I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Catholics Communicate Christ
Many years ago I published a quick handbook for Catholic writers, hoping to encourage more people to offer their writing in service to the Church. The title is being re-used for this new book, because I could not imagine a pithier synopsis of its content. We Christians exist in this world as the means God has chosen for His own self-revelation. To that end, we need to remedy the sad lack of community life within His Body. First, the Church, then the rise of the persons within her, and, finally, the rescue of those outside her – this is the order of approach. We need for the Church to be more fully realized as community, as collaboration, and as communication of Christ, in order that the Word may dwell more richly within us and resound in the world.
As always, my dream for this book is that it would stimulate many hours of wonderful conversation. Unless it is brought to life among the members of the Body, it will never be fully realized as a means of edifying the Church. I am always available to discuss any of my books, to speak on the topics I’ve invested in for many years, and to offer myself however I can for the good of this membership. Please let me know how I can be of help to you in any way.
I’d also dearly love your feedback on this book!
Thanks, in advance, Charlotte
P.S. See Catholics Communicate Christ at Amazon, here.
Joseph Pearce Likes My New Book!!!
“I can think of no better guide for homeschooling parents …”
Even if very few copies ever sell (think: zero marketing budget), the esteem of Joseph Pearce is satisfaction enough for me. Don’t get me wrong: I do wish copies would sell, too! But I am content to leave promotion in the hands of the Holy Spirit. My fondest hope is that groups of parent educators would get together and discuss a chapter now and then, and that I might be an encouragement to them in their profoundly important work.
Please help me welcome Upschooling into the world of print (cue applause):
Here’s a link to Upschooling on Amazon.
Here are all the goodies from the back cover:
If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. So says Chesterton. Homeschooling is so worth doing that it’s worth doing badly. It is, however, better to do it better. Charlotte Ostermann shows us how we can do it better. She shows us how to think so far outside the box that we can throw the box away. Even more important, she shows us beauty and how we can show beauty to our children. I can think of no better guide for homeschooling parents than Charlotte Ostermann.
Joseph Pearce, author of Frodo’s Journey, Catholic Literary Giants, and Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know
Charlotte Ostermann, veteran homeschool speaker, provides stimulating ‘teacher in-service training’ for parent educators. Each chapter is a meaty and inspirational seminar meant to challenge and encourage readers in their vocations. Parent, educator, evangelist, communicator, and anyone with an interest in the integral development of the human person will find this a rich resource for continuing education and intellectual growth.
If you missed the packed rooms where these talks were given in person, don’t miss this second chance to engage with the material. The author’s goal is to help you cultivate freedom for yourself and your students. Each workshop stands alone, so you may pick and choose to good effect. Pick one to read with a group if you love a great conversation!
“Charlotte Ostermann is a fine practitioner and excellent theorist of education. Those who read these chapters will find them winsome and wise; they are a source of potential delight and instruction for anyone interested in the nature and purpose of education or in practical strategies for educating one’s children or students well.”
–Benjamin V. Beier, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education, Hillsdale College
“Charlotte has a way of communicating reality in a succinct yet rich way. Sometimes I remember her talk on flatitudes and floatitudes and it still helps me to have a lens through which I can analyze my choices and behavior on a day-to-day basis. She makes concepts that really are quite sophisticated accessible and exciting, as well as deeply personal and meaningful for my heart. Thank you Charlotte for being a missionary of Truth in today’s context! Anyone, not just home educators, can truly benefit from her work.” Brooklynn S.
“Charlotte’s talk left me with food for thought. It was well structured, thought through and presented.” Anna T.
“Her breadth of preparation and understanding, coupled with her unusually fine speaking skills, have made her a popular speaker for age groups from ages 18 to 80, from a variety of backgrounds.”
– Nancy Yacher, Department of English, University of Kansas
Praise for Souls at Work – An Invitation to Freedom
“Charlotte Ostermann’s Souls at Work is an engaging and beautifully written book that is particularly important for parents and home educators. I have been teaching my children at home for the better part of two decades, yet the ideas proposed about freedom and the life of the soul are new to me and have left me feeling refreshed and inspired.”
– Alice Gunther, author of Haystack Full of Needles
“If you are a teacher, or a homeschooler, or if you simply want to be ‘fully human, truly free,’ you will find what your soul needs in Charlotte’s gentle wisdom.”
