After a quick debrief on their teaching experience this summer, Ante and Oliver share why they have picked this topic at this point in the year, how their mothers have shaped them in their childhood, how we need to give due to the two conflicting archetypes of motherhood, why some contemporary feminists are critical of the burdens of motherhood, how it is difficult to grasp the amount of self-sacrifice and resilience that mothers have, whether it is true that mothers have a harder time of letting go of control than fathers, only to conclude with a poem of praise from the book of Proverbs.
EPISODE QUOTE
One of the frequent tropes in literature is the idea that "the mother must be overcome because her suffocating embrace is the means of her manipulation. Her presence swells and overwhelms and inhales all the oxygen an independent self needs to breathe. She denies our autonomy with kisses; she steals our self-reliance with hugs. She manages to make us hate ourselves for resenting her, which makes us all the more resentful.... Fathers you can leave, but the reach of mothers transcends geography and chronology. Leaving home and growing up never seems to be enough. Independence is the affront mothers cannot countenance. We saw and saw and saw on this umbilical-cord-cum-tether, frantic to unhook, to achieve ourselves, our independence, only to feel the cord snap taut again, surprised to find it’s reeling us in." (Smith, 106-107).
EPISODE MATERIAL
Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine
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In this podcast, we engage in free-ranging conversations on life, faith, philosophy, ethics, relationships, culture, experience, and all matters existential. And as the title of the show points out, we approach these things "in the middle of things," that is, by grabbing hold of them unsystematically and provisionally. Concerning "about us," we are friends and verbal sparring partners who also happen to be colleagues at Andrews University. - Oliver Glanz and Ante Jerončič
