How I Learned to Let God Find Me in the Good Times and the Bad: A Spiritual Memoir

By Jan Weel

What do you do when God disappears off your radar just when you need him most and when the advice of even your wisest friends no longer helps? This was the question Jan Weel faced thirty-four years ago as a young Christian woman of thirty-five.

Jan put many tough questions to her God. Over the next seventeen months, he answered each one of them in amazing and unexpected ways and taught her several tools she could use for her ongoing journey with him. Twelve years later, Jan faced a more prolonged, exacting trial. These same answers and tools enabled her not only to survive it but to thrive in its midst. She emerged even more alive, loving, anchored, joyful, free, strong, and faith filled.

Jans questions may be yours too. This book helps Christians who are looking urgently to connect or reconnect with someone bigger than themselves in order to find solid, actionable answers to daunting life problems or challenges. You learn that

the key to letting God find you in times of crisis is to learn how to enter directly into Gods presence and, once there, to experience firsthand for yourself his love
God is hiding right smack in the middle of whatever situation you might be; experiencing, not somewhere outside of it
God wants to find you far more than you want to find him
there are specific steps you can take to let God find you
there are amazing benefits that ensue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973621126

Jan Weel

Jan Weel has guided and accompanied Christian women on their spiritual journeys for twenty-six years. Jan holds a B.A. from Durham University, England, 1969, and a Diploma in Early Childhood Education, with Distinction, from the London Montessori Centre, England, 1984. She has also received intensive training in Christian spiritual formation and is a participant in the Institute of Christian Formation, a Roman Catholic Benedictine program.

Book preview

Part 1:

The Good Times

ONE

Early Years

I came into the world in 1948—at a challenging time, spiritually speaking. Three years before my birth, the spiritual forces of life, truth, faith, love, peace, freedom, courage and kindness had finally brought freedom from Adolf Hitler’s tyranny. Yet this daunting episode in human history had left behind new problems for human beings.

World War II had inevitably unleashed its own defining spiritual forces, some for the very good and some for the very bad. Although there were endless stories of individual courage and nobility in the face of disaster, the war had left in its wake multitudes of human beings enveloped in unspeakable sorrows of grief and bearing the deep wounds—psychological, spiritual, physical, and emotional—that arise when human beings hate, betray and kill each other.

The world into which I came, therefore, was distinctly unsettled and still reeling from the consequences of a brutal war.

Two particularly horrific events had forever left their mark on the human soul: the deliberate murder of millions of Jews, and the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The first event had laid bare the potential for repugnant evil that exists in the hearts of all human beings. The second had propelled human suffering to new extremes. Together, they unmasked for all to see the sinister barbarism that can overtake the human heart. Humanity had become more thoroughly inhuman.

Very close to the time of my birth, two events of manifestly spiritual significance occurred. The first occurred just five weeks before I was born when an assassin’s bullet extinguished one of the world’s most powerful and convincing spiritual lights, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s life had demonstrated a key spiritual truth: namely that when truth and love join together (satyagraha), they have the power to effect radical political and economic change for the better amongst men and women. This truth, in fact, is one that our current world would do well to learn again.

The second event occurred just nine weeks after I was born: the birth of the state of Israel. The ancient prophecy of the Judeo-Christian scriptures became a tangible reality in this very world in which we all live out our earthly lives. Visceral birth pangs quickly enveloped the fledgling state, however, the manifestations of which remain in one form or another even as I write.

Thankfully, in the years immediately following the Second World War, signs of a positive and life-giving spirituality began to emerge out of the dark void. One could now hear clearly the voices of those men and women who knew how to stand still long enough to hear a special Voice rising above the chaos. It was the voice of the One who is able to set things right in the hearts of children, men and women; the one who speaks to you and me most forcefully in times of devastation and desolation—if we become still enough to listen.

In the year that I was born, four people were able to hear this voice clearly. As a result, they set out on a mission to help heal the destructive influences at work in human hearts that had helped to birth cruelty, hate, war and murder.

