Joyfully At Home: Chapter Five - Part Two

Howdy, folks!

I've mentioned a few times on this blog that I'm Catholic.  The Catholic Church has a thoroughly troubled past and present - but it does occasionally hit on a good idea or two.  One idea that the Catholic Church has used with some success over the last two millennia is having spiritual directors.

I don't have a really detailed history of spiritual direction prepped for this post (sorry; I blame having a toddler who has new AFOs and wants to walk now!  Right now!  Why aren't we walking right now? What do you mean your back hurts from bending over to let me clutch your hands?  Immaterial; walking time!), but I think we can wing it.  The idea is Biblical in nature since one could argue that the point of the Epistles is spiritual direction coming from the author to communities.  The rest of the history consists of the exquisitely human habit of asking another human for help when a person hits a wall.

The important bit for this post, though, is that spiritual directors don't live with the people they direct.  In cases where the two people live in the same location like a mother superior and a novice in a convent or monks in an abbey, there's a third spiritual director checking in with the mother superior or elder monk. 

Why is this third person necessary?   

Well, they are needed because of the equally human tendency to find the people you live with to be completely and totally obnoxious.  Everyone has personal quirks.   Everyone also has areas of their spiritual lives that needs improving.  The danger of a spiritual director living with a student is that the director must apply super-human patience and forbearance to suss out the difference between "activity that harms student's relationship with God" and "quirk that drives the director absolutely batty".   It's so easy to try and eliminate the absurdly annoying quirk by labeling it as a sinful activity - or even better - an activity that is slowing the student's progression towards holiness.  Hey, a student might question why sniffling instead of blowing their nose is a sin - but they might take labeling the same activity as a sign of sloth as being plausible.

That's a level of protection needed by consenting, unrelated adults with a mild power differential.  Jasmine Baucham opens an even larger can of worms in "Joyfully At Home"' when she discusses the importance of living at home peacefully with your parents.   The first quote from the fifth chapter sounds like a good Christian home is one part trade school and one part monastery boot camp:

The home is a training ground for life ahead, which entails much humility as we are constantly taught, trained, guided, and directed by Mom and Dad, as we are refined by the Lord, as our besetting sins are cast in the spotlight of everyday life, not hidden from those who knows best; we are sanctified in a way that we were never before. And that's difficult. (pg. 66)

Seriously, the first two clauses of that sentence describe what the first few weeks at a new job are like while the next four clauses describe the initiation period in a monastery (minus the potential promise of a feeling of Zen or ecstatic bliss, of course.) 

Here's the bit I don't understand.  I imagine a person's besetting sins are obvious to their parents by the time the kid is 10 years old or so.  Their issues might be visible even earlier if we think of  "besetting sins" as personality traits that interfere with the person's growth into the person they want to become.  For me, my besetting sin - such as it was - was fear.  I struggled with medical-grade anxiety starting after my brother died when I was four.  In later years, I also struggled with depression, but for me, anxiety is much harder to live with than depression. 

And you know what?  In spite of the fact that I went to public schools before kindergarten and parochial schools for the rest, my parents could list my 'besetting sin' by the time I was 4.5 years old. I assume this is true for the parents of SAHDs as well - but why does this process take the parents of the SAHDs until the girls are in their twenties...or thirties...or beyond?    If the same besetting sins keep cropping up, why should girls believe that their parents' method of spiritual growth will benefit them in their remaining years of single adulthood since those methods failed during their childhood and adolescence?

At what point do parents transfer the responsibility of spiritual growth to their daughters?   Oh, wait.  I forgot.  They never do.  There is apparently never a time where a woman must be responsible for herself.  She's either the ward of her parents or husband.  This is such a grim lifestyle.

The home a place where we can bless those nearest and dearest to us. Even when we're tired of them; when they snap at us; when it's easier to be " slow in anger" to people outside of our immediate family; when we realize it was more fun to hang out with our friends because they didn't know us quite as well as our siblings do, and couldn't see our glaring sin nature as well; when we look at other homes as outsiders and paint the inner workings as the perfect, blissful family unit; or when we forget that, even if there were such a thing as a perfect family, as soon as we entered it, our sin natures would derail the perfection.. (pg. 66)

Wow.  How little time did Jasmine Holmes get to spend with her friends during her teenage years?  I hung out with a fairly normal group of nerds and choir geeks during high school plus my best friend.  I could quite easily - and effectively - list the irritating quirks and personality flaws of my friends as well as I could list the flaws of my siblings or parents.  I am equally sure that those friends could do the same for me.  For example, I hate when people take longer to make a decision than I think they should.  I am also very opinionated - which means I can completely steamroll over people by judging them to be wishy-washy or vague and use that judgement to ignore their need for more time - and their right to take more time to make a decision.  Likewise, I can be impatient and start barking orders at people when I feel a group is spinning their wheels.   On the flip side, I was often more welcoming of new people than some of my friends and more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt during stressful times. 

Hanging out with your siblings can be fun because you have such a deep store of shared memories.  Hanging out with friends can be fun because you have access to a wider store of separate memories and experiences.  The CP/QF false idea that time spent with peers undermines the quality of sibling relationships irritates me.  If the only way that parents can get their siblings to interact peaceably is to cut off all access to peers, the parents need to seriously evaluate what has gone wrong in the way they run their home!   

The Calvinist obsession with smashing the depravity of human nature all the time gets old.  I don't mind the message of "we are all flawed sinners" - because we are.  We all make mistakes.  We all react in ways that hurt one another.  Because of that - no family is perfect.   Another way to look at it is that the peaceful home viewed from a distance may well feel stodgy or confining from the inside or an active family may be exhausting once inside.   Ms. Holmes' quote, though, feels more like a reminder that anyone who questions the status quo should be silenced with a sharp reminder of their own failings - and that's not acceptable, either.   People within a family should be able to discuss their preferences for activities and ways to recharge.   Families may not be able to give everyone what they need at the same time - but there should be a give and take.    In my family, I need quiet time to recharge my batteries, but my tot is far too young to understand that it's a bad time to play with his toys while jabbering loudly so I might put in earplugs or go for a walk.   My husband's ukulele group overlaps with a swim time for me - but I have so many more options for swimming that missing two times a month doesn't feel like a loss.   My husband takes care of my son when I've had a long day and want to eat at the local greasy spoon to recharge by reading a book, chatting with locals, and having downtime without any family members underfoot.   

The next post in this series will be about figuring out how to communicate with your parents as a stay-at-home daughter.....although I'm not sure why SAHDs haven't already figured that out previously.