Part of the problem I have with writing a long, philosophical post like The Theology of (House)work is that it’s hard for me to get through it without a meandering digression every sentence or two.

This post is to take care of all those side-notes…so my apologies for the variety of topics and directions!

Kids are work!

First of all, the (House)work post oversimplified the situation in order to make a (good, I hope) point: it’s important for us, particularly as mothers, to be reminded that the people around us are more important than the housework. This seems to assume that there are two choices, kids or (house)work, and that they are different things.

We all know, of course, that it is also true that the kids are our work. Sometimes putting your children first means laying in the grass with them and looking for cloud animals…but sometimes it means changing diapers, and the pants that covered the diapers, and the carseat cover the pants were sitting on. So I don’t want to suggest that caring for our children is always as restful as a monk’s time in prayer. (Here comes the parenthetical statement, within the parenthetical post! The monks might point out that standing up and chanting for long periods of time can also be exhausting…but I digress.) Caring for our kids is both our work and our opportunity to praise and rest in God.

The Value of Labor

Then there’s a whole other issue here: the value of a woman’s work. Let’s imagine a couple. The husband has a high-paying job, which provides well for his family, and he prides himself on this. He ties his self-worth to his ability to provide for his family – to make money. His wife is blessed to be able to stay home and raise her children. On the other hand, she feels restless. She went to college to prepare for a good job; maybe she also worked for a while before staying home with the kids. Though she works hard every day, in an occupation she knows is deeply important and worthwhile, she makes no money doing it. It bothers her that she isn’t contributing to monetarily to the family.

The truth is, our society values people by productivity, and productivity is judged by how much money the person makes. By this logic, a homemaker’s work is worthless.

Obviously this is not true, but it’s incredibly difficult to tune out society’s messages completely. So whether it’s the cleaning or the cooking or the raising of children, women’s work is dreadfully undervalued, even by those of us who do it. (Sorry, stay-at-home dads, I know you’re out there, too.)

We can’t be reminded often enough that the job of raising children and creating a holy, beautiful place for our families to live and grow is a great and valuable work indeed.

It’s just not one that you can order on Amazon. Thank goodness.

Prayer vs. Progeny

There was also another false dichotomy lurking in the last post, again in the interest of simplicity. It seemed to imply that we had to choose: prayer (like the monks) or kids (like we have). While it’s true that we can’t spend the hours a day praying in a chapel like a monk or sister would, that doesn’t mean we have to neglect our prayer life. A few minutes when the kids are in bed (early or late) can make a huge difference.

There are also ways we can incorporate our kids into prayer, so that we not only refresh our own spirits, but teach our little ones to pray as well. I know several moms who will stop (with their very young kids) for just a few minutes in a local adoration chapel whenever they are passing (and not already running late!) And prayer that works well for kids is good for grown-ups too: use sea shells, a candle, icons, or other beautiful objects to help little ones focus. My mom used to teach RCIA for kids, and her classes always included both the parents and the children who were preparing for the sacraments. Her prayer table was rich with things to catch the children’s attention, and it worked for parents, too. Thinking like a child can open up a whole new dimension of our relationship with God, who after all, calls us to be like little children.

Finally, I was surprised, a couple of days after I uploaded the last post, to go to our Well-Read Mom meeting (we were discussing Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain) and hear Marcie Stokman on the audio introduction saying basically what I had said in the post, only much more eloquently. She suggests that for each of us, our home is our monastery, the very place where we can best meet God. In fact, she calls all the little interruptions of our days – snotty noses, kids fighting, late night talks with teenagers – the very bells calling us to greater sacrifice and deeper relationship with our families and with God.

Whew. It never ceases to amaze me how many side discussions one seemingly simple idea raises. I hope you find some food for thought in there somewhere!

My pop-culture illiterate daughter trying to explain to friends which songs she is playing for her next concert:

Lucy: I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s something about rocking somebody…

Morgan: “We Will Rock You”?

Phil: No way. [Because it’s a symphony, after all. It has to be more classy than that!]

Lucy: Yes! That’s it!