Billy Graham began his worldwide ministry of Christian evangelization and Kathryn Khulman her worldwide Christian ministry of healing. The Voice also called a young Roman Catholic nun in India to love and serve the most ‘discarded’ souls of the world. Her mission was to return to them their most basic, God-given human dignity. This woman would become known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Then, amid the aftermath of anguish, cynicism and despair produced by the war, a fourth person heard the voice of Life and Love calling out to him. He responded. His name was Thomas Merton, a young, unknown Roman Catholic monk. Through the pages of his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, ¹ Merton’s voice called out to any who would listen. As it happened, millions would. The Seven Storey Mountain told the story of a different kind of war, a war fought not between people or nations but inside our own human heart, the war between good and evil.

Convincing because it was profoundly human, The Seven Storey Mountain testified to the fact that there was and is an alternative to despair, hatred and war. It offered men and women a new reality: an opportunity to encounter authentic life and liberty and, in this way, to recapture genuine dignity and meaning for their lives.

Merton demonstrated that the way to do this was to teach ourselves how to stay still long enough, and to stop our incessant talking and endless thinking and analyzing long enough, so that we could enter fully and directly into an amazing loving and healing Presence: the presence of the Person who loves everyone, saints and sinners alike, without conditions and who lives inside the hearts of each one of us.

Thomas Merton helped us understand that only in the company of this presence can we finally see clearly what brings us death and what brings us life; because this Presence is, in fact, ‘no-strings-attached’, unconditional Love. And when we are able to experience this kind of warm, non-judgmental love, we discover inside us a specific kind of courage that otherwise we might have a very hard time getting hold of: the courage to look inside our own hearts—not someone else’s!

For the first time we can hear—really hear—the one who created us, speak to us.

Millions took note and listened. Like Billy Graham, Kathryn Khulman and Mother Teresa, Merton would help to re-frame and fundamentally transform the destructive spiritual energies that were rampant in the world into which I was born.

I was just seven months old when Thomas Merton’s book hit the bookstores and libraries around the world. Some thirty-four years later, Merton’s book would fundamentally re-shape me too.

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Earliest Memories

My first childhood memory is of the christening party of one of my three siblings which took place when I was three or four years old. I vividly remember eating ravenously of what Barbadians called ‘soda biscuits’ (lightly salted crackers), and drinking just as freely of a popular, cherry-flavored fizzy drink. Lost in a sea of cousins, aunts, uncles, Anglican clergymen and nuns I was blissfully aware that I would be able to go unobserved by adults and babysitters long enough to devour these goodies in unreasonable quantities.

There are other memories. For example, the large annual Christmas parties that we attended with our parents and that were hosted by the relatives of my mother who owned sugar plantations. Santa Claus would arrive in the late afternoon seated in a donkey-cart and ringing his bell. Santa responded merrily to the cheers and screams of hordes of delighted and excited children, at the same time attempting to comfort the children who were howling in terror at the mere sight of him.

I was one of the children for whom the sight of Santa aroused mild terror!

As a very small child, I discovered the bliss of gardening. I developed a morning ritual of getting up around the same time as my father, about five o’clock. He would make a pot of tea and then pour a cup for me with a tiny bit of milk and sugar in it. It turned out that I could not digest milk so I was allowed to drink weak tea in the mornings. Then my father would pour another cup of tea for my mother and put it on a tray. On my mother’s tray my father would also place an exquisite tea rose, often pink or salmon-pink, resting it in a slim silver vase. He had grown these roses himself and would pick one for my mother the same morning, fresh from our garden.

Once my father had gone upstairs with my mother’s tray I would rapidly disappear outside, tea in hand, to examine the large, dripstone pots in which I had been allowed to sow tiny zinnia seeds. I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I wanted to see whether the seeds had sprouted overnight as I slept or whether the buds of the day before had turned into flowers!

I hugely enjoyed observing this progression of nature from seed to plant to blossom to flower. This was, in fact, my very first participation as a very small child in the celebration of life and natural beauty. Even today, in my seventy-first year of life, the thrill of observing the progression of life in any form, and of imbibing the beauty of nature, remains just as vibrant.

Since my father was an Anglican priest, many vivid childhood memories revolve around the main seasons of the Christian year: Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. Each season has its own memories.

Christmas, however, was and remains my favourite time of the Christian year. Looking back through the eyes of an adult spirituality, I can see that the fact of God’s becoming an ordinary human being like me has always held a monumental appeal for me.

