Category Archives: women

Mama You’ve Done Well

poetry, women, ,

My only quibble with this poem is that the author essentially gives credit to his mother for thinking him into being. What part she did have in being his first cause, it was by an act, involving two people, and not a thought. God is the one Who formed us in secret, in our inward parts, and we praise Him for that, and thank Him for our mothers and all the many things they did, and refrained from doing, to cooperate with God in giving us life. ❤

MAMA  YOU’VE DONE WELL

I was first, a thought in your precious mind,
Until I became a living cell.
In the darkness of your motherly womb,
It took me nine long months to be fully groomed.
And Mama, you’ve done well.

After all the suffering and pain
When you labored like hell,
You took me home with pride and joy
Knowing you’ve given birth to a healthy little boy.
And Mama, you’ve done well.

You comforted me when I cried,
And scolded me when I lied.
You didn’t yell.
You kept me warm,
In your loving arms,
And gave me enough to eat,
And taught me that I must never cheat.
And Mama, you’ve done well.

You took me to school
You didn’t want me to become a fool.
You taught me to count and spell.
You taught me a tree started as a seed,
And if I want to become great I must learn to read.
And Mama, you’ve done well.

You taught me about good and evil,
And that I must respect everyone,
Especially old people.
And I must pray to God,
And read my Bible.
And Mama, you’ve done well.

And now that I’m a man
Handsome and strong
With much to tell
I can honestly say
Each and everyday
Thank you Mama, you’ve done well.

-Erwin Jones, (21st century) Belize

Mother by Elizabeth Nourse

Joan was a perfectly practical person.

history, quotes, women, , , , ,

It’s been a long time since I read Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. When I came across the quote below it made me want to read it again — though I can see the good in reading a different biographer.

The Scholé Sisters presented again their idea of the 5×5 reading plan. You pick five topics or genres of books and try to read five books in each category. Personally, I won’t be officially joining the group challenge, but this organizing of my stacks does sound appealing. Already “Women” was one of the categories that immediately came to my mind, and a book about Joan of Arc would fit very nicely. I wish Chesterton had written one; this is from his book Orthodoxy:

“Joan of Arc was not stuck at the Cross Roads either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I come to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche — all that was even tolerable in either of them.

“I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy: the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that, and with this great addition: that she endured poverty while she admired it, whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret.

“And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that and, again, with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche for all we know was afraid of a cow.

“Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing.”

G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy

This busy trifling and frivolous hurry.

quotes, time, women, , , ,

“I know that I am treading on tender ground; but I cannot help thinking that the restless pains we take to cram up every little vacuity of life, by crowding one new thing upon another, rather creates a thirst for novelty than knowledge; and is but a well-disguised contrivance to keep us in after-life more effectually from conversing with ourselves.

“The care taken to prevent ennui is but a creditable plan for promoting self-ignorance. We run from one occupation to another (I speak of those arts to which little intellect is applied) with a view to lighten the pressure of time; above all to save us from our own thoughts; whereas, were we thrown a little more on our own hands, we might at last be driven, by way of something to do, to try to get acquainted with our own hearts; and though our being less absorbed by this busy trifling and frivolous hurry, might render us somewhat more sensible of the taedium of life, might not this very sensation tend to quicken our pursuit of a better?”

— Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1799