Is There Childcare in the Desert?

I wrote up a rather passionate post last week, but in the end I decided it was a good vent, but a bad post. As Steve pointed out to me, it'll need a few more drafts. Stay tuned.

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In the meantime, I've decided to tell you about the great new book I mentioned in my last post, titled In the Midst of Chaos by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore. Let me begin by saying This Book is Awesome!! I've only read the first fifty-something pages, but I'm savoring it as I go, luxuriating in the feeling of releasing some of my previous ideas about what constitutes or contributes to true and meaningful spirituality. The guilt is lifting, by degrees.

Even the preface made me feel encouraged. Here's how she concludes her introduction:

Now I release this book, imperfections and all, and bless it on its way to you. Rather than additional burden or guilt, I hope it will free you to practice your faith more abundantly, loving those around you in the midst of life's craziness and letting go of failures, faults, limitations, and sorrows to live more deeply in grace. (xx)

In Chapter 1, Contemplating in Chaos, Miller-McLemore challenges the pervasive belief that spiritual transformation of the highest order happens in solitude: peaceful, prayerful, and silent. We have romanticized and idolized the stations of monk, pastor, or ascetic as the most suited to spiritual growth and development. People such as these have the necessary space to make room for God in a way that your average parent of children simply can't...or so we've often been led to believe. As a new mom and inexperienced Bible Study leader of a group of moms, I once brought up Martin Luther's comments regarding his prayer life in the midst of busyness. He wasn't too busy to pray, he said, rather his busyness was exactly why he needed to pray, on average, 2-3 hours a day. I cringe at the memory of the guilt I must've inflicted on these women (myself included).

They really do melt in your mouth,
not in your hand!

My spiritual director gave me a book once that talked about the "gremlins" that we give voice to in our heads, the distorted perspectives which can lead us astray if we pay too much attention. The one which I most identified with was called "Little Miss What The Hell". Little Miss What The Hell sets up a Grand Plan for herself, but the moment even one details goes awry, she gives it all up and goes back to the way she was before. It's the reason why I tend to have a messy house (if it can't be pristine, why bother?) and have trouble with diets (I ate that one M&M, what the hell, I'll eat the entire bag!). It's a recipe for failure, and it plays out in my spiritual life as well: If I can't get away and into nature (or the desert, as with the ascetic), or in a dimly lit room with candles and quiet, then there's just no way I can cultivate my spiritual life.

I came by my idealizations honestly. Miller-McLemore points out that "Christian perception of faith as something that happens outside ordinary time and within formal religious institutions, or within the private confines of one's individual soul, still pervades Western society...By and large...twentieth-century theologians continue to look past the sheer messiness of daily family life." (7)

If silence or solitude are required for deep soul-growth, then parenting pretty much shuts that door completely. I don't even get solitude to go to the bathroom, let alone to pray, and as Miller-McLemore points out, on those rare occasions when we do get a bit of silence, we're usually too tired to do much other than pass out on the couch in a heap.

Miller-McLemore tells the story of a Harvard Divinity School lecture on the Desert Fathers,
to which an audience member responded by asking the cheeky question,
"Is there childcare in the desert?"

And yet, despite our weariness with the basic matters of survival as parents of children who need us, we feel guilty for not doing more. For not cutting our short nights even shorter by arising early to do our devotions, for not being as intentional as we feel we ought to be about those spiritual disciplines we just can't find the time - or the desire - to do. Our obsession with extricating ourselves from all that is not explicitly "spiritual" and trying to take on that which we think is, results in our "demeaning the external, the bodily, the earthy, and the material and obscuring their actual connection to our real self and our authentic spirituality." (5)

So, what does it look like to honour "the external, the bodily, the earthy and the material"? How are these things connected to "our real self and our authentic spirituality"? How do we move beyond the idea of pursuing spiritual transformation primarily by introducing specific disciplines such as prayer and solitude into our lives (which still inherently imply that the only spirituality available to the parent occurs by way of a momentary escape from parenting)? Miller-McLemore writes,

Go, go, go, GO!!!!

One participates in these disciplines "despite" or "regardless" of the chaos. They still assume one meets God in a quiet inner space. 

What I am trying to describe, instead, is a wisdom that somehow emerges in the chaos itself, stops us dead in our tracks, and heightens our awareness. (19-20)

She concludes by pointing to a previously featured bookmeal author, Brother Lawrence, who viewed one's actions as capable of becoming a form of prayer in and of themselves. I'm looking forward to seeing how she fleshes out this idea in a twenty-first century context over the next eight chapters.

What about you? What are your perceived prerequisites for spiritual growth? Are they feasible in your life as a parent, or do they make you feel defeated or incapable? How could the "externals" in your life take on sacred meaning?