Origin of Species? Check.

Jane Austen? Check.

Queen? Not so much. 😀

So I’m a little behind in my reading, but this week I finally got to the February 8 issue of Commonweal.  There is an illuminating article in there by Jonathan Malesic which contrasts the American work ethic with the dignity of the human person, and specifically, the way work is treated in Benedictine Monasteries.  (You can read it here.)

The article is beautiful and challenging.  Malesic seriously calls into question whether it is possible to respect the health and dignity of a person in our achievement-driven society.  “No reputation for customer satisfaction is worth as much as the person who fills orders and endures complaints.  Your pride in a job well done, or your anxiety, or your ego: none of those is worth as much as your dignity as a person.”

I think Malesic has hit on an important topic, but his musings led me in another direction. 

There has been a convergence (the first word that came to mind was conflagration, and I think it is also appropriate) of ideas in my life lately, centered on what John Paul II called the “feminine genius.”  It’s not that I’m seeking this out, exactly.  I’ve been bombarded from podcasts sent by Well-Read Mom and friends, Caryll Houselander’s Reed of God, and a Day of Reflection at our parish, all circling this same topic.

Full disclosure: I haven’t done the background reading on this yet (the recommended reading usually includes Mulieris Dignitatem and JP II’s Letter to Women, among others).  So my understanding of the term is basically this: women have unique gifts to share with the world, specifically gifts which make it a kinder, gentler place.  Women, in general, are gifted at truly seeing the other and caring for him or her, wherever the person may be in life.

This is a drasticly short summary, but I think it will do to explain the jump I made when I read Malesic’s piece on work and the Benedictines.

The monks Malesic visited in the New Mexico desert fight the desire to make work the center of their lives by means of prayer and their rule of life.  

I’d like to argue that we mothers have a similar tool built into our vocation to help us fight this tendency to overwork.

Rumba?  Alexa? Wal-mart curbside pickup?

Nope.  Our kids.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Actually, my kids create nine-tenths of the work I do…so how exactly are they helping me to keep work from taking over my life?”

Think of a nursing baby.  He’ll spend some time laying on the floor, playing happily with his toes (hopefully!), during which time his mother frantically folds laundry, washes dishes, sweeps the floor…you get the idea.  But when that baby gets hungry, what happens? The work stops. Mom sits down, puts her feet up, and nourishes a little life. If there isn’t a cell phone or TV on, maybe she even nourishes her own spiritual life for a few minutes with some reading or just soaking in the silence.

True, this assumes there aren’t also a two-year-old and four-year-old pulling on her arm the whole time asking for snacks.  Or chasing each other around the house waving sticks. (Why are the sticks in the house!?) It’s almost never as easy at I make it sound, I know.

However, what if we took all these interruptions in this light?  Not “drat, now I’ll never get the bathtub scrubbed,” but, “Ah, yes!  Little child of God, how can I love and serve you right now?” Houselander would take it a step further, and say, “Yes, Jesus!  How can I serve YOU in this little person?”

Of course cleaning the bathtub is also serving…but that’s an essay for another day.

The monks Malesic visited have scheduled hours for work, and whether they finish the project or not, when the bell rings for prayer, they stop and go pray.  It takes practice, but they learn to accept that they must let their work go until the next work period. As Malesic puts it, “They get over work so they can get on with something much more important to them.”  That “something”? Prayer, and their relationship with God.

I don’t know any mother who can keep a monastery schedule day in and day out.  Still, we have the opportunity to put work in its place. Is a clean floor good?  Yes. Is it more important than reading to my children? Probably not. Is it more important than praying with my children?  No.

The Benedictines’ vocation is to pray.  That comes first, and everything else is secondary.  A mother’s vocation is to care for her children. That comes first, even if it means we have to drop other work (or play) to do it.  (Which I write as I tell my kids to leave me alone so I can finish writing this…yikes.)

It is in the discipline of walking away from our work, our productivity, our sense that we are accomplishing something earthly, to spend ourselves in caring for another human being, that we put work in its place.  Work is good. Human beings need work, and we are called to join God in the work of bringing order to creation. Yet we are also called to “get over” our work when our children need our help or attention.