It goes without saying that for followers of Jesus like me there would be no good news without Christ’s resurrection at Easter; yet the more spectacular miracle for me is that God took the form of a human being just like me. My reasoning is that the resurrection was well within God’s ability to do simply because He was God and has the power to do anything He desires. But for the Creator God to have become human like you and me and to have lived that humanity authentically, has always seemed to me to have required of God something far greater and more inexplicable.

It was not surprising, then, that some thirty years later, it would be the re-discovery of God’s raw humanity in the person of Jesus Christ that affected me profoundly and helped to underscore my radical, life-changing spiritual conversion (see Chapter Three).

Then there is the memory of the annual Toy Service for children held a few days before Christmas. This memory still beguiles me.

It was the Toy Service that heralded the start of our family’s Christmas celebrations. It was held around four-thirty in the afternoon in the large Anglican Cathedral of St. Michael, in the capital city of Bridgetown. Children were asked to bring a toy of their own to give to children who otherwise might not receive a gift for Christmas.

The idea of giving a treasured toy to other children was itself a gift to our children’s souls. I vividly remember the genuine pleasure it afforded me even as a very small child. Sharing with others is one of the great privileges of life, a lesson that my parents passed on to me and my siblings from our earliest days. They did so chiefly by daily example but also, when necessary, with a little kindergarten-style prodding thrown in! It was not easy to give away a favourite toy, but we quickly experienced the real joy that doing so brought with it.

The beauty of the Toy Service, both physical and spiritual, left an indelible mark on my very early consciousness. Floral blooms of poinsettia and other exquisite flowers, placed amidst the serene and peaceful glow of burning white candles, adorned the main altar; while to the left of the nave a real Christmas tree sparkled with tiny lights. The result was a special ‘magic’, reflective of the life-giving spirit of Christmas.

Even today, the recollection of the sheer beauty of this Service greatly influences the way I celebrate and experience Christmas.

The exquisite sacred music of the Cathedral choir and organ brought to life for the overflow congregation the essential holiness of Christmas. The magnificent pipe-organ, together with the skill of the choir master and the expertly trained voices of the boys and men, produced an exhilarating musical experience that spoke of profound life and joy and of the One at the center of it all!

The service began with the choir and clergy processing down the long nave of the Cathedral to the singing of the well-loved carol, Once in Royal David’s City. The chosen readings from the scriptures were the familiar, well-worn passages of old: the Old Testament prophecies, the account of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, the sharing of the news with Elizabeth, the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the birth of Christ in the manger and, finally, the exquisite opening words of the gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…

John 1:1 KJV

We would all kneel at the words:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…

John 1:14 KJV

How could one do otherwise? The God of all Creation had become a human person just like me—hard to believe but true nevertheless!

At the end of the Toy Service, our family would return home for an informal gathering of cousins, aunts, uncles and godparents. My father would joyously dispense his duties as chief barman and butler. His ‘special’ for the adults was a rum and ginger cocktail and, for the children, usually lemonade made with fresh limes and brown sugar.

Once drinks had been seen to, my father would then produce his famous ‘ham-cutters’. These were freshly-baked buns (delivered by our bread-man on his cart at the break of dawn that same morning), spread lightly with butter and filled with thin slices of cured ham, a Christmas gift from plantation relatives of my mother. The finishing touch would be mustard and mayonnaise and, as an extra for the adults, a dollop of the famous Barbados hot-pepper sauce!

My charismatic and jolly father exuded the joy and depth of character that comes from one who enjoys a deep and genuine intimacy with the Christ. With him presiding over a gathering there was never a merrier Christmas party.

The real joy for our family—and the one enjoyed by all our guests—had been derived from the worship of the Christ child at the service before, and by the sharing of our gifts with other children. These two things underscored for us the truly good news that God Almighty had become Emmanuel, God-alongside-of-us.

Such Christmas gifts cannot be wrapped in paper or tied with ribbons. They are ‘opened’ deep within one’s heart.

Over the seventy years of my life these simple, timeless joys of a family Christmas in Barbados have never left me. In fact, they deepen with the passing of time!

