Encouragement from Deuteronomy

Today's reading contains a passage that has been meaningful to me at different points in my life. These are the words of Moses to the children of Israel, before entering the Promised Land where they would be engaging in battle:

If you say to yourself, "These nations are more numerous than I; how can I dispossess them?" do not be afraid of them. Just remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. Moreover, the LORD your God will send the pestilence against them, until even the survivors and the fugitives are destroyed. Have no dread of them, for the LORD your God, who is present with you, is a great and awesome God. The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to make a quick end of them, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you. But the LORD your God will give them over to you, and throw them into great panic, until they are destroyed. (Deut. 7:17 23)

We can only apply these promises to areas of our lives in which we are obeying God's clear direction, but if we are, what encouragement is here! I think of the numerous nations as the many obstacles that we surely will encounter as we obey. But He says not to fear them! He says, instead, to remember all the ways that He has delivered us in the past, and to understand and believe that God will defeat these new enemies in the same way.

Moses reminds us that our God is a great and awesome God, a God who is present with us--so mighty and powerful, yet near and available to us always! May our intimacy with Him never cause us to forget his power and authority over all things.

Finally, I love Moses' explanation that God will not do these things all at once, "otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you." How often we would love to "make a quick end" of our problems! We may not appreciate what God may be protecting us from by clearing them away "little by little"--at a hen's pace, so to speak. This passage reminds me to be patient with circumstances, with myself, and with others, and to trust in God's timing.

In Other Words...

"No distinction was made between the sacred and the everyday...their life was all one piece. It was all sacred and all ordinary."

~ Sue Bender ~
author of Plain and Simple

No matter how fulfilling our careers or our families may be, most of us can't escape what Kathleen Norris has called "women's work." Finding the sacred in the ordinary is somewhat of a preoccupation of mine. I could have had careers or part-time jobs, I could have written articles or maybe even books, I could be serving my church and my community to a much larger extent--but I'm homemaking and homeschooling six children, day in and day out, and hoping I don't regret it. I don't want to regret not making the most of these years. I don't want drudgery to rob me of the joy of each present moment.

So I surround myself with older, wiser women who show me, in the midst of the ordinary, how to open the window into the sacred. Women like Josephine Moffett Benton, the author of The Pace of a Hen. Her metaphor--actually it's Teresa of Avila's--is one I'm borrowing for this blog and for this season of my life. Women like the poet Kathleen Norris, author of The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work, The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace and Dakota. I've shared their insights before, on Mary and Martha, Washing Dishes and Worship, a liturgy of the delicious orange, and Work As Love Made Visible.

From Gerard Manley Hopkins (as quoted by Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries):

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.

From Josephine Moffett Benton in The Pace of a Hen:

If one feels this sacramental quality in daily living every piece of work can become a consecrated act. It is not too difficult to pray on one’s knees as a floor is scrubbed, “Wash me, O Lord, as I wash this floor, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Awakening from sleep can be woven into a beginning prayer for the day: “As I stretch my body and limber my joints for the day’s tasks, thou O Lord, make my spirit supple and ready to accept whatever the day may bring.” Again, a prayer of thanksgiving for the first refreshing cold water of the morning: “As this water cleanses the sleep from my eyes, cleanse thou the sins of selfishness and pride and fear from my being. Pour upon me the water of life.” And then in the act of dressing: “Clothe me in the garments of righteousness.” Prayers so brief can run through all the day’s activities. They can be simple, symbolic, spontaneous, based upon the needs and acts of the day.

From Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries:

This is incarnational reality, the sanctity of the everyday…. Laundry, liturgy and women’s work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import…it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit.

Work is Love Made Visible

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feed but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
--from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (as quoted in The Pace of a Hen)

“Work is love made visible.” And it truly takes the love to make the work good. It may be love of God outflowing in service to others—nursing the sick or building cathedrals. It may be love of people—husband, children, mother, friends, so that clothes are made, houses swept, books written, motivated by warm human love.

