What I’m Into: January (a couple days late)

February 4, 2013 By michaboyett

Well, I don’t think I should start this post as a resident of San Francisco without acknowledging the heartbreak of last night. *Moment of silence.* (Yes, I’m an Eagles fan but all this living in SF stuff has made me a bit sensitive to the 49er’s and our city’s sorrow.) My four-year-old actually came home from the Super Bowl party he and his dad attended (without his sick brother and me) and said, “Mom, I almost cried when they didn’t win!”

Today I’m joining up for the first time with Leigh Kramer for “What I’m Into” posts. (She does it every month and I should have linked up a long time ago.)

So without further ado!

In my hands

If you want to approach St. Benedict or his Rule, Esther de Waal is your girl. I love all I’ve read from her. I’m only a couple of chapters into Seeking God, but she approaches the Benedictines with humility and passion and clarity.

In lieu of any fiction on my nightstand, I’m loving the memoir Leaving Church. Last week, my brother sent me a book called Love Poems from God, which is a collection of sacred poetry from eastern and western mystics. It’s a beautiful book and I’m excited to share some of the poems I’ve been discovering.

I’m using Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours for my morning (and sometimes–rarely, I should say–midday and nighttime prayers). Chris and I are slowly moving through Grace-Based Parenting together. And The Sabbath World is one of those books that sits by couch, just in case I have ten minutes on a Saturday afternoon in the sunshine. Though I’m slow on it, I’m fascinated by the book. Judith Shulivitz is a fantastic writer and I’ve been thinking a lot about practicing a tech/electricity free sabbath every Sunday throughout Lent. I will (of course) let you know if that actually happens.

On the screen

Still watching Downton Abbey, even though I’m very discontented with how things seem to be going for the Crawleys. I can’t take suffering, you guys. Which leads me to: Nashville, which = less suffering + more dramatic singing. Do you want to give me the perfect show? Combine women in cute clothes and pretty hair with family/relational drama and then give it a BIG DOSE of country music! I can’t take how much I love this show. I finished out Parenthood, which I still can’t believe ends its season in January.

I’m grieving the loss of Liz Lemon in my life, though New Girl continues to bring me a lot of happiness.

On the movie front, the Main Squeeze and I made it out on a Real Live Date a couple of weeks ago and saw Silver Linings Playbook in a cozy, neighborhood (20-seat!) theater. You guys.That movie was the quirkiest, dearest romance. Loved.

In my ears

I’m so intimidated to talk music. But I’ll try: Loving the Nashville soundtrack, which my husband gave me for Christmas. This past week I’ve been listening to The Lumineers and Waterdeep’s “No Doubt of Sunshine” has reemerged from wherever it was hiding in my computer. Also, I’m two years behind but finally used some Christmas money to get the soundtrack to Midnight in Paris, which is the perfect dinner-making music.

I’m not much of a podcast listener, but 9Thumbs podcast has become my once a week, cleaning the bathroom/folding clothes listening. The gist of it is three dudes (one of which includes my brother, Jason Boyett) talking about what they’re loving in pop culture. Listening to it is making me feel much more capable of making smalltalk at cocktail parties, if I were ever invited to one of those.

There’s more that I’d add and I probably will next time. But let’s be honest here, I’m tired. Plus Downton Abbey is about to come on. And you all know how I feel about that.

-M

The Spiritual Practice of Slowness

January 17, 2013 By michaboyett

I was strangely moved by that almost final scene in the movie Lincoln, when the president walks away, his back to the camera, down the long White House hallway and into the shadows. Of course we, the audience, know Lincoln is walking down that hall for the final time. We know he is on his way to Ford’s Theater and we know what waits for him there.

But that’s not what moved me as I watched that scene. What moved me was the slow deliberation of Lincoln’s strange, lanky gait. As I watched that man walk the hallway, all I could think was how I long to walk that slowly, how I long for the kind of confidence that allows a person to move with purposeful slowness.

What does it even mean to move slowly in our culture? How can we possibly do it?

I woke up exhausted again yesterday morning. So far my attempts at a 5 am wake up have been miserable. I’m trying to go to bed at 10. Usually what that means is I’m almost done with whatever I’m doing at 10 so I let myself get a few more things done. Then I get ready for bed. Then I read. Then I fall asleep around 11. (Or 11:30.) Turns out waking up at 5 am is too early if you miss bed time.

