{"id":6600,"date":"2006-08-05T01:18:42","date_gmt":"2006-08-05T01:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/caryll-houselander.html"},"modified":"2006-08-05T01:18:42","modified_gmt":"2006-08-05T01:18:42","slug":"caryll-houselander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/caryll-houselander.html","title":{"rendered":"Caryll Houselander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, a couple of people have recommended that I read Caryll Houselander. <\/a>Well, I have finally gotten around to it, starting with Essential Writings – <\/a>edited by Wendy Wright of Creighton U, a volume in Orbis Press’ very good "Modern Spiritual Masters" series. It’s an excellent introduction. I’ve moved on to The Dry Wood<\/em>, one of her novels, although at this point it is less a "novel" than a series of rich meditations in between people do a few things, and then contemplate some more, and then go do some more things. But I’ll post more on that when I finish it. <\/p>\n

Until then, I’ll be posting some passages. It is rich, rich spiritual reading. Poetic and true.  An Archbishop, looking out the window at people leaving their work, considering the possibilities of a saint in the making, contemplates the Church:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

…she was both peasant and queen, a queen crowned with stars, who wore her jeweled cope over her peasan’ts frock and her wide apron, a mother who must wash her children with her own hands in the shining waters of Baptism and absolution, who must feed them at her table on the living Bread and the water of Life, who must close their eyes with her own, firm, pitiful fingers for the little sleep between death and resurrection. <\/em><\/p>\n

It was part of her wisdom that the glory of the the saints is secret, that we on earth see their tears, their struggle, their wounds, the old clothes they have left off, and their bones; that she cherishes their bones as a mother cherishes her children’s milk teeth, when the children have grown to manhood, because they remind her once they were little and weak, and were fed at her breast. Part of her illimitable wisdom that we must ask a miracle of every new waint, that to prove that they are at God’s side they msut reach a hand through the cloud to alleviate our sorrow. The sign of their glory, a touch of love in the darkness.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, a couple of people have recommended that I read Caryll Houselander. Well, I have finally gotten around to it, starting with Essential Writings – edited by Wendy Wright of Creighton U, a volume in Orbis Press’ very good "Modern Spiritual Masters" series. It’s an excellent introduction. I’ve moved on to The Dry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCaryll Houselander - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/caryll-houselander.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Caryll Houselander - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over the years, a couple of people have recommended that I read Caryll Houselander. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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