It may be love of the beautiful that produces the long hours of work required to write a poem, carve a statue, or keep minute bouquets of flowers freshly arranged. The best work is probably that prompted by all sources of love.

My favorite example of love deliberately made manifest is the Mother Currier quilt story. Each year as Christmas drew near, her sacramental offering to the Christchild, and the crowning gift of all her many kindnesses of the year, was a quilt, hand-pieced for some baby who otherwise might lack sufficient warm covering. That is not strange, you say, many good hearted women have taken many stitches to cover the naked. The phrase, love in every stitch, is a common place one. But Mother Currier was able to plumb an even deeper level, for her discipline was—a loving thought back of every stitich. If any least thought of irritation, or resentment, or ill will in any relationship slipped into her heart, she laid aside her handiwork, until she was calm and serene and loving. No sounding brass or tinkling cymbal was sewed into her stitches to mar a baby’s sleep. Who can guess how much more was done unto the least of these, because of the wholeness of her gift. (from The Pace of a Hen, Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961)

The quilt story always reminds me of the time I watched a demonstration of icon "writing" (we think of it as painting). The writer explained that the whole process is begun and sustained in prayer, and if she was unable to stay focused in prayer as she painted, she would lay down her brush. I looked online just now, and found this beautiful prayer before starting work on an icon. I also found these interesting notes here:

it is said that icons are not painted, they are written

the writer ‘prepares himself’ before starting to work, with going within and staying within, fasting, prayer and with the way he lives his life

icons are windows, gates and mirrors to ourselves showing us 'something' of who and what we are

icons communicate an unseen divine reality, beyond logic and thinking

icons form a part of Liturgy, which means ‘the work of the people’

icons are venerated for what they represent, not as objects as such

an icon is an embodiment of prayer; it is made with prayer and for prayer

painting icons is also called Work

Lord, may my Work of writing on human hearts be performed with love and supported by prayer. Forgive me when I bake bread with indifference...when I crush grapes grudgingly. May my daily work be love made manifest.

Washing Dishes...and Worship

A few days ago, I shared one of my favorite sections from The Pace of a Hen (Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961). There Ms. Benton described an accepting attitude toward our responsibilities that lightens their burden. These two little anecdotes are from that section, and they have always been meaningful to me:

Casual remarks are often so much more character-forming than all our carefully thought-out speeches. How deeply we need to be good and whole and honest. I can still see the country kitchen, the brown patterned ironstone ware, and the old aunt who said to the do-less little girl beside her, “I like to wash dishes.” No sermon was preached, but those five words summed up a not-to-be-despised way of life.

I used to ask the busy mother of six young children, “Don’t you get awfully tired and find you need to rest in the afternoon?” Because her work was the expression of her deep love, and because she had an inner rest so many of us know nothing of—“In Him I live and move and have my being”—she could answer, “Oh, I keep going, and I get my second wind.”

I think these pictures are helpful because we know we're not supposed to complain, but we honestly don't know sometimes what to think or say if it's not complaining! To find one task that we can honestly say of it, "I like to do that," can begin to change our whole mindset. Though I used to enjoy it more when there wasn't so much of it, I actually enjoy doing laundry--I like turning smelly hampers full of damp clothes into clean, neatly folded piles. (We won't discuss putting the laundry away.) I wonder if one reason I like laundry is that, when I was in high school, my dad once confided in me that he finds laundry a satisfying job! Now, what attitudes about work am I passing on to my kids?

I can relate to the busy mother of six, too, who says she just keeps going, and she gets her second wind--me too. It's nice to think that that second wind can come from a place of "deep love", of "inner rest" that has nothing to do with how much sleep I've had or haven't had!

(I'll go out on a limb here too, and say that I think Mental-Multivitamin is preaching the same message when she says of homeschooling--and of life: "It's. Just. Not. That. Hard." Benton's version is: "…whether [work] is hard or easy depends upon a woman’s feeling about the multitudinous, monotonous tasks that confront her each day...Work does not wear us out, but an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened very quickly produces a “cumbered Martha.” They're both saying that you can choose your attitude. That's also the point of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning...but that's another post.)