But what I haven’t done is let go of some of the load. I haven’t let go because I don’t know how to. But my word for 2013 is Enough. There is Enough Time in each day for the things that are important. I’m choosing to believe that. I want to believe that the enough I have to give is actually enough.

Can I reshape my life into something slow enough that my pace actually cultivates space for rest? Can I move at a pace that helps me recognize that I’m a lot less important than I think I am? Can I practice real humility, the kind that reminds me what is actually true around me: that I am so deeply loved that I don’t have to be in control? Can I make space for peace and stillness simply by asking God to change my heart?

Over the past two weeks as I’ve felt God speaking “Enough” to my spirit, I’ve felt so much more aware of how I hurry and how my rushing from thing to thing is shaping my kids. Brooksie has decided he hates being put into his carseat. He has decided he wants to take his very sweet time climbing into the seat, looking around, thinking about turning around, then actually plopping onto his bottom before I lock him in. This process takes around three minutes. If I rush him, there is screaming: back arched, face bright red screaming. It’s not worth the battle. And in those moments when time is passing and I’m fuming: “Brooksie, we are late. You need to sit onto your bottom right now!” I’ve felt God saying: Slow down, baby. Slow down, babe. God is saying slow down to me. Slow down in this moment. Right here. Let your child move at his pace.

And as I’ve stood still in the garage for 30 seconds longer, awkwardly trying to think of something to do for that unfilled moment of the day, I’ve laughed at myself. Seriously? I constantly lament not having time in my day for prayer! I wax long about the demands of motherhood and my inability to connect with God. In waiting for my children, I actually find time to pause, to breathe, to pray, to notice what I’m thankful for. The pace of children is a gift if I choose to let it be.

Slow down, babe.

As I write this, there is a little boy on the couch across the room whose mind is full of breathtaking ideas. Right now he’s a cheetah super hero who can turn into a puma through special magic power. Yesterday he cried at the playground when a kid named Ollie ran an elbow into his mouth beside the slide. My boy across the room is in batman pajamas with a cape attached. And when he runs down the hall, it flaps behind him like a sheet in the breeze in Spring. I can’t believe how beautiful it is.

Can I see the world (and my place in it) by standing still every once in a while and letting is float past me?

There are a lot of questions in this post. But maybe the answer is pretty simple.

I keep thinking of Lincoln in that hallway. And when I do, I slow my steps. I walk like a person who is really not that important after all. I walk like my being on time or getting whatever it is done does not make me more or less loved. I am whole because of Christ.

I can walk slow because I am enough.

Thanksgiving in their words…

November 21, 2012 By michaboyett

This is a repost from last Thanksgiving. But how can I not post it again?

“Country Home” by suziebeezie (Pinterest via Andrea Duffy)

“It is impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear.”

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

“[The] dinner party is a true proclamation of the abundance of being–a rebuke to the thrifty little idolatries by which we lose sight of the lavish hand that made us. It is precisely because no one needs soup, fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert at one meal that we so badly need to sit down to them from time to time. It was largesse that made us all; we were not created to fast forever. The unnecessary is the the taproot of our being and the last key to the door of delight. Enter here, therefore, as a sovereign remedy for the narrowness of our minds and the stinginess of our souls, the formal dinner…the true convivium–the long Session that brings us nearly home.”

-Robert Farrar Capon The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection

“What will our final perspective be on all these hours? The hours of work, the hours of wealth, the idle hours, the hours of failure and self-doubt? Who stands up and divests themselves of this body of work? Who lets go of all these accomplishments, these so-called failures? Do we look back on the wealth acquired from the acquisition, the poems published and admired, the house built and sold, the land farmed and productive, or do we see the drama of the acquisition, the beauty in the act of writing itself, the happiness the house can contain, the love of the land and the sky that nourished it?…

It is the hidden in our work that always holds the treasure. A life dedicated to the goodness in work is a life making visible all the rich invisible seams of existence hidden from others. Good work is a grateful surprise.”

-David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

“Thanks be to Thee, Jesu Christ,
For the many gifts Thou has bestowed on me,
Each day and night, each sea and land,
Each weather fair, each calm, each wild.

I am giving Thee worship with my whole life,
I am giving Thee assent with my whole power,
I am giving Thee praise with my whole tongue,
I am giving Thee honour with my whole utterance.

I am giving Thee reverence with my whole understanding,
I am giving Thee offering with my whole thought,
I am giving Thee praise with my whole fervour,
I am giving Thee humility in the blood of the Lamb.

