studies and practical theology. I bring particular attention to mothering as work and to mothering in relationship to other spheres of women’s labor. Why this

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focus? First, because from the standpoint of Catholic theology, family life and work are two interrelated dimensions of lay spirituality and lay vocation in the world. By situating mothering within this larger purview of lay spirituality and vocation I can unpack interrelationships of mothering and work in women’s spiritual lives. Work also is an important category and context for understanding spirituality; in sociological terms, it is a “critical site of lived religion”! While social scientists have studied the relationship between work and mothering extensively, because fewer theological works address this issue I bring women’s narratives more squarely into the theological conversation. This is not simply about “balancing” work and mothering. Patricia Hill Collins uses the term “motherwork” to convey a far more integrated relationship between work and family and to critique white feminist assumptions:

Whether because of the labor exploitation of African-American women under slavery and its ensuing tenant farm system, the political conquest of Native American women during European acquisition of land, or exclusionary immigration policies applied to Asian-Americans and Hispanics, women of color have performed motherwork that challenges social constructions of work and family as separate spheres...and of the search for autonomy as the guiding human quest...] use the term ‘motherwork’

to soften the existing dichotomies in feminist theorizing about motherhood...”

Hill Collins thus underscores the significance of distinctive cultural contexts in theorizing about motherhood. I adopt the term “motherwork” at points in this book to keep in the foreground the interwoven, as well as tensive, publicdomestic labors of mothers.

As cultural contexts do significantly impact practices and beliefs around mothering, work, and spirituality, it is appropriate to situate myself as an author — I am a white, middle-class American Catholic, mother of three. My engagement with this topic may well emerge from what could be considered a white problematic: the lived experience of separation, not integration, of work and family, spirituality and work, spirituality and mothering. The effort to better integrate, relate, bridge, and weave these together may itself reflect a white

1 Susan Crawford Sullivan, Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 67. See also Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

2 Patricia Hill Collins, “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood,” in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency (New York: Routledge, 1994), 47.

experience of dichotomization, as Hill Collins notes. Indeed, a problematic of “separation” or “dichotomization” more broadly is often assumed in practical theology — e.g., a separation of theory and practice; Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin ascribe this preoccupation with “overcoming of binaries” as a key, unexamined feature of white practical theology: “Established theologies arising from specific race-ethnic-identified communities, like Black, Latino/a, or Asian Theologies, for example, do not typically traffic in such separations that white theologians often see as so essential.’3 Thus, while this study will explore what can be learned from a practical theological reading of diverse mothering narratives, it acknowledges that the very conceptualization of the project emerges from a white cultural context and may well be framed differently in other cultural contexts.

In pointing to the necessity of considering work as a theological and spiritual issue, John Paul 11’s 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”) addresses the importance of work as a focus of ongoing, contextual analysis and action. This description resonates well with the dynamic, contextual, interpretive, and action-oriented tasks of practical theology:

Work is one of these aspects, a perennial and fundamental one, one that is always relevant and constantly demands renewed attention and decisive witness. Because fresh questions and problems are always arising, there are always fresh hopes, but also fresh fears and threats, connected with this basic dimension of human existence: man’s life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity, but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of human toil and suffering, and also of the harm and injustice which penetrate deeply into social life within individual nations and on the international level.+

Work is a critical theological issue. This study focuses particularly on the task of articulating, constructing, and guiding a spirituality of work that takes maternal labor seriously. Indeed, “On Human Work” notes that the formation of a spirituality of work is a significant ecclesial task. “[The Church] sees it as her particular duty to form a spirituality of work which will help all people to come

3 Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin, “White Practical Theology,’ pp. 251-69 in Opening the Field of Practical Theology: An Introduction, edited by Kathleen A. Cahalan and Gordon S. Mikoski (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 263.

4 John Paul 11, Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work’), no. 1: http://w2.vatican.va/content/ john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html, accessed February 6, 2015.

closer, through work, to God, the Creator and Redeemer.” This study seeks to advance a more developed conception of a “spirituality of work” through theological reflection on maternal life writing.

Mothering as Practice

This book is not a “retro” romanticization of mothering. Women’s varied experiences of mothering belie the platitudes about mothering that fill greeting cards and shape social constructions of mothering; these discount women’s actual lived realities and struggles. To argue that mothering is a spiritual practice does not coat mothering with a layer of sweet sanctity. Rather, it affirms that mothering makes a calling upon one’s life that demands ongoing practice, deeply embodied practice that is really a lifetime process of learning and teaching, forming and being formed, growing and failing, wondering and worrying. Mothering is a kind of askesis, training, spiritual exercise. Practical theologian Dorothy Bass describes practices as constituting a way of life; the cultivation of a “life-giving way of life” or a “way of life abundant” is the “telos of practical theology and Christian ministry." Mothering embeds one in the most vital dimensions of living through the care of a vulnerable, ever-changing new human being; it is ideally (though not always in practice) an eminently “life-giving way of life.” The practical theological task is to think through how mothering is and can be more abundantly life-giving, how we can better sustain mothers in the constellation of practices that make up this way of life, and how mothers can, from the depths of their experience, share their own questions and spiritual-practical wisdom with the larger community.

Sara Ruddick conceptualizes mothering as a practice that yields distinctive kinds of thinking.’ In seeing mothering as a theological-spiritual practice, I argue that mothering opens us to deep theological knowing and equally piercing theological questions. This knowing and these questions belong in the broader theological conversation and canon. Spirituality and theology are integrally interrelated and mutually informing, despite their unfortunate division in academia. Mark McIntosh, a scholar of mysticism, expresses this point well:

5 John Paul 11, Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), no. 24.

6 Dorothy C. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant” in For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry, edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra, 27.

7 Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

So while it is very true that theology provides an indispensable critical function for spirituality, it is no less true that spirituality affords a radically critical perspective equally necessary for the health of theology... The critical function which spirituality serves for theology is not a matter simply of adding one more source for theology to consider; it is not a matter of judiciously taking people’s experiences seriously along with supposedly more ‘rational’ thought, but a matter of exposing theology to the profound questioning that animates the very heart of the community’s struggle to be faithful.®

The study of maternal spiritual narratives exposes theology to just this profound questioning.

In writing on this topic, I note that mothers are not monolithic, of course; diversity in maternal experience is vast and cannot be covered comprehensively in any text. A related point: mothering as experience and practice is shaped by social institutions, economics, and cultural ideas about “good mothering” (as scholarship on the “social construction of mothering” aptly demonstrates ).° Spirituality does not exist in a vacuum; it is best studied contextually. Second, I do not seek to re-inscribe mothering in an essentialized way as women’s calling in a way that takes significance away from the multiple paths that women may choose or find themselves in. Mothering is not necessarily a better spiritual path, or the only spiritual path. But it is one spiritual path and practice. This is what I want to explore.

Mother Studies, Spirituality, and Practical Theology

Mother studies as an interdisciplinary field of research has grown in recent decades to include an array of scholarship in psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, political science, and law.!° Across these fields, feminist contri-

8 Mark McIntosh, Mystical Theology (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 17.

For an overview of this topic, see Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Social Constructions of Mothering: A Thematic Overview,’ pp. 1-29 in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, edited by Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey (New York: Routledge, 1994).

10 See, for example, Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, Modern Motherhood: An American History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014); Amber E. Kinser et al., eds., Performing Motherhood: Artistic, Activist and Everyday Enactments (Bradford, oN: Demeter Press, 2014); Julia E. Hanisberg and Sara Ruddick, eds., Mother Troubles: Rethinking Contempobutions have been significant." And yet, research on spirituality and mothering is still quite underdeveloped. For example, Aurélie Athan and Lisa Miller point to the lack of research on spirituality in mothering within the field of clinical psychology.!? They note that when the transition to motherhood occurs against a “cultural backdrop” that does not “honor[s] mothering as a critical window for spiritual crisis and transformation, women navigate unassisted, conflict is exacerbated, and mothers are at higher risk for dysfunction.”!3 Psychological study of women’s maternal health and spirituality is only nascent.

Sociological research has begun to yield important data on religion in everyday rary Maternal Dilemma (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey, eds., Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency (New York, NY: Routledge, 1994); and Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

See, for example, Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995); Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Penelope Dixon, Mothers & Mothering: An Annotated Feminist Bibliography (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991); Andrea O'Reilly, ed., Feminist Mothering (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008); Andrea O'Reilly, ed., From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s of Woman Born (Albany: State University of New York, 2004); Sally Purvis, “Mothers, Neighbors, and Strangers: Another Look at Agape,’ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (Spring 1991): 19-34.

