Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women without Children (Elizabeth Felicetti) - A Review
UNEXPECTED ABUNDANCE: The Fruitful Lives of Women without Children. By Elizabeth Felicetti. Grand Rapids: MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023. Xii + 163 pages.
If we read carefully through the
Bible, we will come across stories of "barren" women. That is, we
encounter stories about women who for some reason are unable to produce
children. In the ancient world that was a problem because it was important for
women to bear children. This was their duty in life. Therefore, we encounter Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, and others who seem unable to conceive. However,
in all of these cases, God made a provision for them to bear children who
proved important to the biblical story. Then and now, one solution to “barrenness”
was surrogacy. Sarah used Hagar, while Rachel and Leah also used surrogates to
expand the family. For a contemporary conversation about surrogacy, one might
turn to Grace Kao's book: My Body, Their Baby: A Progressive Christian
Vision for Surrogacy. Despite societal pressure for women to bear children,
is having a baby necessary for a woman to live a fulfilled life? Might a woman
live an abundant life of service that is made possible by not having children?
It's a question that requires careful exploration.
Elizabeth Felicetti’s Unexpected Abundance makes the case biblically and historically, as well as contemporarily,
that women can live fruitful lives without children. She does so from personal
experience. Felicetti is an Episcopal priest who tried for a decade to conceive
but did not have a child. What she offers here is an invitation to look at the
many women in Scripture and through history who lived abundant lives and made
great contributions to the work of God in the world. In this book, Felicetti
essentially seeks to reclaim the word "barren." She does this by
looking at the desert, which at first glance might seem barren, that is it
might seem to be lifeless, but is full of life. What we have here is a book
written by a woman who wanted to have children but ended up not having
children. While she could have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceive, in
the end, she chose not to go that route. This was her choice, understanding
that other women might make other choices. What Felicetti seeks to do in this
book is offer women without children (and really men as well) a word of
encouragement. She wants them to know, whether by choice or not, one can
experience extraordinary abundance without producing children.
In the course of Felicetti's book, Extraordinary
Abundance, we encounter the stories of biblical women such as Hannah and
Rachel, as well as women like Mary and Martha. While Hannah and Rachel are
given sons, we’re never told of the marital status of the sisters Mary and
Martha or whether they had children, but the silence of scripture invites us to
ponder the question. Along the way, we also encounter stories of medieval
mystics, English religious reformers, composers, activists, medical
professionals, and clergy. Each of the women discussed never had children but
they made extraordinary contributions to the wider world.
Felicetti begins her book by
meditating on the fruitfulness of the desert as a way of reclaiming the word
barren (Chapter 1). She tells us that she grew up in Arizona, where the “desert
burned into my soul.” She suggests that people who think of deserts as being
lifeless haven’t spent any time in them. As for women without children, they may be
called barren, but that doesn’t mean they are without life.
With that meditation on the desert
as a foundation, in Chapter 2, Felicetti turns to discuss the lives of “Barren
Old Testament Matriarchs.” Instead of focusing on Sarah and Rachel, Felicetti
introduces us to Moses' sister Miriam, a prophet and worship leader. She lifts
up Deborah, a judge and warrior, who served as a leader of the people of Israel
in time of war. There's also Esther, who risked her life for her people. Then
there’s Huldah the prophet who interpreted Scripture for Josiah. Yes, she was
the one Josiah turned to after the high priest discovered what many believe to
be Deuteronomy. Felicetti writes that "these childless women were warriors
and prophets, saviors and poets, matriarchs and liturgists. Yet women in church
pews have heard and continue to hear more about biblical women as mothers or
women yearning to be mothers. Women can be all of these things" (p. 33).
Though these women discussed do not appear to have children, they too are
matriarchs of the faith.
In Chapter 3, we move from the Old
Testament to the New Testament. Here Felicetti reminds us that Jesus didn’t
have children (despite the tale spun by Dan Brown in the DaVinci Code).
