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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Talks for Women

A is for Atmosphere

The original title of this talk for the 2014 KS Catholic Homeschooling Conference was “Taking Care of Mom and Each Other”. It’s subject still is about the tremendous importance about that caretaking of the mamas. Listen to a clip, and ask for the whole recording, if you’d like more. Moms are the most important ‘environment’ for their children – affectionate, acoustic, and aesthetic atmospheres, like the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Women on the Way to Healing

For women in the Kansas City area in the Heart of a Woman group: How women become disintegrated, and how they heal themselves and others through their own weakness and pain. The complete text of this talk and free downloads of many resource materials created for women are available upon request.

High Resolution Beauty

For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat: What it means to realize your own being, and what your beauty contributes to the realization of Christ in the world.

Sabbath is a Woman

Jewish mamas welcomed Sabbath into the home each Friday evening. She was thought of, like Holy Wisdom, as a woman – even as a Queen. The Sabbath gives us some fascinating insights into the characteristically feminine movement of the Holy Spirit into the lives of the faithful.

Mother Church, Our Role Model

Look at the way the Church teaches and disciplines her children; how she balances their disparate personalities and needs; how her ‘home making’ affects their formation. In all these ways and more, she is a model for mothers.

The Veiled Self

Using C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, we discuss the imagery of the veil in the life of a woman – her need for modesty, for beauty, for privacy, for mystery, and for self-revelation to God.

How Can I Be Loved?

It’s one thing to say, “God loves you,” but it’s another for women to receive the love of God. We discuss four ways of actually being loved, and for each, two opposite ways we women sometimes avoid that love.

The Holy Spirit Wants YOU!

For a Day of Reflection, Women of St. Ignatius, Leavenworth, KS in 2011: The Holy Spirit wants you BEAUTIFUL, EFFECTIVE, and POWERFUL. Find out why, and how He helps you become YOU, fully realized.

Sabbath – Easy as ABC

For the Daughters of Isabella, Kansas City in 2012: a retreat in three parts. Desiring His Sabbath, Designing Your Sabbath, and Dwelling in the Eucharistic Sabbath. I love helping others discover the 7+ weeks of vacation God has made possible for us!

Building the Bridge As We Cross

This talk was originally given to home educating parents, but is of particular importance to women, as they work out how in the world they can help their children reach safety, keep faith, navigate the world’s dangers and lies.

A Mind in Love

An introduction to the life and key works of Dorothy Sayers, who is of particular interest to women who love home, family, church, and the intellectual life.

A Prayer, A Poem, A Person, A Place

My own poem, The Race, is the window into the life of busy women everywhere – we all see ourselves imaged in the woman who ‘races past herself’ and sometimes past her loved ones, past her own needs and longings, past her Lord. We look deeply into what it means to be God’s ‘poema’, His workmanship – to be a place of encounter and to be wholly human.

A Love Poem for Two Voices

In a discussion of my poem by this title, we look at the pain a woman may feel upon being loved by Christ. It is sometimes a very difficult thing to be loved, and to receive love. Many women have related to my example of a woman who fights that love as though her life depends upon keeping Christ at arm’s length. This is a very healing discussion!

Communicating Reality to a Child

How mothers mediate the world to their children through five stages of learning. Created for the Blessed Sacrament Latin Mass Community Homeschool Conference of 2011.

The Art of Friendship

How to cultivate intimacy, mutuality, and spiritual growth with friends.

Safe Harbor

Bearing the burdens of others without breaking your heart, or theirs.

We Will Be Like Trees

How to extend deep roots into streams of living water.

Beauty Becomes You

How mothers contribute to the aesthetic education of their children. Designed for the 2011 Blessed Sacrament Homeschooling Conference.

Need a speaker for your next event? Contact me about what you’d like to offer your attendees:

 

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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!

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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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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

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Family – Apostles of the Interior LIfe

Communion & Liberation

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Catholic Writers Guild

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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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