Tweet the Midwife

Tonight at 7PM Central I will be watching (and live-tweeting ... more on that below) Call the Midwife.

For those not in the know, Call the Midwife is a British television show broadcast in the US on PBS which tells the stories of a community of Anglican Sisters and lay midwives who minister to the people of London's East End in the late 1950s. The current series ends on May 18th.

It is an excellent period piece, in my humble opinion, painting a vivid picture of life on the margins in this particular neighborhood in London and the very real women who sought to meet the needs of people living in or near poverty. It also delves into the cultural shifts of this era, in particular for women. The situations and people depicted are very real, not caricatures, but with real depth and complexity.

While the show features a community of Anglican Sisters, I will admit to being particularly fascinated by the series because it causes me to imagine what it must have been for my own Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace living in the UK at this time in history, some of whom were in fact midwives or nurses.

Flash forward to the 21st Century ... inspired by my friend Julie Vieira, IHM of A Nun's Life Ministry, I've started live-tweeting Call the Midwife. That is, as I watch the show, I use the hashtag #callthemidwife on my personal twitter account (@susanfrancois) to comment on the show. In particular, I find myself commenting on aspects of the Sisters lives which are depicted so very well.  For example, here are a few tweets from last week's episode!

Last week, my tweets (along with a few other Sisters who were tweeting) received a bit of attention in the twitterverse!

In the end, it's just a bit of good fun and a way to be a witness and share the fact that not only do vowed women religious still exist today, we can even be a little bit silly.

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