Indeed, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus tells the woman who shouted at him that the
womb that bore Jesus was blessed, that the ones who are blessed are the ones
who hear the Word of God and obey it. With that in mind, Felicetti emphasizes
chosen families over biological ones. She begins with the story of Mary and
Martha, whom she speaks of as being wise leaders and prophets. There is also
the Samaritan woman at the well who is an evangelist. The way that story is told
suggests that this woman might have been caught in a series of levirate
marriages. I had never thought of that possibility, but it makes complete
sense. Here is a woman forced into a series of marriages to produce a child,
but that doesn’t happen. Yet, because of her encounter with Jesus, she becomes
an evangelist. Finally, there is Mary
Magdalene, an evangelist and apostle. Each of these women does not appear to
have children, and yet they were generate in life without bearing children.
We move from the biblical stories
to church history in chapters four and five. These chapters and the ones that
follow focus on specific women and their vocations. Chapter 4 introduces us to several
medieval mystics and writers including Clare of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, and
Catherine of Siena. She says of these
women that “in a time period when enormous pressure was exerted to marry and
procreate, these women chose to serve God by prayer, Christian leadership, and
writing, and their fruits have come down to us in ways they may not have had
they acquiesced to a more traditional path” (p. 58). After she lifts up the
lives and influences of these medieval mystics whose writings and life stories
continue to influence modern Christians, she spends Chapter 5 exploring the
lives of two English religious reformers, Queen Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey,
who was queen for nine days and later was executed. Both women played important
roles in the English Reformation. It's worth remembering here that Felicetti is
an Episcopal priest, but these women who for different reasons did not bear
children have left an important legacy.
After taking up these stories from
history that focus on mystical writers and religious reformers, she turns to a
specific vocation, that of composer. Interestingly she chooses to lift up one
from the medieval world and one from the modern world (Chapter 6). These two
composers are Hildegard of Bingen and Dolly Parton (yes Dolly Parton, the
mother to 3000 songs). Her discussion of Dolly Parton may surprise many
readers, but also be of great interest. Felicetti writes that "both
powerful women had to contend with sexism yet created significant fruit despite
not having children" (p. 82). From these two composers, we move in Chapter
7 to three activists: Sister Helen Prejean—the advocate against the death
penalty known from the depiction of her in Dead Men Walking —along with Rosa
Parks and Dorothea Dix. Parks is, of course, a civil rights icon, while Dix is
known for her work addressing the issue of America's mental institutions. Chapter
8 introduces us to several childless medical professionals. These include the
Blackwell sisters who were among the first women to earn medical degrees and
become physicians. Then there is Florence Nightingale. These women were
pioneers in health care and made a difference without having children. Finally,
in Chapter 9, Felicetti introduces us to several childless women clergy. Being that
she is an Episcopalian, she chose to focus on three Anglican women who were
pioneers as clergy., These include Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was the first
Anglican woman to be ordained. While that largely occurred because there was a
shortage of priests in China during World War II, and her ordination was considered
to be irregular, she is honored as the first to be ordained. The reason she was
ordained at the time was due to her faithfulness in the face of adversity. The
second woman is Pauli Murray, an African-American woman, who began her work as
an activist before becoming one of the first women ordained as an Episcopal
priest. Finally, Felicetti introduces us to Barbara Harris, the first woman
ordained as a bishop within the Episcopal church. Again, all three women were
childless and yet they served their church fully.
Felicetti began this attempt to
reclaim the word barren by lifting up in Chapter 1 the often-invisible
liveliness of the desert. She brings Unexpected Abundance to a close in
Chapter 10 by returning to the desert. then the final chapter (10), Felicetti
takes us back to the desert, reminding us again of the fruitfulness of what
might appear at first glance to be barren (lifeless). Thus, she concludes, speaking
of the desert, “If this fruitful, fierce landscape is ‘barren,’ then I proudly
claim that title” (p. 142).
Life is complicated. Yet, whatever the
situation in life we find ourselves in, we can be fruitful. As the reviewer of
this book, I am a married straight male who, with my spouse, produced one son.
Whether he marries and his children is not yet known. I approached this book
with an openness, acknowledging that people make different choices. When it
comes to having children, not having a child does not mean that one’s life is
not fruitful. In fact, the stories revealed here in Extraordinary Abundance suggest
that women can lead fruitful lives without having children. They may, as
Elizabeth Felicetti, be barren, but they are not lifeless. So, whether we have
children or not we can lead abundant and fruitful lives, whatever our vocation.
Thus, in her book Extraordinary Abundance, the Rev. Elizabeth Felicetti,
the rector of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, invites us to
embrace our situation in life and live that life to its fullness.
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