– Stratford Caldecott, author of Beauty for Truth’s Sake
Get Down, Get Pithy
How Pithy Can Your Apologetics Get?
When a child asks “Where do babies come from?” he may just be wondering if the new one can be exchanged, or he may need a simple reassurance that he came ‘from Mommy’ and not from toxic slime as his older brother insists. Experienced parents know what he probably does not want is a long, technical explanation accompanied by slides and illustrations.
Restraint is often the better part of apologetics as well. When an evangelical Christian, who really cares about these things, asks “Do ya’ll worship Mary?” the answer is “No.” If you go into the definition of worship, the historical veneration of Mary, and the different types of worship, he will hear one thing only: “Yep, they do–look at him try to weasel out of it!”
It may be frustrating to you that they don’t want to know the Whole Truth. Especially if you were an evangelical yourself and searched with great zeal for the big ‘T’. Give it up. Anyone with that goal in mind will keep asking questions. You’ll get your chance. Often these questions are trotted out as a ‘gotcha’ or a ‘dare’. They know we worship Mary and plan for you to be mighty uncomfortable being forced by their challenge to admit it.
You must discern when “Do Catholics offer Christ in sacrifice at every Mass?” really means “Do you think Christ’s one death wasn’t enough?” The answer is “No.” Keep to yourself all the rhetoric about un-bloody sacrifice and re-presentation of the one sufficient sacrifice. If you blurt it all out, they’ll hear one thing: “Yep, they think He has to die again every week–look at him try to weasel out of it!”
Here are some other pithy answers to ‘dare ya’ questions:
“Do you pray to dead people?” — “No.” (If you define the word pray, or explain the Church Triumphant, he’ll hear one thing: “Yep, they do–look at him try to weasel out of it!”)
“Is the pope perfect?” — “No.”
“Do Catholics think all of us other Christians won’t go to heaven?” — “No.”
“Did the Catholic Church add books to the Bible?” — “No.”
“Do Catholics worship that bread and wine?” — “No.”
“Do you guys have to earn your salvation?” — “No.”
“Do you worship saints?” — “No.”
“Is there any mediator besides Christ between God and man?” — “No.”
“Do you think saying a formula prayer over and over works better than just sharing your heart with Jesus?” — “No.”
“Do you have to believe all those wild apparitions?” — “No.”
You may need to convert their question into one you can answer concisely. Try to get to the core of their concern in your restatement of the question. Translate “Do you believe Mary is up there answering prayers and working miracles?” by saying “Does the power to work a miracle come from Mary? No!”
Convert “You think I need a priest to stand between me and God?” into “Does everyone have a direct, personal relationship with God? Yes!”
Change “Do you really believe I can say certain prayers or do some good works and then God is obligated to reward me?” to “Does anyone obligate God? No! He rewards good works and answers prayers however He sees fit.”
This refusal to bandy many words is not meant to be a withholding from others of the gift of your apologetics. It is based on careful assessment of your audience and your determination that you are dealing with someone who is daring you to admit what he already knows and considers proof positive against the Faith. He is not asking to hear answers, but an admission of guilt. Wordy answers will only prove things in the Catholic Church are as bad as he suspected. Your pithy ones may surprise him into digging deeper.
Evangelization Proposals
So, the Synod on the New Evangelization once came up with 58 Proposals for making the New Evangelization work. Some of them interest me more than others.
#4 Our participation in the life of the Trinity, our sonship, our identity as Christians is the source of our power to evangelize. Nothing new here, or anywhere in this, but a great reminder that to be better givers-away, we need to be more fully who we already are!
#11 Every opportunity for Scripture study should be made available, and the Scripture should permeate homilies, catechesis, and all our evangelization. Amen, amen! Our separated brethren in the Protestant churches will hear us more clearly if we speak ‘scripture,’ and put the lie to their sense that we don’t value the Bible.
#15, 16 Standing up for human rights, for the unborn, for religious freedom IS evangelization! We don’t have to take time away from all that to be contributing mightily to the New Evangelization. Perhaps we’ll add more scripture, more prayer, more loving-kindness to our methods, but rock on, ye who are fighting these fights!