Yes, it takes effort – mental, physical, and spiritual – to care for these little people.  It is work.  But it is work that, if we keep our hearts open, turns us towards God in a way that scrubbing and dusting and grocery shopping might not.  Dropping our menial labor to look into the face of a child is stopping to contemplate the divine, if only we can look with God’s eyes instead of our own.

(On a side note – this topic requires a part II, with some of the caveats which threatened to make this post a short book, and which I’ll get to soon.  I hope. It’s dangerous to make such promises in my state of life!)

Clare: Why don’t people want to go to Mass?

Lucy: They probably think it’s boring.

Clare: I love the readings.  Except the ones that start “brothers and sisters”, they’re usually pretty boring.

Me: raucous laughter

Sorry, St. Paul.  I guess you can’t please everyone.

Just a tidbit from Luke Timothy Johnson’s recent piece in Commonweal entitled “How a Monk Learns Mercy: Thomas Merton and the Rule of St. Benedict.”

“The most destructive forms of speech in community, Benedict understood, are those that involve judgments against the other.  Benedict calls this form of speech ‘murmuring,’ included [sic] all forms of griping, gossiping, and nagging.  He forbids it absolutely.  When I was a monk, I thought that the rule of silence was mainly in service of contemplation.  Now, after many years of suffering poisoned discourse in the halls of academe, I have come to understand that silence was mainly about charity.  As we learn every day in our new world of constant chatter, savage judgment, and long-distance shaming via (anti)social media, when speech is totally without restraint, mercilessness is an almost inevitable consequence.”

There are a number of other useful insights in the article, but whether it is at work, church, or in the home, I can relate to Johnson’s experience here.  So much of the talk is negative, tearing down either the hearers or others who aren’t in the room.  It makes me think, maybe my house needs more silence…

On the other hand, how do you convince kids to fold their laundry without nagging?  I am open to suggestions.

And then, how do you convince them not to nag and judge each other?  Besides by example, which, clearly, I’m not good enough at to count on.

Still, this passage in particular was a reminder for me to be careful with my speech.  Especially around my kids, who are forming their own patterns on mine.  Yikes.

Johnson closes with this thought, summing up the rest of the article.  It sounds like marching orders to me:

“But if Christians are to cogently and consistently represent the face of mercy – which is the face of Christ – in this valley of tears, then in some fashion, I think, they must find ways to gather together for prayer, to sing the psalms and canticles, to practice silence in the name of charity, to readily confess their faults to each other, and to receive strangers as Christ.”

A year ago – or maybe closer to two – I was at a friend’s house.  She had a little hand-written note on her refrigerator, on red construction paper, which said,

“Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.  -St. Isaac the Syrian”

I commented that maybe I needed one of those for my fridge.  We could use that sentiment in my house.  So, being the woman she is, my friend moved the magnet and handed the note to me to take home.  It was on our fridge until we moved; it seems to have disappeared in that (ongoing) process.  But the impact hasn’t left us.

The girls were preparing for a All Saints’ Day party.  (How cool are our friends?  One hosted a party for 40+ children and their moms, and the kids prepared saint themed games, and everyone dressed up as saints and told the group about the saint they were dressed as.)

Anyway, Isaac needed a saint to impersonate.  Of course, Issac the Syrian (aka Isaac of Nineveh) was his choice because, well, his name was also Isaac.  And I knew the quote from the fridge…so we looked up the rest of the quote so Isaac would have something to say about Isaac the Syrian at the party.

Phew.  This is going somewhere, I promise.  Here is some more of the quote, from OrthodoxWiki:

“Be persecuted, rather than be a persecutor. Be crucified, rather than be a crucifier. Be treated unjustly, rather than treat anyone unjustly. Be oppressed, rather than zealous. Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.”

Ouch.  Of course, I had to share that one with Craig when he got home from work.  And he looked up the rest of the homily, and took to it like a Cajun to gumbo, and has been working out its implications in our daily lives ever since.

