The Monastic Order of Parenthood

At the very beginning of this year, my mother forwarded to me an e-mail that she had received from a friend of hers. In the subject line was written: "had to share this gem with all the moms I know", so I knew immediately that this e-mail would have something to do with the general issues of parenting. Since this was forwarded to me by my mother, I have to also add this background: I am the youngest of 10 children, and my mother is an extremely intelligent woman with an excellent sense of humor...so, I figured this one had to be worth reading.

Was it ever.

The content consisted of a column written by a man named Ron Rolheiser (a Catholic priest in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and a writer/columnist) back in 2001. The title was "The Domestic Monastery", which right away caught my attention because 'domestic' and 'monastery' aren't usually two words that go together. Indeed, in this article Rolheiser focuses on an idea that, for me, has become a kind of hard-to-accept "aha!" moment:

"What is a monastery? A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart. It is also a place to learn the value of powerlessness and a place to learn that time is not ours, but God's.
Our home and our duties can, just like a monastery, teach us those things. John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism in these words: "But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you." What John suggests here is that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with the mild.> Although he was speaking about the vocation of monastic monks and nuns, who physically withdraw from the world, the principle is equally valid for those of us who cannot go off to monasteries and become monks and nuns. Certain vocations offer the same kind of opportunity for contemplation. They too provide a desert for reflection.
For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is definitely monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of power and social importance. And she feels it. Moreover her sustained contact with young children (the mildest of the mild) gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild, that is, to attune herself to the powerlessness rather than to the powerful."

Rolheiser goes on to point out that, just as monks and nuns do, parents also must live in obedience to their own version of the "monastic bell": the incessant interruptions from our children, who seem to need assistance/supervision/hands-on-parenting about every 10 seconds on any given day. "The monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your own agenda to God's agenda. Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something."

"It is also a place to learn the value of powerlessness and a place to learn that time is not ours, but God's." These are very, very difficult lessons for any human, with or without children, to learn. And, to be honest, I'm not always very patient towards my two little 'monastic bells'. And so now, I have arrived hard up against this question: how do I reconcile myself to God's agenda....when it seems like there are so many items on my agenda that will never be accomplished? What exactly does "stretching my heart" look like, and have I been at all able to do that since becoming a parent? I guess another question might be, "how much of my parenting, so far, has been pleasing to God?"

I received this e-mail from my mom in January, and in the following months I have thought of it repeatedly. I have never read a more accurate summation of what have come to be my own personal frustrations when it comes to being a parent. I know in conversations with my husband I have asked the rhetorical question, "why would God make me a parent, and yet give me also all these other talents and skills which, as a parent, I have no opportunity to use????" My friends, I will be very honest here in saying that over the past 10 years I have consistently struggled with the my-needs-vs.-my-childrens'-needs conflict, even more so since transitioning into the SAHM mode.

Last week, my husband and older daughter and I went to visit Trinity Cathedral, here in downtown Cleveland. I forgot the camera otherwise I would share pictures...it's a beautiful place. We also stopped in the "Sacred Path" bookstore and the "Ten Thousand Villages" store. In the bookstore I came upon a book which, like that e-mail from my mom, has seemed to speak directly to my internal conflicts about "my agenda vs. God's agenda". I will write about this book in another post, but here is the title (you will see immediately how appropriate it is): In The Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice, by Bonnie Miller-McLemore. I am already about halfway through, with some underlining and comments in the margin along the way....

Blessings to you,
Jen

Father Keith's Sermon, 6/14

Greetings all,

A while back I asked Father Keith if he would be okay with having his sermons posted on this blog. His reply was that that was one of the original ideas for the blog anyway! So, here is his sermon from today, Sunday June 14 2009. Today's readings were: 1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17, and Mark 4:26-34. It is helpful to review these readings so that the context of the sermon is fully understood. Everything within the quote marks is taken directly from the sermon print-out provided in the front foyer at St. Peter's Church.

"WEEDS AND REBELS, Proper 6, Year B"
"'With what can we compare the Kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of the seeds of the earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of shrubs, and puts orth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.'

