A difficult love: mother as spiritual guide in the writing of Susanna Wesley.

In recently published letters to her children, Susanna Wesley (16691742) claims a vocation as a spiritual guide. She grounds this claim in her maternal love and responsibility; indeed, her vocation is forged in the practice of maternal love. The mother of J oho and Charles Wesley emerges as a compassionate but tough spiritual director and a fiercely loving parent. Her writings reveal her struggle both to love and to let go, two movements required by her Christian faith. She wrestled with the nature of divine and human love as she confronted her call to cherish her children and yet relinquish them to the care of a God whose ways are incomprehensible. Susanna Wesley offers a model of spiritual guide which differs sharply from the more detached "spiritual paternity" and "spiritual maternity" practiced by some of the earliest Christian spiritual directors. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th through the 6th centuries, for example, sought to "beget" or "engender" others in the spiritual life. While they were addressed in Aramaic as "abba" (father) and "amma" (mother), parenthood was metaphorical for these early monks and nuns wandering in the wilderness of Egypt, Palestine, an~ Syria. The image of spiritual paternity or maternity became a foundational model of spiritual direction in the Christian tradition. According to one author: