I didn’t fall off the face of the earth although the blogging tempo has slowed to a standstill. June is a full month for us typically. This June, in particular, has been very full – full of fun, of learning, of sharing with friends, of coming together with our faith community. We just finished our summer catechism camp and our beloved nuns’ visit. The children function very competently in a group setting Rest assured homeschooled children can and do raise their hands, stand in line, and follow directions quite appropriately when the need arises.

They had a week of waking to an alarm, dressing and commuting, and boxed lunches eaten on the lawn with friends. It was delightful. I am glad its over. I think they are as well. As much as we enjoyed ourselves the little ones are out of sorts from the excitement and fatigue. The house needs some attention and the children have spent the weekend evenings where we often find them in the summer. They were outside picking flowers and throwing the football and playing any number of impromptu games. Allen and I sat and watched and wound down from the pace of the previous weeks. We look forward to getting the babies back to their regular rhythm of playtime, worktimes and sleeptimes.

During busy times it is critical to pay extra attention to them and be as tuned in to their needs as possible. Hence the blog vacation. I haven’t had a moment to write and have not had a word to say. I think it is due to being extra focused on them. My head and heart are there. They have a much greater need to be heard and responded to when they are tired and out of their routine. Being both of those things myself means it takes more intention to do that for them. So that is where we are. I expect by week’s end to be back in the saddle again.

It seems when an important concept comes one’s way it just keeps echoing until it sinks deeply in the heart. Shea Darian shares the lessons she learned from her mother about the deeper meaning of our work:

“Chop wood, carry water. Wash dishes. Sweep floors. Bake bread. Wipe noses. Mow grass. Pick up toys. Fold clothes. Small gestures of usefulness. Small. As i wash dishes I look at my hands and smile at how much they are becoming replica’s of my mother’s. I see her ironing freshly laundered clothes, slicing bread from the oven, tying the laces of my shoes. Her hands moved from task to task, as if they were opening intimately to the mystery of the ordinary.

Some days I forget the mystery…

With these everyday hands we birth usefulness and purpose. We create a compassionate servitude that can only be wrought through ordinary actions…

These days as I watch my hands opening more intimately to such small endeavors I think of my mother hundreds of miles away and I whisper, “No greater gift could you bestow.” Chop wood. Carry water. “Work is love made visible.” Our children will see it and sense it through the joy and meaning we find in our daily tasks. And they will be nurtured through these small gestures of compassion…

for the way we come to small things shows our reverence for all things.”

– Shea Darian Seven Times the Sun

I have been chatting with a friend about seeing the nobility of motherhood and homemaking and tracked down Chesterton’s famous essay on domesticity. It is worth repeating:

When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery,
all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word.
If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman
drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens
or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard
work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small
import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know
what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area,
deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley
within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes.
and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals,
manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might
exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about
the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children
about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing
to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s
function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it
is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task;
I will never pity her for its smallness.

Similar to the concept of “simple but not easy” he points out that this vocation is ordinary – in the sense that so many are called to it. It is also extraordinary by the virtue of its indispensible impact. The truly immense things are rarely accompanied by fanfare and attention.

Dom Hubert Van Zeller explains the necessity of viewing one’s vocation with the proper perspective:

Once you have this sense of mission, this sense of dedication to a cause more worthwhile than any purely personal claim, the rest can follow.

My dear friend Jen often tells of hearing Elizabeth Elliot on the radio when she was home with her firstborn, having left a nursing career to be a homemaker. Surrounded by those who would have her believe she was wasting her potential she clung to Elizabeth Elliot’s assertion that if God has blessed you with children and a husband you need not fret over your ‘calling’ any longer. You can stop of musing over what your contribution to the world ought to be. It is right there before your eyes. All that is not to say that everyone can readily accept that what is before their eyes is as potentially as monumental as the ‘vocation over the hill’.

Mrs. Elliot feels this is because motherhood has suffered from profanity. Not swearing but rather:

treating as meaningless that which is freighted with meaning. Treating as common that which is hallowed. Regarding as a mere triviality what is really a divine design. Profanity is failure to see the inner mystery.

How often we miss the mystery. We disregard the divine in our midst, which is often hidden in the mundane.

Van Zeller concurs:

Another thing about this “drudgery” which we are all so afraid of and so eager to avoid: it can promote not only holines – in fact that is what it is for – but happiness as well.

If people only searched harder for the dignity that is hidden in labor and worried less about the drudgery that inevitably accompanies it, they would have time to look about them and see what kind of happiness it can be made to bring.

Our challenge is not in accomplishing the thousand and one inane tasks required of us on a given day. Our challenge is to view them rightly, to be sure to attribute to them the high value they hold. It is to our great advantage to fill our hearts and minds with the words of those who affirm the importance of this vocation. We must take every thought captive.

As Van Zeller says,

It is not that the fruit is bitter, it is that we have a wrong idea of sweetness.

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