#18 The most effective form of evangelization is the sharing of the testimony of life. How has your life in Christ moved you, changed you, helped you, challenged you, blessed you? TODAY??
#20 There should be a particular attention paid to the way of beauty. Beauty attracts us to love…In this light artists feel themselves privileged communicators of the New Evangelization. Can I hear a big whoop from writers and artists and poets and musicians out there??
#27 Education needs to promote everything that is true, good and beautiful. Is this happening at your school, boys and girls?
#34 Sunday needs to be recovered with its sacred and special character together with Sunday Mass, as the center of Catholic life. Souls at Rest, anyone??
#35 THE LITURGY OF THE CHURCH IS THE BEST SCHOOL OF THE FAITH. No more nun puppets, please Father!
#39 Pilgrimages to shrines and sanctuaries are an important aspect of the New Evangelization. Where shall we go? Who else wants to put up roadside shrines??
#45 The mission proper to lay faithful is the transformation of worldly structures. I love this! Let’s get busy!!! Life witness, works of charity and mercy, renewing the temporal order, and learning how to just flat proclaim what we believe….we can do this!!
# 52 The New Evangelization promotes ecumenical collaboration…in particular, the Church invites Christians to persevere and to intensify their relations with Muslims. Despite difficulties, this dialogue must continue. Sounds pretty clear to me….we can’t be part of the demonize-the-other-guy crowd, but must take the risk of identifying with him as a human being, and keeping a respectful dialogue going. Dialogue – it’s not just for ‘liberals’, but for anyone who wants to set people free: LIBERATORS!!
Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us!! I’d like to know what you think of all this, and what you’re consciously doing for the New Evangelization.
Practice of the Presence of Persons
I’m beginning to think we need more conscious practice for being present to persons.
Though I know that you are a deep mystery and a unique, unrepeatable reality, you enter my space as an object in the environment and I often do not register your presence at all. This is a sad state of affairs, exacerbated by the speedy pace of life, the isolation of persons in cars and suburbs, the barely-there transactional symbology that counts as ‘communication,’ and other obvious factors of reality that I can’t change.
What can I change? What can I suggest to help along this ‘practice of the presence of persons’?
- Prayer before coming into the presence of others. “Dear God, please help me to be fully present to those I am about to encounter, to believe you have arranged for me to meet with the particular individuals who are present, to resist my own inward resistance to showing real heart hospitality to them, and to place my interest truly into the essence of who each person is and yearns to be. And Lord, please help me remember their names!” (I am so bad at this!) “Please bless our time together, help us to edify and encourage one another, and remain undistracted by other concerns during our visit. Please come into the space between us to unify us for your greater glory.”
- Courtesy. I think we should resurrect the courtesy of formal greeting and leave-taking. I’m trying to move into a “Grace and peace to you” format that I usually forget as greetings take a much more casual turn and the moment is lost. I love getting and giving good-bye hugs, but still stand there wondering if I’ll seem foolish, old-lady-ish, or overly personal if I lunge forward with a hug someone doesn’t want. Still, if you come to my Open House, please say hello on arriving and good-bye on leaving, please. And I’ll do the same when we all meet for book groups or meetings or whatever.
- Be affected. I need to do more than see you. To be present to you is to receive you into my own being and to be affected by you, there. I can’t be present to you without that opening that allows you entrance and makes me somewhat vulnerable to you. I hope I can look into your eyes and that you’ll see yourself loved in mine. I need to do more than hear you. You need to sound in me so that I resonate with you, mirror your movements and expressions, sense the meaning beneath the message on the surface. Just the other day, as I was listening to a friend and being deeply affected by him, one word he said in passing seemed to reverberate in me. I couldn’t shake the sense that this word held much more meaning for him and, as it turns out, it sure did! When I asked why that word was somehow very important or meaningful to him, out came the stories and the emotions elicited by them. It was fascinating to experience the reality that one word could ‘carry’ so much ‘weight’. He hadn’t realized it himself, but as we explored it together it was clear that God had helped my own heart be troubled with a message meant for his healing. What a delicate, lovely instrument the open, affect-able heart is!
Naturally, I am very much interested in your thoughts about how we can better practice the presence of persons. Please let me hear from you!
Know any Podcasters who Need Guests?
Poets Can Be Troublemakers
The Place of Poetry
I so enjoyed this and hope you’ll pass the word that I am ready and willing to offer this workshop elsewhere!