Another celebration followed one week after Christmas day, early on the night of New Year’s Eve. My parents invited some of our various uncles and aunts to stop by for a brief New Year greeting. All our visitors were gone within an hour, their ultimate destination being a glamorous dinner followed by ballroom-dancing, fireworks, whistle-blowing, party hats and champagne at midnight.

The destination of my parents and our family, however, was less glamorous but unquestionably more life-giving: the New Year Midnight Mass for my parents and bed for us children! The house quickly became quiet as my parents put us four children to bed for the night. My father retired to the silence and solitude of his study to prepare prayerfully for the celebration of the midnight mass, and my mother retired gratefully to her bed for a few hours of much needed rest before the Mass.

Holy Week in our house is another specially cherished memory. It was a week both of special reverence and heightened anticipation. Even as a very small child, I was able to drink in the tangible atmosphere of holiness that prevailed. In my child’s soul and spirit I knew that something and Someone very special was being revered and honoured.

Maundy Thursday at St. Paul’s, the large city church of my childhood where my father was priest-in-charge, also remains vividly embedded in my mind, heart and spirit. I remember as if yesterday the pregnant silence that enveloped the church on this very holy day. This kind of silence spoke louder than any words. It spoke of beauty, love, freedom, truth, peace and life—the beauty, love, freedom, truth, peace and life of the King whose sufferings on our behalf we had come to church to honour.

Banks of tiny flowers of pastel blues and pinks adorned the side-altar. Interspersed among them were delicate blooms of white and ivory and tiny buds of pale green. Lilies, tube roses, pink anthuriums and sprays of tiny, baby-pink blossoms that grew on a vine completed the floral array, transforming the altar into a place of understated yet vibrant beauty and gentle, unassuming peace. The subdued glow of cream candles placed among the blooms completed the final effect.

This unique atmosphere of silence and beauty made one want to stop and reflect on the meaning of this day, the day before that Friday two thousand years ago when the world lost its centre and went dark.

In this church on this day the Christ’s passion and death somehow became real. No doubt this explained the unceasing flow of hundreds of worshippers and visitors who entered the church, starting from the hour of sunrise to the hour of sundown.

In fact, they came so that they might experience the Presence that filled and, very gently but with great majesty, dominated the building!

I also remember my small sister, aged about four, executing perfectly a task that my father allowed her to perform every Maundy Thursday under his watchful eye. With her dark brown eyes twinkling and her head of black curls bobbing, she would approach the altar with all the reverence she could muster, blowing out any candles that had burned low. As Anglo-Catholics, we had been taught from infancy to genuflect before what for us is the real Presence of Christ in the reserved Blessed Sacrament; and my little sister was more than adept at genuflecting!

The next day, Good Friday, remains another strong memory. The annual Three Hours Service of Devotion was, in fact, my first formal exposure to silent prayer—first as an infant and then as a young child. It is in silence that the human heart can be freed finally of much of its customary mental clutter and inner noise and in this way can begin to enter more directly into God’s Presence.

I retain to this day vivid memories of my extremely busy mother seeking any available opportunity during the church’s high seasons and holidays for a time of quiet spent in God’s presence. The Three Hours Service on Good Friday was one such opportunity. When we children were still too young to take part she would get someone to look after us so that she could benefit from at least one of the Hours of silent devotion spent alone in the presence of Christ.

When I became the mother of two very active children and the wife of a very busy husband, I could relate more fully to my mother’s needs. In fact, it is now my own life’s work to teach busy, hardworking women—single, married, young and old—how to make time in their lives for solitude and quiet in the Lord’s healing presence.

This early exposure to times of silence before the Lord would hold me in extremely good stead later on in my adult life when, at the age of thirty-five, I experienced a dark night of the soul (see Chapter Four).

When I was three or four, my parents sent me to an Anglican School, St. Gabriel’s, run by the sisters of the Order of Jesus the Good Shepherd. The strong Christian values that I imbibed daily from my parents were lovingly reinforced by the sisters at St. Gabriel’s.

Then, at the age of nine, I entered a much larger grammar school for girls, Queen’s College, and remained there until the age of eighteen when I was accepted into the University of Durham in England.

Teenage and Young Adulthood

When I was thirteen, my father was appointed priest-in-charge of St. Philip’s parish church.

My family left the city of Bridgetown where I was born and moved to the much larger parish of St. Philip. It was here that I progressed into young adulthood.