And I even found myself using it a day or two ago.  (It only took a year – or maybe two – for the idea to be imbeded in my brain enough that I thought to use it!)

It was a little like this:

“Daughter A, can you please wipe the table?”  (Of course I was at least this polite.)

“No, it’s not my turn, and Daughter B skipped wiping it after breakfast, so she should do it.”

“Well, Daughter B is already laying down for quiet time, so could you please do it this time, just to help me out?”  (I was carrying a tired baby, who also desired nap time, and trying to do something else…who knows what…but it wasn’t very compatible with wiping tables.)

“No!  She should do it.”

[Lightbulb appears over my head]  “Daughter, remember how we have been talking about laying hold of goodness, instead of justice?  It would be just for me to drag your sister out of bed and make her wipe the table, but here is a chance for you to lay hold of goodness by doing it even though it’s not your job.”

“No!”

The table had to wait quite a while before it was finally wiped.

I suppose we can’t all live up to the standards of the desert fathers all the time.  

Despite such minor setbacks, I’m not giving up on this one.  I would guess that roughly three-quarters of the fights in our house have to do with someone thinking a situation isn’t just – who gets the last cookie, who has to do the extra chore, etc.  And this includes myself, with thoughts like, “I cooked, and did the dishes, can’t someone else at least take out the trash?”

Which would probably be just – but my whining about it doesn’t help any of us grow in holiness.

So I’m not prepared to take on all the dirty work, just to be good.  I don’t dare to hope that my kids will decide to follow my example and suddenly want to fold all the laundry and clean the chicken coop.  But I can start thinking a little differently about these situations, and start trying a little harder to do what’s good, rather than what is simply just.  I can try to point my kids in this direction, too.  Maybe if we can ask ourselves “what would be good for me to do” instead of “what would be just to me” we would make some progress.

After all, it’s God’s goodness, God’s merciful justice, that I’m counting on for forgiveness for all those times I’ve fallen short of goodness, or even simple justice.

First, the funny story.

A friend of mine had just had a baby.  The baby was fussy and spitting up a lot, and so she thought the baby might be reacting to the cows’ milk my friend was drinking.  She might have to cut out dairy.

She was willing quit milk, cheese, and the like, for the good of her baby, despite her great love of these foods.  Butter was another story.  Surely there was a way to not have to give up butter.  It turned out that dairy was not the problem (we can all breathe a sigh of relief with her!), but the whole situation (isn’t it funny how these things work?) left her with a slightly harrowing spiritual insight.

You see, she is an Orthodox Christian, and to keep Lenten and other fasts, she *should* have been giving up dairy to keep the fast.  Of course she was often nursing or pregnant, and so didn’t have to keep the fast strictly.  But really, she supposes she could have given up butter and cheese and been none the worse off.

Her spiritual insight?  That she has disordered loves.  She loves, in order, 1. butter (which she was determined to find a way to keep in her diet); 2. her baby (for whom she would give up cheese); 3. cheese; and 4. God (for whom she would not give up butter or cheese).  Of course, we all want to be able to say that God is at the top of this list.

So that is a lovely story about our priorities in life, and self-reflection, and how God can use all kinds of situations to teach us and help us grow.  But in reflecting on this story over the last couple of weeks, it occurred to me that there is another lesson here, hiding under the surface.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to challenge anyone’s love of butter, ordered or otherwise.

What struck me was the language my friend was able to use to describe this new self-knowledge she had attained.  She had found herself to have “disordered loves.”

Which, if any given person takes a couple of minutes to puzzle out, she could probably find that the phrase means “loves in the wrong order.”  Yet it’s not the sort of phrase any given person on the street might use, nor is it an accident that my friend would use such a phrase.

She has had a Catholic, classical education, including a good bit of philosophy and theology, which does not count the reading and study she has done on her own in these areas.

Thus, my own little insight: our vocabulary affects our spiritual life; or, more broadly, without some degree of knowledge and study of spiritual things, it will be more difficult for us to attain to the growth we desire. 