See the Place of Poetry brochure.
Contact me to discuss how I can serve you:
Are You an Amplifier?
Some people are natural “amplifiers” and others are natural “balancers”.
The amplifiers tend to agree, nod encouragingly, and add to your thoughts with material that proves or corroborates your assertions, or opinions. Balancers listen with a different attitude. You’re making one case, so they’re helping by voicing the opposite case, or an alternative narrative. Amplifiers are most comfortable in a conversation with depth of agreement, and balancers in one with breadth of perspective.
It’s good to understand this dynamic, and to be aware of your own conversational bent. Without that awareness, you may fall into thee traps these personal styles present.
The amplifier may feel offended by what seems to be the contrariness of the balancer. The balancer may feel threatened by the pressure toward group-think in a conversation dominated by amplifiers. Both styles, pushed out of balance, move toward the silencing of other persons.
An amplifier can be just a ‘yes man,’ or drown out the wisdom and contributions of others. The balancer may think he’s being helpful, while his constant contradiction flattens and quashes the enthusiasm of others. In unity, respect, integration and love, though, these two can turn a conversation into an enjoyable and edifying event.
Find Your Remove
I can be in unity with anyone, at some remove. Perhaps I’m not your cup of tea, or we just don’t sync well, or you’re just ‘not that into’ me, or a little bit goes a long way in our relationship. It may just not be our time yet. We both will continue to grow and change, and maybe the Great Dance will find us, someday, back in phase for a few steps. Or maybe not.
Ultimately, in the kairos of the Eternal present, we’ll reconnect. Meanwhile, we are held in the Spirit’s tether – his net of relationship. It’s a dynamic tension that generates a context between us – a space that we (or even just one of us, with the Spirit’s help) can fill with love.
In the comedy movie Hallalujah Trail, one character tries to keep step with others surreptitiously. The name he gives this maneuver is “maintaining detached contact,” and it’s what I love to do when I feel you’ve dumped me, abandoned me, blown me off, ignored me, or otherwise let go of our unity.
I know from experience that I don’t need your cooperation to hold you in my heart, to fill the space between us with love, to let my yearning for you become a prayer, to offer the pain of separation for your blessing.
If I’m maintaining detached contact with you, watch out! The Spirit is ever at work drawing us closer. One of these days, you may be surprised to find yourself wanting to see me, write to me, touch base with me, or remembering me fondly. I wish you well, and look forward to our reunion.
Questions for Atheists
It might seem hostile to pepper a live atheist with so many questions, but these are things I’d really like to know:
- Is it possible to live so immersed in atheism, so aligned with its principles that they become a life support system to you in alien, or hostile environments?
- Is atheism so important, or helpful to you that you can’t live without it, can’t stand without its support?
- Is it possible to live so fully in correspondence with atheism that your life does not make sense without it? Nothing else makes sense of YOU. Atheism is the key to your coherence, without which every aspect of your being falls apart into incoherence. Is that true for you?
- Does the word ‘atheism’ live so richly in you that it shapes and colors and fills your every word, act, gesture and work of art?
- Does atheism bond you to other atheists in a community that extends from generation to generation and to every corner of the globe? Does it give you a kind of real unity with other atheists that irritate you, disagree with you about everything but atheism, get in your way, or make demands on you?
- Do you find yourself wanting to express atheism in works of great beauty, profound joy or hopefulness? What works by atheists do this? I would like to experience their works of art.
- Does your atheism overflow to immerse and influence people around you?
- Does your atheism enliven and ennoble and edify people when you share it with them? Do they feel more hopeful if they convert to atheism?
- By the light of atheism, can you examine the natural world more deeply, understand interpersonal dynamics and mental illness more fully, or perceive paths to renewing the world more clearly?
- What would it mean for someone to adopt a distorted or malformed atheism? Are there ways someone could know if their atheism was becoming deformed, dangerous, or confused with other beliefs?
- Can you be a ‘fundamentalist atheist’? What would that look like? How ‘bout an ‘orthodox atheist’? A ‘non-practicing atheist’? A ‘cultural atheist’?
- Are there any obligations imposed upon you by atheism?
- What are an atheist’s guidelines for getting along with non-atheists (and answering their questions)?