My academic studies first for the Ordinary Level and then for the Advanced Level of the Oxford and Cambridge Examining Boards accounted for most of my time. There was still just enough time, however, for my social life to bloom. It soon included the inevitable ‘boyfriend’ as well as private dances. Then, when I was seventeen, I obtained my much anticipated ticket to freedom, my driver’s license!

A significant part of our education, first as children and then as teenagers, took place at our dinner table. My parents, most often my father, would casually bring up a wide variety of topics for discussion. There would be much interesting food for thought as well as a good deal of laughter. Both my mother and father had independent minds and encouraged us children to form our own opinions and never be hesitant to voice them, provided we did so in a way that was courteous and respectful of divergent opinions.

As we matured into teenaged life, these dinner discussions would continue after dinner on our veranda, accompanied by desert and a hot beverage. These chats could last for another hour or longer depending on everyone’s interest in the topic at hand or whether we had homework to finish—or how sleepy we were!

There was another reason that dinner was always entertaining: namely, my father’s voluntary and zealously guarded role as dishwasher.

The routine was always the same. Once the last person had finished the main course, my father would very cheerfully excuse himself from the table and begin to ask everyone to pass him their used plates and cutlery. At this point my mother would interject with: ‘Now, Dinx, (my mother’s nickname for my father) you are not to do the washing up. Just take the dishes to the kitchen and leave them for me, please.’

At this moment, my father would go into his ‘clown’ mode. He would wink at the assorted diners (his own children and sometimes a selection of young cousins as well) and say to my mother: ‘Don’t worry; I’m just making room on the table for desert, you see.’ My mother would then respond predictably: ‘Oh, dear, what can I do with him?’

We all knew exactly what would take place once my father had arrived in the kitchen. He would start the washing-up right away and then, right after we had all finished desert, the drying up. It was not uncommon to catch sight of him using the corner of his (clean) shirt if the dish towels had become saturated!

My father’s innocent mischief and sneaky maneuvers, performed in the manner that only he could, had great appeal for all who watched. Soon, the merriment at our dinner table would reach its high point as we listened to the inevitable clatter of my father accidentally, but fairly routinely, dropping a plate on the floor. This would be followed immediately by his cheerful voice calling out: ‘Oh, that’s just a saucer, Joe Thomas!’

‘Joe Thomas’ was the name my father used to address anyone, male or female, young or old, who was known intimately to him. This could become confusing if several Jo Thomas-es—of both genders—happened to be present at the same time. But in a world full of competing distractions, my father always knew how to get people’s attention.

Before we knew it, my father would have completed his washing up and would have brought out to the dinner table our family’s standard desert, a slice of my mother’s very popular home-made sponge cake topped with a slice of peach and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Naturally, as we got older, we realized that there was a method to our father’s madness. He was teaching his young audience the critical lesson of never thinking oneself too highly educated or too grand to perform the more menial tasks of life, and of always being ready to give of oneself cheerfully to whatever a situation might demand.

These were the values that my father embodied and came to represent not only to family and close friends but to the thousands of people who crossed his path in his thirty-seven years of priestly ministry.

Having lived several lives in one, my father died suddenly of an aneurism when he was almost sixty-one.

My Father

My father was intellectually gifted and very well educated. After graduating with an M.A. in Theology, he started studying for a Doctorate of Divinity; but due to many pressing demands on his time, he never completed it.

As I have matured in my own journey with the Christ, I recognize that it was my parents’ lived example that was responsible for introducing me to the world of supernatural Christian faith. Thanks to their example, we children experienced that world as being very real. This world of supernatural faith was, moreover, stimulating, exciting and very freeing. As a result, it made one want to follow the Person who was its Source.

Like all leaders who exercise the courage of their convictions, my father had his enemies. He never allowed this, however, to bother him in the slightest. As an intelligent follower and brother of the Christ, he understood well the foibles and frailty of human nature and treated friend and foe alike with equal love, grace, patience, kindness, respect and good cheer.

There were four things he would never tolerate: the deliberate falsification of the truth; the blaspheming of the Lord’s name; the use of obscene language; any form of bullying. My father did not hesitate to reprimand anyone who engaged in any of these practices, especially if that person occupied a position of leadership or trust. He knew that these behaviors severely undermined the human dignity of people who, after all, have been created in God’s image, and that they were therefore deeply grievous to God and man.

