Charlotte Ostermann

I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity.  Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!

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SAW 16: Art vs Intellect

How ‘intellectual’ are you, and how do you know?

Well, I’m highly ‘intellectual,’ but not so ‘academic,’ or ‘scientific,’ or even so ‘smart.’ I know that I relish the life of the mind, and that I am exercising and applying myself to the use of my mind for enjoyment and contemplation of God. To me, that’s the life of the mind, as taught in A.E. Sertillange’s book, The Intellectual Life, which I’m always recommending.

What is your greatest intellectual weakness (memory, mathematics, history, language, science…use whatever categories make sense to you) and how do you know?

My greatest intellectual weakness is to read for agreement with my own ideas rather than to engage fully with the ideas of others. I know from experience, and from comparing myself to the ‘excellent reader’ mentioned in C.S. Lewis’ An Experiment in Criticism.

What type of learner are you? How do you know?

I learn both visually and verbally. I’ve read about learning styles and see myself described, and also just observed. Aural instruction is hard for me, and I’m not strong in kinesthetic awareness. If I watch you do something, I try to put that visual content into words to ‘lock in’ the understanding. If I read words, I often imagine or sketch visual representations to secure the content with relationships, and visual elements, metaphors, or connections.

What are your credentials?

I don’t have much in the way of formal credentials – a BS in Finance, the ABI certificate, work and consulting and speaking experience. Publications are a form of credential, and also personal recommendations from people who know me testify to my ‘believability’ (credential, credo, credibility).

Describe any creative experience you have had.

Ooohh…my creative experience! Sketching at the zoo, quilting, making stationery, writing poems and songs and stories, doodling, sculpting a head/face, playing with clay, creating new talks and presentations, conveying ideas through Powerpoint and brochures and posters, singing, being a ‘creative philanthropist’ on a small scale,’ creating gifts and letters full of surprises, designing events large and small, writing puppet show scripts, cooking, home-making, decorating and re-arranging. I’ve often been creative on the job, with problem solving, vision planning, and as a teacher.

Have you had any formal training in the arts?

Nope. Well, there was a junior high choir teacher. Art classes were for kids who seemed to have art skills already. Woodshop was off limits to girls. An experienced sculptor helped with the bust I sculpted, teaching our class about facial proportions and such along the way.

How/why are ‘intellectuals’ in danger of compromising their faith, or spiritual lives?

Those who excel at the life of the mind may forget how much they need to be connected to earthy reality – ground, place, nature, mess, real people, food, their own senses, etc… . Mental concepts are so much neater and less discomfiting that one is tempted to escape to a mostly-mental life if one can.

How/why are ‘artists’ in danger of compromising their faith or spiritual lives?

Artists may forget the need for Truth to be integral to the forms they create. They can get over-balanced toward self-expression and interiority, and need more development in intellectual discipline, doctrine, logic.

Describe how your intellectual and artistic development has contributed to, or detracted from your own spiritual growth.

I have so needed the greater intellectual rigor in order to do more than just play with ideas, like toys. The doctrines of the Catholic Faith have made me so secure within Catholicism that I feel free to play and to explore the world within their limits, by their light. Without the deep consolations of art, I don’t know how I could have made it through the most painful parts of my life. Music, in particular, has had a profoundly healing effect. The combination of faith in art – sacred music, and sacred art – found in the Church’s Liturgy has enable a robust synthesis between ‘head and heart’ within my soul.

Describe your imagination.

My imagination feels like a huge playground to me. In my childhood, it was a place of escape and that was not terribly healthy. In my youth, I tried to suppress it more (as it seemed to make me unlike other people, and I didn’t want to be weird). I didn’t find much in life or literature (there was no theology for me at that stage) that corresponded to the activity in my imagination, so I escaped in the opposite direction – into externals, popular music, unhealthy relationships. As a Christian adult, I found myself struggling with impure imaginations. Though I prayed and wanted release, nothing helped eliminate this poison until I became Catholic and ‘had recourse’ to Mary. Praise God for the perfect, immediate deliverance He gave as I prayed for help from the Immaculate Mother filled with grace!

ine.

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Blogging About My Talks

Building the Bridge

This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]

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Putting Down Sabbath Roots

Some audiences want to cut right to the chase: “Give us practical applications of all your ideas about Sabbath-keeping.” OK – here you go: In this talk I do just that – give concrete, practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings  interior equanimity and leaves you more whole, more human, more […]

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Women on the Way to Healing

I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, […]

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High Resolution Beauty

For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat, where the theme was “The King Desires Your Beauty,”  I prepared this truly interesting talk. Will you believe me when I say that this is another of my favorites?!?! I know, I’ve said that about a  lot of these talks, but revisiting them to give a […]

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Sabbath is a Woman

I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]

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The Veiled Self

Differences between the original myth of Cupid and Psyche, and C.S. Lewis’ retelling of the myth in Till We Have Faces have the effect of revealing new dimensionality in the Christian understanding of both myth and of the human person. The pre-Christian myth, like the pre-Christian person, is veiled in a darkness that constitutes a […]

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More Posts About My Talks

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About a Landscape

In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church”  Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.

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A Merry Drinker

 “The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.

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A Wedding Feast

Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.

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St. Francis Altar

Berlinghieri’s St. Francis  appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.

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More Posts About Art

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art artist Beauty Brick capacity Catholic Chesterton Christ Church communication community conversation creativity culture dialogue Education evangelization form formation freedom friendship fun healing Homemaking imagination intellectual life interior life leisure love motherhood Parenting person Personhood play Poetry prayer reading reality response Sabbath senses unity Women work writing

I’m a Member:

Family – Apostles of the Interior LIfe

Communion & Liberation

Association of Catholic Women Bloggers

Catholic Writers Guild

Catholic Creatives Salon

Northeast KS Chesterton Society

Sursum Corda Polyphony Ensemble

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Friends of Most Pure Heart of Mary Schola Cantorum

Well Read Mom

The Table – Christian Writers in Conversation

A is for Atmosphere

A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]

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Three-Dimensional Transcendentals

Benedictine College hosted a Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization in 2014. The theme was Transcendentals as Preambles to Faith, and I got to propose my take on that as a paper. Anyone who knows me could probably have bet good money I’d do something ‘three dimensional’ with that, and they’d have won those bets. […]

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A Prayer, A Poem, A Person, A Place

I once got a chance to do an all-day retreat with one of the sister Apostles of the Interior Life. Naturally, I wanted to discuss the role of leisure in the formation of persons! As usual, I prayed about the upcoming event, and God brought together several threads of my contemplation to weave this talk. […]

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Living Poems

Did you know YOU are a poem? Check out Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek ‘poema’ is usually translated ‘workmanship’. I like ‘poema’ better, as it implies beauty and artistry, but ‘workmanship’ is nice. I’ve discussed the importance of poetry, poetic education, poetic imagination and poetic reading in many different venues (many of the talk topics […]

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More Posts About Education

  • Charlotte Ostermann on Creativity
  • What About Gaudi?
  • Enchanted Education
  • Poetry Workshops
  • Stratford Caldecott Bibliography
  • Welcome to Bright City

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