Aurélie M. Athan and Lisa Miller, “Motherhood as Opportunity to Learn Spiritual Values: Experiences and Insights of New Mothers,” Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 27, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 221. Noting the lack of research in this area, Athan and Miller have begun to conduct qualitative research on spirituality and mothering. In a meta-analysis of interviews with 22 new mothers, primarily middle-to-upper class, heterosexual, white women in the eastern region of the United States, they show that mothering can be a positive spiritual awakening for women, reflecting spiritual values such as unconditional love and interdependence, transcending ego, growth in empathy, mindfulness, and a sense of meaning and purpose. Such research lays a groundwork for further studies, although it is a limited sample that lacks racial/ethnic, socio-economic, or regional diversity. The authors also note that most of their interviewees did not use explicit spiritual language in describing their experience; the authors rather brought a spiritual interpretive framework to the data.

Aurélie M. Athan and Lisa Miller, “Spiritual Awakening Through the Motherhood Journey,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 7, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005): 18.

Aurelie Athan, Sara Chung, and Jeanette Sawyer Cohen, “Spiritual Beliefs of Mothers with Potentially Distressing Pregnancies,” Spirituality in Clinical Practice 2, no. 3 (2015): 230.

life, including work and family.!° Yet, there is still a gap in sociological scholarship about spirituality and mothering; this is not a focus of most qualitative research.!6

While mothering is not at the forefront of practical theological research, several practical theologians have made related contributions. Supported by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment, Don S. Browning developed the Family, Religion, and Culture project, which yielded a series of book publications, including volumes on the family in early Christianity; economics and the family, law; feminism; congregations and the family; and the American family debate.!’ In other works, Pamela Couture analyzes child poverty, public policy, and single parents.'® Joyce Mercer draws upon Reformed traditions to articulate a theology of hospitality for children in the church.!9 Annemie Dillen advances the study of children and spirituality.2° Elaine Graham’s understanding of the “kitchen table” as a locus of practical theology lays a groundwork for attending to women’s everyday practices and landscapes.”! Bonnie Miller-McLemore has made particularly important contributions in two related books, Also a Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma

15 See, for example, Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Regarding motherhood, two texts to note are Tina Miller, Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Martha McMahon, Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-Transformation in Women’s Lives (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995). Yet these texts do not address spirituality in relationship to mothering,

16 Susan Crawford Sullivan’s Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) is one contribution here.

17 See Don S. Browning et al., From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997). For a volume celebrating and evaluating Browning's contributions to family studies, see John Witte, Jr, M. Christian Green, and Amy Wheeler, The Equal-Regard Family and Its Friendly Critics: Don Browning and the Practical Theological Ethics of the Family (Grand Rapids, M1: Eerdmans, 2007).

18 Pamela Couture, Child Poverty: Love, Justice, and Social Responsibility (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 2007).

19 Joyce Mercer, Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 2005).

20 See Annemie Dillen and Didier Pollefeyt, eds., Children’s Voices: Children’s Perspectives in Ethics, Theology and Religious Education (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2010).

21 Elaine Graham, “A View from a Room: Feminist Practical Theology from Academy, Kitchen or Sanctuary?” pp. 129-52 in Liberating Faith Practices: Feminist Practical Theologies in Context, edited by Denise M. Ackerman and Riet Bons-Storm (Leuven: Peeters, 1998).

and In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice.2 My work builds upon such rich contributions, most of which arise from Protestant practical theologians, while staking out a different approach. I bring a Catholic theological emphasis, notably in giving theological readings to Catholic mothering narratives from the tradition; critically engaging Catholic social teaching on work and family; addressing the ecclesial task of spiritual formation; and exploring Catholic traditions and practices of spiritual direction. I also foreground the study of Christian spirituality as an essential piece of this work in practical theology.

Study of Christian Spirituality

The history of Christian spirituality is indeed rather muted on the subject of mothering. Few recognized saints are mothers — with some notable exceptions, such as Saint Anne, Saint Elizabeth, Saint Monica, Saint Birgitta of Sweden, Saint Louise de Marillac, and the American Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. While historians such as Carolyn Walker Bynum have uncovered significant maternal imagery in medieval piety”? and scholars such as Wendy M. Wright have brought attention more generally to family and spirituality,2+ mothers’ own writing is poorly represented among “classic” texts in Christian spirituality. Even spiritual autobiographies by mothers too often hide or silence the author's mothering life. This is not to diminish the importance of monastic traditions and the many saints of the church whose contemplative and active lives give witness to their faith. Yet, the omissions, marginalization, and silences regarding mothering reflect and yield a highly ambiguous conception of the spiritual worth of mothering — both undervalued and highly romanticized — and a dearth of spiritual resources by and for Christian mothers. As

22 Bonnie Miller McLemore, Also a Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) and In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2006).

23 See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

24 Wendy M. Wright, Sacred Dwelling: Everyday Family Spirituality (Boston: Pauline Books, 2007) and Seasons of a Family’s Life: Cultivating the Contemplative Spirit at Home (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003). On the specific topic of breastfeeding, see the recent article by Elizabeth Gandolfo, “Mary Kept These Things, Pondering Them in Her Heart: Breastfeeding as Contemplative Practice and Source of Theology,’ Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 13, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 163-86.

Margaret Hebblethwaite wrote: “So few of our major Christian exemplars in history have been mothers.... For the mother, it has to be a matter of personal experiment in a largely uncharted ground, and it is easy to lose heart and lose interest.”25 The critical retrieval and reconstruction of mothering practices, experiences, struggles, and spiritual knowing is a significant task for Christian theology, spirituality studies, and the church.

The effort to locate mothers in the history of Christian spirituality requires broadening the canon of Christian spiritual classics so as to include more texts written or dictated by women. In this book, I probe the value of women’s life writing as a generative source for Christian spirituality studies and practical theology. While practical theology typically takes contemporary contexts as primary focus, I include several historical case studies of mothers’ life writing as well as more contemporary sources. In studying and teaching Christian spiritual traditions, I remain committed to engaging these traditions with critical rigor, love, and openness to wisdom. Hence, while it is frustrating to encounter silences around a practice like mothering, so vital to human development and such a key aspect of many women’s daily lives, I do not advocate a turn only to the study of contemporary spiritual texts and contexts. My approach in the study of Christian spirituality affirms the import of all of these moves: study of “classic” spiritual texts and traditions; expansion of the “canon” of Christian spirituality through retrieval of maternal narratives and other texts by more marginalized voices from within Christian traditions; and interdisciplinary study of contemporary spiritualities employing every relevant discipline, including the social sciences. Practical theological study of spirituality is most robust when it brings learning about contemporary contexts, popular religion, and everyday practice into critical dialogue with Christian spiritual traditions.

In naming gaps in connecting spirituality and mothering, one qualification is important to make: of course Mary is a primary maternal figure in Christian spirituality, most notably in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. The Council of Ephesus (431) affirmed the Greek patristic name for Mary as Theotokos, or Mother of God. For many, Mary is a revered “maternal face of God,’? in the words of Leonardo Boff, the primary saintly model for mothers and a supportive intercessor. The 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem (“On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”) finds in Mary the true mystical union for which each

25 Margaret Hebblethwaite, Motherhood and God (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1984), 97. 26 Leonardo Boff, 0.F.M., The Maternal Face of God: The Feminine and Its Religious Expressions (New York: HarperCollins, 1987).

human being is predestined as a “gift of the Spirit.” In Mary’s “fiat,” her free embrace of the incarnational reality in her own motherhood, she expresses her own authentic subjectivity and becomes a key exemplar of human dignity and vocation: “The dignity of every human being and the vocation corresponding to that dignity find their definitive measure in union with God. Mary, the woman of the Bible, is the most complete expression of this dignity and vocation.”?” Others have critiqued the dominance of Marian theology and piety as reinforcing patriarchy with submissive images of women, essentialist understandings of women’s nature, and restriction of women to the domestic sphere. Feminist theologian Mary Daly described Mary as “a remnant of the ancient image of the Mother Goddess, enchained and subordinated in Christianity, as the ‘Mother of God.”?8 Elizabeth Johnson seeks to reclaim the human Miriam from the oversanctified hagiographical portraits of the Virgin Mary.”° Such critiques are not limited to white feminism; according to James Empereur and Eduardo Fernandez, contemporary Latino/a spirituality includes both strong devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe as “a symbol of justice and freedom” and, unfortunately, a “marianisma’” that reinforces machismo and perpetuates abuse of women.®° Gloria Anzaldua writes that Guadalupe “has been used by the Church to mete out institutionalized oppression...to make us docile and enduring....”3! On the other hand, Jeannette Rodriguez’ research among second-generation Mexican American Catholic women found devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe to be empowering; the interviewees identified with her “as woman, mestiza, mother” and turned to her as a powerful intercessor.32

27 John Paul 11, Mulieris dignitatem [Apostolic Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women], August 15, 1988, sec. 4-5: https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/ apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html, accessed February 27, 2017.