Ms. Benton goes even further, then, to say that our work can be worship:

When all work is done to the glory of God, Martha learns from Mary the blessed sacrament of the present moment.

If one feels this sacramental quality in daily living every piece of work can become a consecrated act. It is not too difficult to pray on one’s knees as a floor is scrubbed, “Wash me, O Lord, as I wash this floor, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Awakening from sleep can be woven into a beginning prayer for the day: “As I stretch my body and limber my joints for the day’s tasks, thou O Lord, make my spirit supple and ready to accept whatever the day may bring.” Again, a prayer of thanksgiving for the first refreshing cold water of the morning: “As this water cleanses the sleep from my eyes, cleanse thou the sins of selfishness and pride and fear from myt being. Pour upon me the water of life.” And then in the act of dressing: “Clothe me in the garments of righteousness.” Prayers so brief can run through all the day’s activities. They can be simple, symbolic, spontaneous, based upon the needs and acts of the day.

…Certainly, Mother Currier made the preparation of food a sacrament. “My children came home bringing other relatives and I did everything alone and became neither fussed nor tired. My secret feeling about preparing a Thanksgiving feast is that it should all be done in a spirit of worship. It isn’t stuffing a turkey and peeling onions, and washing celery; it is preparing food to place before people to remind them of all their unearned blessings on this day. Then there’s a high joy in having the food my strength and care have produced become a source of strength to those I love. In that way—a mystical thing perhaps—I become part of them.”

Another writer who has delved this idea of work as worship is Kathleen Norris, in her book The Quotidian Mysteries (1998), which Papa Rooster gave to me soon after it came out. I read The Pace of a Hen a year or two later, and found that Norris and Moffatt were saying many of the same things to women--though separated by 37 years and huge cultural shifts during that time.
For more from Norris, see here and here. (Highly recommended; inspiring reading.)

Mary and Martha--With a Twist

I've been promising that I would post some more quotes from The Pace of a Hen (Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961). Here's one of my favorite passages:

“A woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was cumbered with much serving; and she went to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and needful about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

This is a mere incident that took place as Jesus and his disciples “went on their way.” It was not told as a parable. It is not a principle that Jesus taught, saying, “Let them who have ears, hear.” This was a bit of eldering [instructing] done to fit an individual case. It wasn’t that Martha worked and got the meals on the table that was all wrong; it was that she was anxious and troubled. And it is not that the meals do not need to be prepared; it is just that Martha needs to be partly Mary and put first things first.

The incident might even have been reported in this fashion: A woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who worried and could not center herself. She sat at the Lord’s feet and questioned him and wearied him with much talking. But Martha was calm and sweet-tempered and went about her work preparing the meal with much serenity. Mary said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left us alone? Call her then to come and talk with us.” But the Lord answered, “Mary, Mary, you are anxious and troubled about your libido, about your dreams, about the progress of your soul. You waste my time, your time, and that of everyone you meet. One thing is needful, and Martha has chosen that good portion. She has accepted herself, and the frame in which she lives. She is receptive of grace and truth. She has learned to love and serve God and her neighbor as herself. This shall not be taken away from her.”

I was astounded the first time I read this chapter, having all my life heard poor Martha either villainized, excused or defended, to read this story in a new light. To think that it is our attitude toward work, and not the work itself, that is wrong when we are feeling anxious and cumbered by our responsibilities was a pivotal idea for me. I may not be able to control the amount of work before me--and it can seem overwhelming at times--but I can choose my attitude toward it:

…whether [work] is hard or easy depends upon a woman’s feeling about the multitudinous, monotonous tasks that confront her each day. She has the opportunity to choose one of the most creative roles in the world, or to exist as a toiling slave forever chained to household drudgery.

...A friend who came back from spending a vacation on a ranch related that her most enlightening experience of the summer was observing the unhurried and tireless work that seemed to continue all day and into the night. Work does not wear us out, but an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened very quickly produces a “cumbered Martha.”