Of course, it is totally possible for someone who has done little or no study of the spiritual to realize, “Huh, I guess I love butter more than God.  Oops.”  But it seems to me that without having at some point thought about the fact that we love some things more than others, and that God is one of the options of things to love, and that He ought to be the first of our loves, as well as what love looks like – ahem, sacrifice – that is, without this prior foundation, it would be much more difficult to come to the realization in the first place.

So what are we to do?  I don’t think the lack of a degree in philosophy or theology or scripture means we aren’t capable of this sort of spiritual insight.  However, I do think that we shouldn’t hope for self-knowledge and growth if we aren’t putting in a little bit of work.

Some of this is easy – pay attention to the scripture readings at Mass.  Read the Bible often.  (A study Bible with a good commentary can be even more helpful.)  Pick up a book on spiritual things once in a while.  Go to lectures, if you are so lucky as to have the opportunity, on theological topics, or take the theology-for-lay-people classes that some diocese offer, usually in the evenings to accommodate working peoples’ schedules.  Pray – and ask God to show you where you need to grow.

That is all fine and good, but here’s my real concern: are we giving our kids the vocabulary to talk about and ponder spiritual things, as well as we are able?  We have the advantage, in our home, of a Theology MA to answer (and pose!) these questions.  But even when Craig isn’t home, I have to be ready with the words that will help my children understand their faith.  My words form their conception of God, the Church, and what it means to be a person of faith.

Shoot.

No pressure, right? 

It is daunting, day in and day out, to not just break up the sibling bickering and direct our children towards virtue, but to do it in such a way that they grow up with the language that creates a framework – a scaffold, perhaps – on which to build their understanding of their faith.

I feel like I should digress and point out that faith is possible without understanding; that a relationship with God is what counts; that many holy people don’t use fancy theological language to describe their love of God…and all this is true.  And yet, we have been created with intellect, and spirit, and body, for that matter, and God wants us to use all of them to seek Him out.  (Of course, there should be one or more attributions here for this idea – Aquinas, I think – but that part I usually leave to the resident MA.)

All of which goes to show that I myself have a long way to go towards doing this well.  Listening more closely to those conversations between our theologian friends will probably be one of my starting points.  

And at the end of all my own philosophizing, (or is it theologizing?) I have to thank my friend for her love of butter, and her desire to love God better, and her humility, which allowed her to share this story with me, and me to share it with you.  Because it was her funny, self-deprecating story which started my reflection (should there be a tangent on time for reflecting, even on the mundane?  Not today!), and it is her story, and, of course, her friendship, which I hope will spur our family along on the path to greater holiness.

…the old lady at the bookstore stops you to say, “My, what a big baby that is!”

Yeah, this is the same baby who was so small that we couldn’t take him out of the incubator to hold him for the first week and half he was alive; the same one who was eating 10 mL at a time, and that through a feeding tube; the same one who, when he was curled up, was about as long as Craig’s hand.

That baby astonished this dear woman with his sheer girth.

God is good.  If I forget for a minute to be grateful, he reminds me.

Yep, it was a good day.

I guess that title could also refer to our renewed search for a permanent dwelling place (prayers for that, please!)…

but this poem hit close to home, considering what we’ve been through during the last six months.  So I thought I’d share it.  Thanks to poets.org and their poem-a-day project for bringing it to my attention.

The Things That Count

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when

          you want to play—
Dear, those are the things that count.

And, dear, it isn’t the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.
But it is keeping to true ways,
Though the music is not so loud,
And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along

          alone;
In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a

          groan—
Dear, these are the things that count.

My dear, it isn’t the loud part
Of creeds that are pleasing to God,
Not the chant of a prayer, or the hum of a hymn, or a jubilant shout or

          song.
But it is the beautiful proud part
Of walking with feet faith-shod;
And in loving, loving, loving through all, no matter how things go

          wrong;
In trusting ever, though dark the day, and in keeping your hope when

          the way seems long—

Dear, these are the things that count.

Jacob is five months old now!  (So, like…10 weeks developmentally.)  Smiles all around!