28 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

29 Elizabeth Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 2006).

30 James Empereur and Eduardo Fernandez, La Vida Sacra: Contemporary Hispanic Sacramental Theology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 230.

31 Gloria Anzaldia, Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4° edition (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012), 53.

32 Jeanette Rodriguez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican American Women (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 134. See also Socorro Castefiada-Liles, “Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Politics of Cultural Interpretation,” Pp. 153-79 in Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture, edited by Gaston Espinosa and Mario T. Garcia (Durham, Nc: Duke University Press, 2008).

INTRODUCTION ll

The impact of Marian devotion on women’s self-understandings, sense of vocation, and mothering practice needs further research; yet, this is beyond the scope of the current book. Because there has been substantial research on Marian devotion and theology and far less on other mother figures in Christian spirituality, this book explores Marian piety not as a central topic in itself but rather as refracted in women’s life writing. Thus, Marian devotion will be addressed as it arises in the life writing of the figures selected for this study, however, I seek a broader approach that will open up questions of spirituality and mothering beyond debates about Mary and patriarchy.

One might ask whether it is worth doing these intellectual gymnastics to reclaim a spirituality of mothering and work from within a decidedly patriarchal tradition. Why not put religious traditions aside and simply build a spirituality of motherwork, freed from the misogynistic constraints of religion? Wouldn't it be simpler — and more relevant to societies that are rapidly shedding religious affiliations and deconverting?33 Many today do embrace “spirituality” while rejecting religion, and spirituality can be defined quite broadly, as in Sandra Schneider’s often-cited description of spirituality as “the project of life-integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives.”34 I fully understand the import and potentially healing capacity of spirituality outside of religious structures, particularly for those who have been alienated from or harmed by religious institutions. Yet the approach in this book focuses on spirituality within religious traditions and communities, understood as life in the Spirit as a follower of Christ in the community of the church. I situate my project within the study of Christian spirituality, with particular attention to Catholicism. I also welcome dialogue with those from other traditions who may struggle with parallel questions and with those who embrace “spirituality” but eschew religion. This is a work of dialogical practical theology — deeply rooted in a tradition, curiously conversant with others, and open to the practical wisdom that emerges in the in-between spaces of our conversation.

33 For a recent study of the “nones,” see Elizabeth Drescher, Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

34 Sandra Schneiders, “A Hermeneutical Approach to Christian Spirituality,” pp. 49-60 in Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, edited by Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 6.

12 CHAPTER 1 Voice and Self: Life Writing, Spirituality, and Practical Theology

While the primary contribution of this book is to practical theology and spirituality studies, this work also intersects with autobiography studies. Scholarship in autobiography theory and life writing has expanded dramatically and internationally since 1980. One recent volume included an appendix that listed sixty genres of life narratives, including autobiography, letters, diaries, memoirs, blogs, oral histories, and travel narratives.25 The expansion of autobiographical studies prompted the Modern Language Association to reorganize categories of literary study and to publish a volume specifically about teaching life writing texts.36 Estelle Jelinek noted in 1980 that scholarship on autobiography has been overwhelmingly focused on male authors and most of the “objective theories” of autobiography critics “are not applicable to women’s life studies.”3’ There has been a rise in research on women’s autobiography since Jelinek’s observation, including several key volumes on women and autobiography theory.** In its attention to women’s life writing from the perspective of spirituality, it is my hope that this book contributes to this exciting area of work.

I am interested in maternal voice and specifically the practice of voicing, struggling to claim voice, understood within the framework of spirituality. Ruddick notes how maternal voices have been silenced, “drowned by professional theory, ideologies of motherhood, sexist arrogance, and childhood fantasy.” Thus, writes Ruddick, listening to maternal voices that are themselves in process of becoming, in process of seizing language to articulate experience and thinking, this listening is “an act of resistance.’ Life writing is very much a practice of becoming, a naming of a self that is always still emerging. And