I am giving Thee love with my whole devotion,
I am giving Thee kneeling with my whole desire,
I am giving Thee love with my whole heart,
I am giving Thee affection with my whole sense;
I am giving Thee existence with my whole mind,
I am giving Thee my soul, O God of all gods.”

-taken from the Carmina Gadelica, found in The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious imagination, by Esther De Waal

“You have survived the winter because you are, and were, and always will be very much loved,” said the sun. “For that small place deep within you that remained unfrozen and open to mystery, that is where I have made my dwelling. And long, long before you felt my warmth surrounding you, you were being freed and formed from within in ways so deep and profound that you could not possibly know what was happening.”

-Mary Fahy, The Tree that Survived the Winter

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
for his love has no end.
Let the sons of Israel say:
‘His love has no end.’
Let the sons of Aaron say:
‘His love has no end.’

–Psalm 118, as translated in The Benedictine Handbook

Scrolls

by Brooks Haxton

So will I compass thine altar, O Lord: That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving. (Psalm 26)

Thine altar is to me this bathtub
where my four-year-old twin
girls tip back their heads.
They close their eyes.
I read their faces from above,
in trust and fear, in holiness,
heads tipped until the waterline
has touched their hairlines, cautious.
Look: their hair flows underwater
like the scrolls unfurled in heaven.

from Uproar: Antiphonies to Psalms by Brooks Haxton

(Emphasis mine, where in bold. Also, I’m taking a Thanksgiving break. See y’all on flip side!)

May 26, 2012 By michaboyett

{Practicing Benedict} Prayer and Anything Worthwhile

“My words are addressed to you especially, whoever you may be, whatever your circumstances, who turn from the pursuit of your own self-will and ask to enlist under Christ…” (From the Prologue, the Rule of St. Benedict) Beginning today, we’re starting a new Wednesday series about what I’ve been learning over the past two years…

{Practicing Benedict} Nothing harsh or burdensome

Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it has meant to me as a stay at home mom. (Full disclosure! I’m no expert on Benedict or the Benedictine Order. I just love him/them and can’t seem to stop reading books that have “Benedictine” in the title.) “In the guidance we lay down…

{Practicing Benedict} The God who comes

{Practicing Benedict} Nothing More Important

Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it is teaching me about life as a stay at home mom. “Count nothing more important that the love you should cherish for Christ…Don’t harbor in your heart any trace of deceit nor pretend to be at peace with another when you are not; don’t…

{Practicing Benedict} Your hope of fulfillment

Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it is teaching me about life as a stay at home mom. “Your hope of fulfillment should be centered in God alone. When you see any good in yourself, then, don’t take it to be your very own, but acknowledge it as a gift from…

{Practicing Benedict} A reputation for holiness

Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it’s teaching me about motherhood and the praying life… “No one should aspire to gain a reputation for holiness. First of all we must actually become holy; then there would be some truth in having a reputation for it…” (St. Benedict’s Rule, Chapter…

{Practicing Benedict} When love is obedience

Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it’s teaching me about motherhood and the praying life… “The first step on the way to humility is to obey an order without delaying for a moment. That is a response which comes easily to those who hold nothing dearer than Christ himself”…

{Practicing Benedict} When it is best not to speak

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and…

{Practicing Benedict} Humility

“Holy Scripture, brethren, cries out to us, saying, ‘Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled,and he who humbles himself shall be exalted’ (Luke 14:11). In saying this it shows us that all exaltation is a kind of pride, against which the Prophet proves himself to be on guard when he says, ‘Lord, my heart is…

{Practicing Benedict} Lord open my lips…

“During the winter season the office of vigils begins with this verse recited three times; Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. To this should be added the third psalm and the Gloria. Then will come the ninety fourth psalm chanted with its antiphon and after that an Ambrosian hymn, followed…

{Practicing Benedict} Seven Times a Day

“The words of the Psalm are: I have uttered your praises seven times during the day. We shall fulfill that sacred number of seven if at the times of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline we perform the duty of service to God, because it was of these day hours that the psalm…

{Practicing Benedict} It should normally be short.

