Room for Households: (Working in Communion #3)
Kitchen Still Life, Franz Snyders, mid 17th century, Getty Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Does your church community have a rule of life offered to guide you and your household in activities of daily living? Are you expected to make public account of how well you are following that rule?
Nothing onerous or quirky or nonsensical for your life, but nonetheless intended to challenge you, as well as ease your yoke, and to make a way for the Lord in the everyday desert of what you face. To encourage you to live differently and alongside others in this faithful walk.
Does it dare to get ‘down in the weeds’ with you about…
Where to shop?
What you spend money on?
What kind of work is appropriate?
Ways to tend and care for the earth?
What (not) to wear?
What you eat, and how you cook?
What appliances you have in your household?
How much you use, and are used by social media and information/surveillance technology?
These sorts of questions arise as I ponder on Benedict’s four-fold typology of ‘single ones’ (aka monks). ‘Sarabites’ are monks living in small households not governed by an Abbot or Abbess. Benedict disapproves of this life pattern.
We can take his disapproval for what it’s worth. But I’ll appreciate the ‘sarabite’ here as representative of something important for spiritual practice.
They ask whether our congregations and religious organizations make room for and encourage small intentional and family arrangements for daily living. Everyday faith happens in householding.
It brings our habitat of spiritual practice to a smaller, closer-to-home level. To the places where we do the dishes, we allocate and shape personal space within a shared home, articulate common values and distinct sense of person-hood, disagreements and working things out, bearing with (and sometimes drawing a line at) our worst sides, and seeing, encouraging and choosing the better part.
The place where you dwell, often with a small handful of others whom you may call kin, family, friends, loved ones, is a where you practice your faith and grow in holiness everyday. But it has not been my experience that ‘mainline’ congregations offer much guidance or expectation about how to keep the household, so as to affirm that our practical tasks and “lifestyles” are endeavors of prayer, growing in life with God, and mission to others. I mean the more boring yet difficult stuff that makes everyday life happier and more functional. Faith shapes how we live over the dinner table, while doing the dishes, on the neighborhood sidewalk, in the garden.
I wonder further…
Does you church offer some means of support in your old age? I know some christians fret about the evils of social security…I ask rather should Christians have IRAs?
Does your congregation offer guidance or support as you engage with a Home Owners Association that drives away the homeless, or disallows a front-lawn creche, or stipulates the use of herbicides?
Does your congregation expect, teach and support you to be a christian peace-maker in your home, workplace, school, and neighborhood?
And more…
These aren’t off the wall questions to ask. Consider that the torah is an exercise in the awareness that what we do each day matters to God, and to our ongoing growth in love, faith, wisdom and holiness.
Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. ( Deuteronomy 11:19-21)
The Apostle Paul’s household codes and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount are attempts to speak to living faithfully in the practical details of each day. We might not agree with every yod and tet of Paul’s local and historical directives, but the impulse to guide and practice our faith as households is too important for ‘mainline’ churches to either ridicule, dismiss, or cede to social reactionaries.
God calls us to the sanctification of time, of work, of rest, of the places we dwell, and the decisions about how we live. Benedict agrees. His job description for the monastery cellarer (link) makes clear that the work of given to the one who keeps the pantry and kitchen and laundry in good order. In serving the common good and diverse needs of the persons in a community, the cellarer helps shape the living environment where faith and hearts set on God may be nurtured and sustained.
By way of comparison to zen buddhism, master Dogen describes the kitchen master as among the most important spiritual roles in a monastery.
Since ancient times this office has been held by realized monks who have the mind of the Way or by senior disciples who have roused the Way-seeking mind. This work requires exerting the Way. Those entrusted with this work but who lack the Way-seeking mind will only cause and endure hardship despite all their efforts. The Zen Monastic Standards states, “Putting the mind of the Way to work, serve carefully varied meals appropriate to each occasion and thus allow everyone to practice without hindrance.”
Not the scholar, the preacher, the systematic theologian, or the sociopolitical activist. The one carefully slicing the vegetables, washing the rice, serving the food with wisdom, a twinkle, and attentive love.
A household that does this well is an example and encouragement to many.
So I thank God for Benedict’s rule being an occasion to think about those things we we need to make room for in the church today: room for faithful households to practice their faith concretely, with guidance and affirmation from their worship communities.
So you might not only consider developing a rule of life with your household, you might also raise this as something for your congregation to develop and follow as well.