When he started his ministry as a young curate of a small city church, my father had determined from the outset to end the practice of racial and class segregation in church congregations that was typical in Barbados in that era. And he was perfectly prepared for the inevitable outcry from those who felt threatened.

Twenty-four years later, as rector of the large parish church of St. Philip, he likewise put an immediate end to the practice of physically separating the boys and girls from the Reform Schools from the main body of worshippers. Instead of assigning them to the upstairs balcony as had been the custom he put them to sit downstairs at the very centre of the main congregation.

Every week my father visited the farm run by the boys at the Reform School. In what turned out to be the last year of his life, he was thrilled to be able to take with him on these visits our toddler daughter, his only grandchild at the time. Our little daughter could hardly wait for the next drive with her granddad to visit the boys, the cows and the chickens!

One of my most vivid early childhood memories revolves around my father’s half-hour radio services, broadcast live at six o’clock every Monday morning. On these Monday mornings I would bid him good-bye around 5.15 a.m. as he made his way to the recording studio, often using a bicycle to get some exercise and save on gasoline. Half an hour later, I would run into the living room to join my mother, just in time to hear my father’s familiar voice on the radio announcing: ‘We begin with the hymn….’ Often it would be one of his favorites: Rejoice, the Lord Is King, Glorious things of Thee are spoken (sung also at his ordination to the diaconate and again at his funeral) or Fight the good Fight. At the conclusion of the opening hymn, my father would preach a short sermon—often ending it, as he also ended his church sermons, with one of his most beloved sayings of Jesus:

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 7:21 KJV

Or:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.

Matthew 5:16 KJV

A final hymn, followed by a blessing from my father, concluded the broadcast.

My mother never missed these broadcasts. Week in and week out for thirty-five years she seemed to draw strength and inspiration from them for the week ahead. It must have been painful indeed for her to hear my father’s voice on the first Monday morning following his death. He had, in fact, recorded what would be his final broadcast on the same morning of the afternoon that Christ called him home.

It did not take long for my father to positively impact people. Four years before my father’s death, my Norwegian father-in-law, a former naval Commander, had met him for the first and, as it would turn out, the only time. They were able to spend a few hours together in England. After my father’s death, my father-in-law told me that if people worldwide could have met and listened to my father there would have been few agnostics left.

Similarly, a well-known British journalist had his first and only opportunity to hear my father preach in person at St. Philip’s parish church. In his regular magazine column, the journalist expressed an opinion similar to my father-in-law’s. If people in England, he wrote, had been able to meet my father in person or listen to his sermons, people throughout that country would have been able to encounter the Lord for themselves.

Even though these men’s acquaintances with my father had been fleeting, they were both profoundly impacted.

These men had met my father at a time when his health was already seriously compromised by heart disease. He was not, therefore, quite as powerful or magnetic as he had been in his younger days, a fact that my mother would often point out to us children. Yet I suspect that in the case of those who genuinely try to follow Christ, ill-health and advancing age do not diminish, but indeed often heighten, their daily surrender to the Lord. This enables others to see even more clearly the bright light of Christ shining through their soul and spirit, and to experience that special anointing of a human creature who has made it his life’s endeavor to live and walk in step with his God.

My Mother

Over her almost ninety-eight years of life, my mother provided me with an ongoing example of the importance of claiming God’s help when times were hard and thanking Him when times were good. She also taught me how to remain healthy simply by living according to the Lord’s principles. My mother had a deep belief not just in God’s ability but in His willingness to protect her physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Whenever she faced a challenge in her life she would tell us: ‘God has never let me down and He is not going to start now’. And she would then proceed to walk her talk!

Due to financial hard times, my mother had been forced to leave school in her early teens. In later years, she would express her regret at not having been as well educated as her own children. She seemed to think that this had been a barrier between her and us. Although I can appreciate her concern, I have often reflected on the fact that if I had to choose between a parent who had spiritual intelligence and one who had been academically well trained I would choose the former without hesitation every time.

My mother’s lack of opportunity to further her own education made her a very strong proponent of education for women. She felt that women, even more than men, needed the