“If in ordinary life we have a favour to ask of someone who has power and authority, we naturally approach that person with due deference and respect. When we come, then with our requests in prayer before the Lord, who is God of all creation, is it not all the more important that we should…

{Practicing Benedict} On rising immediately

“All should be prepared to rise immediately without any delay as soon as the signal to get up is given; then they should hurry to see who can get first to the oratory for the work of God, but of course they should do this with due dignity and restraint. The young should not have…

{Practicing Benedict} The greatest possible concern

“As for the abbot or abbess, they must show the greatest possible concern with great wisdom and perseverance to avoid losing any one of the sheep committed to their care. They should be well aware that they have undertaken an office which is more like the care of the sick than the exercise of power…

{Praciticing Benedict} The Sacred Vessels of the Altar

“All the utensils of the monastery and in fact everything that belongs to the monastery should be cared for as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar…” (The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 31). If we aim to live as monks, then what else is our home but the monastery? Full of people…

{Practicing Benedict} The work of God

“When the time comes for one of the divine offices to begin, as soon as the signal is heard, everyone must set aside whatever they may have in hand and hurry as fast as possible to the oratory, but of course they should do so in a dignified way which avoids giving rise to any…

{Practicing Benedict} How Lent should be observed in the monastery

“There can be no doubt that monastic life should always have a Lenten character about it, but there are not many today who have the strength for that. Therefore we urge that all in the monastery during these holy days of Lent should look carefully at the integrity of their lives and get rid in…

{Practicing Benedict} Work and Prayer and Rest

“Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore all the community must be occupied at definite times in manual labour and at other times in lectio divina.” (The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 48) One of the things that makes St. Benedict’s Rule so significant in the canon of ancient Christian writings, is that he…

{Practicing Benedict} A post about monks and errands and eating

“Any who are sent on an errand which will allow them to return to the monastery on the same day must not eat outside, in spite of pressing invitations whatever their source, unless the superior has approved this..” (The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 51) Oh, the errands! There are the errands and the falling…

{Practicing Benedict} Receiving Guests, Receiving Christ

“Any guest who happens to arrive at the monastery should be received as we would receive Christ himself, because he promised that on the last day he will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me… As soon as the arrival of a guest is announced, the superior and members of the community should…

{Practicing Benedict} When new clothing is issued

“When new clothing is issued, the old should be immediately returned to be put in store for distribution to the poor. Two tunics and two cowls should be enough for each member of the community to provide for night-wear and for laundering. Anything more than that would be excessive and this must be avoided…

{Practicing Benedict} Do not disappoint me…

“When the decision is made that novices are to be accepted, then they come before the whole community in the oratory to make solemn promise of stability, fidelity to monastic life and obedience … Novices must record their promises in a document … Each must write the document in his or her own hand or…

{Practicing Benedict} Offering the Child

“If parents who are from the nobility want to offer to God in the monastery one of their children, who is too young to take personal responsibility, they should draw up a document like that described above and, as they make the offering, wrap the document with the child’s hand in the altar cloth…

{Practicing Benedict} Compassion and Sober Judgment

“The abbot or abbess, once established in office, must often think about the demands made on them by the burden they have undertaken and consider also to whom they will have to give an account of their stewardship. They must understand the call of their office is not to exercise power over those who are…

{Practicing Benedict} Gentle Piety, Warm Charity

At the entrance to the monastery there should be a wise senior who is too mature in stability to think of wandering about and who can deal with the enquiries and give whatever help is required. This official’s room should be near the main door so that visitors will always find someone there to greet…

{Practicing Benedict} The Good Spirit

“It is easy to recognize the bitter spirit of wickedness which creates a barrier to God’s grace and opens the way to the evil of hell. But equally there is a good spirit which frees us from evil ways and brings us closer to God and eternal life. It is this latter spirit that all…

{Practicing Benedict} The Finale: A Beginning

The purpose for which we have written this rule is to make it clear that by observing it in our monasteries we can at least achieve the first steps in virtue and good monastic practice. Anyone, however, who wished to press on towards the highest standards of monastic life may turn to the teachings of…

Do Not Easily Leave: A Small Reflection for a Friday

July 22, 2011 By michaboyett

“Someone asked [St. Anthony]: ‘What must one do in order to please God?’ The old man replied, ‘Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.’”

(From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward)

Some wise sayings are easier than others. Or at least they seem that way. You know I love the ancient faithful, those who followed Christ at great cost: the mystics, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the monastic heroes, whose lives have taught us how to be people of prayer and humility.

And so, I’m stuck on the saying above, words that have pricked me and that offer no ease to my modern soul. St. Anothony says: You want to follow God? 1) Don’t let God out of your line of vision, 2) always live in light of the scripture, and 3) Stop moving everywhere, Micha! Seriously, pick a place and live there.

