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!

  • Catholic Speaker
    • About Me
      • Speaker Bio
    • My Talks
    • Events
    • Testimonials
    • Media Kit
      • Topics for Podcasts & Talk Shows
      • Audio & Video Samples
        • Events
  • Catholic Author
    • Books
    • My Poetry
    • Motherheart Press
  • Catholic Contributor
  • Catholic Creative
    • My Projects
      • News
    • Welcome to Bright City
    • Support for Art and Artists – Not as Expensive as You Think!
    • Talks for Writers and Artists
    • The JOY Foundation of Kansas
  • Catholic Poet
    • My Poetry
  • Catholic Educator
    • My Reading
    • Talks for Parent Educators
    • Talks for High School & College Students
    • Talks for Book Study Groups
  • Contact Me
  • My Blog
You are here: Home / Authentic Woman / Practice of the Presence of Persons

By charlotteostermann19@gmail.com

Practice of the Presence of Persons

I’m beginning to think we need more conscious practice for being present to persons.

Though I know that you are a deep mystery and a unique, unrepeatable reality, you enter my space as an object in the environment and I often do not register your presence at all. This is a sad state of affairs, exacerbated by the speedy pace of life, the isolation of persons in cars and suburbs, the barely-there transactional symbology that counts as ‘communication,’ and other obvious factors of reality that I can’t change.

What can I change? What can I suggest to help along this ‘practice of the presence of persons’?

  1. Prayer before coming into the presence of others. “Dear God, please help me to be fully present to those I am about to encounter, to believe you have arranged for me to meet with the particular individuals who are present, to resist my own inward resistance to showing real heart hospitality to them, and to place my interest truly into the essence of who each person is and yearns to be. And Lord, please help me remember their names!” (I am so bad at this!) “Please bless our time together, help us to edify and encourage one another, and remain undistracted by other concerns during our visit. Please come into the space between us to unify us for your greater glory.”
  2. Courtesy. I think we should resurrect the courtesy of formal greeting and leave-taking. I’m trying to move into a “Grace and peace to you” format that I usually forget as greetings take a much more casual turn and the moment is lost. I love getting and giving good-bye hugs, but still stand there wondering if I’ll seem foolish, old-lady-ish, or overly personal if I lunge forward with a hug someone doesn’t want. Still, if you come to my Open House, please say hello on arriving and good-bye on leaving, please. And I’ll do the same when we all meet for book groups or meetings or whatever.
  3. Be affected. I need to do more than see you. To be present to you is to receive you into my own being and to be affected by you, there. I can’t be present to you without that opening that allows you entrance and makes me somewhat vulnerable to you. I hope I can look into your eyes and that you’ll see yourself loved in mine. I need to do more than hear you. You need to sound in me so that I resonate with you, mirror your movements and expressions, sense the meaning beneath the message on the surface. Just the other day, as I was listening to a friend and being deeply affected by him, one word he said in passing seemed to reverberate in me. I couldn’t shake the sense that this word held much more meaning for him and, as it turns out, it sure did! When I asked why that word was somehow very important or meaningful to him, out came the stories and the emotions elicited by them. It was fascinating to experience the reality that one word could ‘carry’ so much ‘weight’. He hadn’t realized it himself, but as we explored it together it was clear that God had helped my own heart be troubled with a message meant for his healing. What a delicate, lovely instrument the open, affect-able heart is!

Naturally, I am very much interested in your thoughts about how we can better practice the presence of persons. Please let me hear from you!

Related

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Authentic Woman, Communication, Community & Culture, Education for Freedom, IMHO, Just Life Tagged With: communication, courtesy, gestures, hospitality, persons, practice, presence

Free for You: Motherheart Collection

Upschooling

Souls at Rest: An Exploration of the Eucharistic Sabbath

Souls At Work: An Invitation to Freedom

DARE YOUR SOMETHING!

JOY! JOY! JOY!

Do You Need a Speaker?

  • My Talks
  • Three-Part Retreats
  • Audio & Video Samples
  • Poetry Workshops

Talks for Writers and Artists

Talks for Spiritual Retreats

Talks for Parent Educators

Talks for Women

Talks for High School & College Students

Talks for Writers and Artists

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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, […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

More Posts About My Talks

Explore Posts by Category:

Search this site:

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.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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’.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

A Wedding Feast

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

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

More Posts About Art

Tags

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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. […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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. […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

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 […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

More Posts About Education

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

Copyright © 2023 · Executive Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.