I love the line from the "rewritten" story of Martha: "She has accepted herself, and the frame in which she lives." For me, the word "frame" is a multi-layered symbol. I think that Ms. Benton means it as something like a picture frame: the boundaries around the life of a woman. They could be constraints--having small children, being without a car during the day, having a husband who is gone a lot. They could simply be her realities: the husband and the children she has, or doesn't have; the distance she lives from extended family; the number and quality of friends she has, or doesn't have; opportunities she has or doesn't have.

No woman can find joy and fulfillment if she is expending energy railing against these realities or striving for the day when things will be different--she must accept the frame in which she lives, for the present moment at least. In this way, I think of "frame" also as meaning "time frame."

But a third meaning could be our physical frame. As women, our skeletal frames are generally smaller than those of most men, yet we are the ones who carry the children for nine months inside our bodies--and for years afterward we lift and carry them, though they grow heavier every day. We must accept the physical limitations of our frames and respect the body's need for rest and replenishment. If we don't, we're far more likely to fall into "an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened."

In a metaphorical way, too, many of us small-statured women shoulder Atlas-sized burdens. Accepting our frame sometimes means admitting that we can't do it all, all at once! We often think we are stronger than we are. There is a great relief--and a power--in confessing our weakness, our inadequacy to God, for "when I am weak, then I am strong."

For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
(Psalm 103:14)

Fans... Hens!

The Headmistress is also a fan of Josephine Moffett Benton's 1961 book, The Pace of a Hen!

In her archives are a number of posts related to it. She's collected them here.

I've been planning on quoting a bit more (I've already done so here and here and here) from this book myself, especially now that we've started homeschooling again and I won't have as much time for original material. So at first I was worried that she'd stolen my thunder! But the interesting thing is: she chose many excellent quotes, and a few overlapped with the ones I've already quoted, but mostly she hadn't touched the sections I was planning on quoting. It's a rich little book, though it meanders in circles a bit.... (Appropriate, don't you think?)

Grandma Was a Hen Too

We just returned from a family reunion in Ohio, celebrating together the life of and death of my grandmother. She was an amazing woman: beautiful, godly, dignified, hard-working. She lived a life of service to her Lord, family, friends, church, the unsaved, and missionaries--usually with a little twinkle of humor in her eye. She was a woman who grew remarkably more beautiful of face and spirit as she aged.

I heard many stories this weekend about Grandma, but one stands out. Her third child, my aunt, told me that as a young mother of two girls, Grandma went to hear a speaker at a church service and came under the conviction that she was holding back from God by not trusting Him in the area of childbearing. After that, they didn’t use birth control—and had three more children, my aunt and two uncles. “And I’m certainly glad of it!” my aunt said.

Looking around the room at my extended family, I was glad of it too--and impressed with the legacy that Grandma had left. Five children, twelve grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren (so far)—and all of them walking with the Lord. The wives of my brothers and cousins (my only other married girl cousin was unable to be there) are all such beautiful Christian women, helping to raise another crop of Christ-followers. It was a joy to celebrate Grandma’s life with the generations gathered around and underfoot and to hear the testimonies, at the funeral home, of spiritual children as well.

How fruitful she was: her children, her gardening, her canning and freezing, her sewing, her letter-writing to encourage friends and missionaries, her organ-playing and other service at church, and her evangelizing. Working at the pace of a hen--a few seeds, stitches, words or musical notes at a time--what a harvest was produced!

Her hands and her quiver were full when she was my age, even as mine are with six children. A friend always reminds me, “You can shoot those arrows farther and in more directions than you yourself can go.” Looking around at Grandma’s legacy, listening to the stories of how they are serving God in big and small ways all over the country, I was encouraged as a parent and as a believer. For myself and for all Christian parents, our days may be difficult, but there is such a future in what we do; such hope, such promise, such blessing, such reward.