I can’t stop coming back to the idea of stability around here. The Benedictines commit to stability for life. And then I sit around reading books about them while moving myself and my family all over the country every two years. Something about my “love” for the ancients doesn’t add up. I’m reading about the Desert Fathers (St. Anthony in particular) in Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart right now. St. Anthony did leave the place in which he lived. But he left it once and spent the rest of his life in the desert, making a calling out of solitude.

Part of me wants to laugh when I read about solitude or stability or even reflective prayer. How am I supposed to seek solitude when I have a baby my body feeds every three hours, who can’t sleep without my touch? How am I supposed to pray in paragraphs when all the time my 3-year-old allows is one sentence brain spurts?

And how am I supposed to “please God” (according to St. Anthony, of course) when I have left the places I’ve lived over and over and over?

I began this blog because I feared I was losing my spiritual earnestness due to the tangible needs of motherhood. I had some inner nudge that there is a deep answer to motherhood found in monastic life—that underneath the constant emotional and physical demands of raising babies, there is room for the sort of faith of the monks. I have this kernel of belief that if I keep holding my mother-calling up to God my time is going to be redeemed, my depth is going to be expanded, my soul is going to ease out of the scrunched wad it often feels like it’s in.

St. Anthony says: “Don’t easily leave it,” these places we’ve lived. He also says, “always have God before your eyes.” Neither is easy.

Becoming Small

April 12, 2010 By michaboyett

Glee is my dream show. I love musicals. I love silliness. And I love high school. No. Scrap that. I did not love high school when I was in it. But, somehow, high school people became my career. And I love high school people…which means I’ve spent a LOT of time in and at high schools since leaving the one I attended in the nineties.

So, when I watched the Mattress episode (this past weekend…we’ve been catching up on Hulu), in which Rachel poses for every club photo in her goal of total club domination, I couldn’t stand how much I loved it. I was Rachel in high school…accept way less talented and probably less annoying because I tried not to talk so much. But the earnestness? Yes. The awkward yet almost cute clothes? Yes. The longing to be in every club humanly possible? Yes. However, Rachel and I had different goals in mind. Her goal was to get her photo in the yearbook on every page in order to prepare for her future singing and acting career. My goal was to be in every club so that I would win the most awards possible my senior year. I’m not joking.

It worked. I won a LOT of awards. And then high school was over and no one has any memory of who was “Senior Girl of the Year.”

I’ve always had an obsession with being exceptional. That’s why I struggle as a stay-at-home mom. I want to be someone of significance, someone important. Now, if you’d like to, you can start whispering emotionally in my ear about how significant I’ll be in the lives of my children and I can nod my head and smile and say, “Yes, that’s true.” But your explanation won’t be enough for me. I would rather be important in the lives of thousands of children. I would rather get streets named after me and live a life that inspires. My need to be affirmed by you is the sign of something much deeper in me, something broken.

I’ve had a sticky note on the wall above my desk for the past four months that reads: “Accept my own smallness.” That’s the phrase David Robinson uses in his book, The Family Cloister, to describe humility. St. Benedict defines it in his Rule as being “convinced in our hearts that we are inferior to all” (Chapter 7). It’s one of the most important daily monk steps I’ve been incorporating into my life since I left full time ministry and began to stay home with my son. I would rather not be inferior to all…or I would at least like you to think I’m awesome for acting like I’m inferior to all. But daily motherhood is the perfect incubator for accepting my own smallness. I’m caring for one little boy in a world full of people who need care. There’s no one around to watch and admire my skill. August is not going to remember much of these days at home with me. So, I wipe his bottom and help him brush his teeth. I build towers and sing songs. And, nobody knows.

For a long time, I thought of humility as being something like an “Ah shucks,” attitude (as Dennis Okholm describes it in Monk Habits for Everyday People). When people said good things about me, I was supposed to shrug my shoulders and pretend like their praise meant nothing.

What I’m learning is that underneath my actions and even my own knowledge of myself, I need to believe that my value lies not in what I accomplish, what I read, or what I have to say. It’s not even about how good I am at being a mom. My value is found is a secret place in the center, where I begin to recognize that I’m lovable because I’m loved by my Creator. I have value because I’m valued already. I’m unique because my life is worth Christ’s life, because I’m already loved apart from my actions.

Benedict says humility is a life-long practice, like every other spiritual process. I’m not going to learn it through a step-by-step program. I’m going to learn it slowly by changing diapers and buying groceries and letting myself be small. Or, as Michael Casey says in his Guide to Living in the Truth, “Humility is a very slow business if it is authentic.”

How is your life forcing you into that authentic process of becoming small?