If you don’t automatically start singing the theme song to Wonder Pets when you read the above words, you either 1) Don’t have a toddler or 2) Are a much better parent than I am and don’t allow your toddler near the brain sucking powers of Nick Jr. But, alas, I’m a TV girl. I always have been, no matter how much smarter I know I’d be if I just turned the TV off and read in the evening. So,... Read more
Making the shift from normal life into a Benedictine monastery is shocking. It’s frightening. It stuns. I’d driven four and half hours from my parent’s home to get to the monastery last week, music on, a couple of sermons talking at me. And then I pushed through those thick wooden doors. I’d expected the quiet; I’d even longed for it. But the shock of monastic life is exactly that. Its reality is scary in the way that being thrown into... Read more
It is Thankful Tuesday and I, after having been MIA for almost a week, am back in San Francisco (along with the post-family-visit-blues). This past week has been wonderful, packed with some amazing niece and nephew time, one good steak, one smothered fajita (I’ve got to stop eating like a 20 year old. Seriously. It’s over.), one daring drowning rescue in the baby pool (special thanks to my brother Brooks for snatching my son out while I sprinted in slow... Read more
Hi. Chris here. Micha asked me to publish Alysia’s post while she’s at the monastery, but I didn’t listen and published it too soon (big surprise). So, rather then getting a post a day, you got two yesterday and none from her today. Sorry! After reading Alysia’s post on the Geography of Home I thought of CS Lewis’ essay, The Weight of Glory, and how Home is such an elusive notion. Here is the passage in mind. In speaking of... Read more
I’m honored that my dear friend, Alysia Yates, agreed to share some of her fascinating brain with us. She’s a stay-at-home mother of four and somehow still manages to make me jealous with her reading life. I’m always impressed with how creative her home is…it’s full of stories and imagination and sword-welding pirates saving princesses. And I love the hospitality of her home. She’s the ultimate Mama Monk, living as the wife of a beloved pastor (ours in Philly, and... Read more
For the rest of the week I will be off (by myself!) at a Benedictine monastery near my parents’ home: writing, praying and hanging around monks. I’m pretty excited. So while I’m off in Benedict-land, I’m honored to have two dear friends of mine stepping in to guest post at Mama:Monk. Amanda Fleming Kolman and I shared a dorm room for one glorious year at our cheesy Baptist college, where we, the ultimate of church girls, laughed like crazies and... Read more
I’ve spent my life loving the mountains. Growing up, if the Boyetts took a vacation, it was to New Mexico or Colorado for a camping trip. And if my brothers were fishing, I usually flocked behind them, clutching my fly rod as best I could. I’ve always been terrible at fly-fishing, never really learning how to tie a fly onto my leader, pathetically holding out my rod to my dad so he would do it for me. But I have... Read more
Dear friends, I’m writing from a cozy cabin in the mountains of Colorado. I’ve spent the past three days with my parents, brothers, sisters in law, August, and all his super cool cousins. It’s been a good, exhausting trip and I’m sorry to say that I have very little insight to give you on this late Sunday night/early Monday morning. Though I will say that “Cousin Camp” in the mountains is the ultimate in the kind of “slow” childhood I... Read more
Today, while zooming through a profile piece on an artist and mother in the New York Times, I came across a new parental catch phrase that seems to ring true with my husband’s notion of “idle parenting,” as he defined it in Wednesday’s post. That notion was artist Karen Kimmel’s reference to “slow parenting.” She described it as “the idea of making time to be a parent. We so undervalue our time, say yes to too many things and have... Read more
This past Tuesday morning I faced my hiccupping, wet faced two-year-old nose to nose. It was time for a serious talk. The problem? Week three of hysterics when faced with the prospect of his once a week drop off art and play time, aka “School” (something he’d loved before we went on family vacation last month). August’s teacher had said he could bring something “special” this week in hopes that it might help him overcome his anxiety. He and I... Read more
Micha Boyett
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