If you are one of those people who take great pride in having a lawn that could make it onto a Scott's Turf-builder fertilizer advertisement; if you aspire to a yard that looks like a fairway at Augusta National Golf Course; if you're an artist in green who could pass for the groundskeeper at Progressive Field; then you do not ever want to live next door to me and my family. For a variety of reasons economic and philosophic, Monica and I practice more of a wild meadow approach to lawncare. If it's green, let it grow! Keep those chemicals off of our children's feet and our of our storm sewers.

Which, of course, means that every May, in addition to the random selection of grass species that populate our lawn, we have an abundance of Dandelions. And in August, as the grass is drying out, we enjoy a bumper crop of crabgrass. So, it is by definition a yard that likes to share itself with neighboring yards. Every May, those pretty yellow dandelion flowers overnight become those fuzzy dandelion seed-heads. And just a puff of wind is all it takes to scatter from each one of those plants thousands of tiny aspiring dandelions, which rise into the atmosphere to float along with the offspring of thousands of other dandelions, to create what sometimes looks like a warm-weather snowstorm. And each of those little flying seeds is looking for one of those perfect green lawns into which to settle. And there, it will wait patiently until next May, when it will spring up to repeat the glorious process all over again, or to die and agonizing death, burned and poisoned by the lethal chemical weapons of mass dandelion destruction arrayed against it by the lover of thoroughbred Kentucky Blue Grass.

What is this priest babbling about, you are asking yourselves?

Well, I'm using an image that for us might evoke the same kind of wonderment and wry confusion that the image of a mustard plant would have evoked for Jesus' listeners. In Jesus' day and place, the mustard plant was, and still is, a nuisance. It is a prodigious reproducer, each plant capable of producing thousand of tiny seeds to send aloft in a gust of wind, or in the guts of birds. Left unchecked, mustard could largely take over a farmer's field in just a few seasons. Galilean farmers, to this day, go through their fields hand-plucking as many of the plants as they can, and in late May and June, use the old-fashioned form of herbicidal warfare: burn over their harvested fields precisely to destroy mustard plants and their seeds on the ground, and other plants like them.

So, to those Galilean peasants, and to us this morning, Jesus must have sounded slightly demented here: The Kingdom of God can be compared to mustard seed? The kingdom of God can be compared to dandelions? What gives?

A similar thing is going on in today's reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, one of the most tantalizing tales in all of Scripture. [Discursus: this Summer the Lectionary takes us through one of the wildest ancient soap operas you'll ever encounter - the story of King David. You won't want to miss it, so be in church every Sunday.].

So here, in our Scriptures today, we have held up for us two pretty strange images of God at work: rebels and weeds. For those of us whose values tend more towards law and order in politics and uniformity in lawn-care, those images are probably not just strange, they may be positively alarming.

And yet, step back for a moment. Let your historical imagination be free. Look at the story of God's people, and see if rebellious weediness isn't precisely what you see. God's people have always faced suppression, God's Kingdom has always been opposed. Yet, somehow, in every generation, God's people and kingdom have managed to survive. And not only survive, but thrive, and grow, and like weeds, spread. God's Kingdom, Jesus seems to be saying, is like weeds: you can keep them in check, but you can never, ever get rid of them. God's work, we see in the story of David, will almost always be done by the most unlikely of people - the youngest son of Jesse the shepherd, the son of Mary of Nazareth - found along the margins of established power, quietly undermining the edifices of control.

And interestingly, the most dangerous form of suppression that God's people and kingdom have always faced has never been the active forceful opposition of the world; the most dangerous form of suppression is domestication, the taming of the wild. Wild prairie grass is tamed and domesticated to become the perfect, lovely fescue to adorn McMansions. The rebel shepherd becomes the oppressive king. The tiny Jewish cult of Jesus Messiah, becomes the institution of the Church.

And so, hear the Good News this morning: the Kingdom of God is like a weed. You can't stop it. The world will try, through force, intimidation, and domestication, to keep God's kingdom under its thumb, but ultimately that effort will fail, the control will break. God is, even now, calling and appointing the rebels, the Davids, who will undermine that control. One or two of them might even be in this room, looking for all the world like good, domesticated, tamed blades of grass.

Watch out, these wondrous Scriptures seem to both promise and warn us, right now, in this room, in our own souls, unseen, are the mustard seeds, the dandelions, the unremarkable peasant boys, through whom God may renew the face of the earth."


Peace to you,
Jen