- What, for you, is the most compelling argument for the doctrine that there is no God?
If you substitute your religion for ‘atheist’ in each question, then answer them all, it will be good for you and for our future dialogue! Here’s a contact form in case you want to share your answers with me. I’d be honored!
The Danger of Great Stories
A Catholic Church has a new tagline: “We exist to guide great stories.”
Setting aside my concerns about the new action-planning guide which fall under the general category, “Question Rhetoric,” I here take up those of my hesitations about what exactly is a “Great Story.”
While I appreciate the need to appeal to people’s innate sense of narrative, using the natural structure of story to convey meaning, I sense the possibility that the very notion of ‘story’ is so dangerously deformed in many of our ‘audience’ or ‘market niche’ members that the approach might backfire.
Question Slogans
What Do We Mean by Great?
Is a ‘Great Story’ one in which I, the protagonist, achieve greatness? If so, it is important to know what we mean by greatness. We’ll have to let the audience know their story is only ‘great’ if it conforms to a true definition of greatness. Otherwise, they may misunderstand that we want to help them toward any of the false greatnesses that fill the culture with disorder and the mental wards with patients.
Fr. Giussani says, “The beggar is the protagonist of all history.” Will we be helping them learn to beg? To achieve career success? To become holy? To attract followers to an attractive narrative? To realize dreams, ‘make a difference,’ or what? What will make for the greatest stories? It is important to know, else how will we guide them?
Who is the Hero of a Great Story?
I worry that the post-modern audience is already vulnerable to the lure of being the protagonist, to any story-line that stars ‘me’, to any chance for fifteen minutes of fame. I would hate to fan those flames. Must one be the hero of one’s story for it to be great, and, if so, would a comic or tragic hero be best? Narcissism is at an all-time high, so a dose of comedy might help the would-be heroes take themselves a bit less seriously. How will being the fool and being great be reconciled in the stories we help guide?
What Makes a Story Great?
Is a ‘great story’ one which has the marks of great literature, great art, great rhetoric? Have our hearers been prepared by their educations and experience to make any good judgment about the aesthetic quality of their life stories? Will their stories be ‘great’ according to the conventions of biography, or detective fiction, or romantic comedy? Is all this concern for our stories just more self-referential metacognition?
Do You Have Capacity for a Great Story?
Do people raised largely without skill in the use of words, or practice in the creative arts have the skills needed to generate truly great stories (works of fiction, or life narratives)? What remedial help will be needed to successfully engage people in this metaphor of the storyline? C.S. Lewis commented upon the artistic difficulty of rendering virtuous characters well in stories. Flannery O’Connor’s work demonstrates the grotesque nature of many ‘real to life’ characters – none of whom (though her stories are of high quality) lead lives anyone would call great. There are real and difficult paradoxes here to be probed and addressed. What artists have faced in their work may be of great help to those who would help make, of lives, works of art.
Resist Anti-Culture
Worse, probably, than vague definitions, poor capacity for judgement, scant experience in creative resolution of tension, and mal-formation in literature for the living or guiding of ‘great stories,’ are the messages about story which prevail in the current culture. Among them, “You write your own story,” “A hero defies the law for a greater good,” “One may choose an utterly new narrative to support each reinvention of Self (new gender, new relationship status, etc…),” “A story arc is the best way to lure someone down a sales funnel to a call-to-action button,” “To be great, a story should make a great movie,” or “The greatest stories get the most ‘likes’.” If they have absorbed such messages, parishioners will need pretty intensive ‘guidance’ in order to overcome the resultant pressure toward anti-greatness.
Have Conversations
I offer my perspective as an exercise in thinking critically about slogans, taglines, brand promises, mottoes, buzzwords, catch phrases, message spin, and other rhetorical devices borrowed from the sphere of marketing. I suppose my quibbles about the efficacy of the ‘great stories’ concept makes me seem ‘not a team player’. I write, however, to offer real conversation to the team who came up with this new game plan, and to their fans. Given that, as Josef Pieper said, “Conversation is the context of truth,” conversations like these might actually be helpful in guiding great, Catholic, virtuous, beautiful, joyous, influential, poignant, satisfying stories with deep integrity and coherence. Those, by the way, would be my starting point for a working definition of ‘great’ as it applies to a life story.
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