I am a Shelter for Souls?
What does it mean to be a Spouse?
Like many young brides, I welcomed the opportunity to create a more beautiful space when I married a man with a wagon wheel couch and a crate style dinette. It’s fun to decorate and to make spaces for work, play and rest. Especially during those (long) years that I sat nursing an infant and watching my toddlers play, I was constantly re-decorating the room in my mind for health, safety and aesthetic reasons.
But it can become a mania, too. Can’t it?
And yet, by the time we move out of the home, perhaps years later, we are only too aware of the many deficits of the abode. We know which knobs are loose, which drains clog easily and the exact right way to run the appliances so they don’t break. We can hardly wait to move. The shelter that we invested so much creativity into devolves in our memories to a list of projects.
Until we move. Each time I have walked out and shut the door behind me, driving off to a new shelter, I have cried. And each child who has grown and flown the nest leaves my heart in tatters.
As I did to my own mother before me, and hers before that. A long line of homes that we leave, to embrace a new home. The mother’s heart is the guardian of those memories. The shelter she provides is in her soul. And the homes we create are for one another.
When Edith Stein decided to pursue a semester of graduate work in Gottingen, with Dr. Edmund Husserl, her mother agreed, but was clearly dreading her departure. At the time, Edith assured her it was only a semester. But, as she recalled later, both mother and daughter knew in their hearts it would likely be a permanent move. She would have to leave the nest and fly solo to fulfill her vocation.
Frau Stein surely cried when Edith left.
There is a light that shines in a mother’s eyes when she sees her adult children after a long absence. It shines from deep within. And we can, and do, create space for the souls of friends, of colleagues, of employees, of children. Women have a unique capacity for creating a warm and inviting place where others may enter in and find rest.
Edith Stein calls this, “being a shelter for souls.”
The simple act of offering a gentle smile, a peaceful demeanor, a listening ear, a place to rest, is motherhood, if only for a few minutes. The recipients know they've touched upon a secret, the divine Secret, within. This is a beautiful reality— creating a safe space where our beloved friends and family can unfold.
The light of God radiates through a woman when she embraces spiritual maternity. We can even see it in a prophetic sense, that we create on earth this safe space for one another. As souls draw strength, the motherly heart rejoices.
Stein experienced this shelter in her home, and later lived it as the teacher in a high school for girls. Dr. Stein taught her students to carry out the sometimes monotonous and even difficult tasks of daily life. And, with her entry into Carmel, and even in her martyrdom, she continually was a witness to the power of love to transform lives.
This is part of the unique contribution that we can make as women in the "public arena," as Stein says. At home or in the office, women welcome and nurture the souls entrusted to us. The secret of providing shelter is to remember that our eternal home is the one each one of us is called to. Heaven is our true home, and the shelter we find on earth is just a foretaste of that truth.