On Balance (from The Pace of a Hen)

I've been putting off posting this quote till I figured out how to do this...but you're going to have to imagine labels on the four poles of the cross image: Prayer at the top and Recreation at the bottom, and Work and Family on the sides. It would also be nice if you could imagine it appearing down towards the bottom of this quote from The Pace of a Hen where the cross is mentioned....

If the purpose of existence is to be useful, to exercise one’s particular gift, to grow more loving, to increase in awareness of beauty and goodness, to be ever more thankful for the miracle of life, many selves seem to be required for such fulfillment. There may be one self who wants to bake golden loaves of bread, wash the kitchen shelves, weed the garden, use all the tangible domestic arts to create an orderly, well-provisioned home. A second self desires to lie abed in the morning, curl up all afternoon with a good novel, listen to good music, write stories, drink coffee, and laugh over the New Yorker. The third self is quite unhappy without the companionship of family and friends, without an outreach to those in trouble, or even a prominent part in the world of affairs. A fourth longs for solitude and an early rising that gives space in the day for prayer.

How can we pull together this divided creature? The bustling housewife! … Instead of worrying about her diverse interests, she can learn to give thanks for the richness of her existence, for the wholeness she may attain as she weaves together the varying selves of her feminine nature.

Out of the welter of pace and pattern the design that emerges is the old, old symbol, a cross. …The level of life on which women spend most of their time serving their families, friends, and community—that is the horizontal bar of the cross which seems to point in opposite directions but turns out to be all of a piece, with no separation between family and work. …Likewise the upright bar is unbroken. It can scarcely be determined where recreation which keeps life sane and joyful ceases, and spiritual renewal begins.

(The book was written in 1961--I guess "housewife" wasn't un-PC yet, and don't you love the New Yorker reference? I think a modern-day equivalent might be sitting at the computer in your pajamas reading blogs.)

The Pace of a Hen, Continued

More from The Pace of a Hen, by Josephine Moffett Benton (1961):

…I am always hopeful that the pendulum will swing back and that women will see again not only the necessity of a mother’s being at home, but also the infinite and rich choice in that occupation for women of all ages. Some will complain of monotony, but how few going out to a paid job have the opportunity to make their own schedules, to choose the routine of their week’s labor, to follow up creative interests that women have within the home…. Perhaps we would be more contented if we could realize that one of the few remaining free professions is that of housewife. If a woman resents being just a housewife, let her be called an artist, for the dictionary definition of that word is “one who works artistically;” furthermore, “the work of the artist is creative.”

...Instead of seeing this hard-working span of years as a time of disciplined growth, it is too commonly thought of as a time of intellectual stagnation for the young mother. Perhaps it is the rhythm of nature for her to be somewhat dormant during the nesting years, and right for her to take a vacation from solving the problems of the world. We let land lie fallow that it may later produce a more abundant harvest....

If only we are not in too great a hurry, and are willing to take even a hen’s pace to enjoy the opportunity to mature and grow through the ordinary family frame, we can be wife, mother, poet, musician, or whatever our gift may be.

What great descriptions of the season of motherhood: "a time of disciplined growth"..."the opportunity to mature and grow through the ordinary family frame." Nothing has pushed me toward spiritual maturity and growth like being a parent; nothing has taught me discipline more than homeschooling and managing a home with a large and busy family. (Discipline, she says, is "the organization of energies." That sure is what it feels like in my home!)

And how encouraging to think that following these creative, artistic, maturing years, there may yet await an even more "abundant harvest."

Psalm 128
Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways. You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table. Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD. May the LORD bless you from Zion all the days of your life; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem, and may you live to see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel.

The Pace of a Hen

Two years ago a friend mentioned to me the quote from Teresa of Avila that is in my sidebar and also the book that brought the quote to her attention, Josephine Moffett Benton's The Pace of a Hen (1961). The insights of this older, wiser Quaker woman have been such an encouragement to me in my attitude toward labor as a wife and mother. Here's an example of her perspective:

A woman...must walk a precarious way between her family, her work, her desire to be of service in the community, and her need for recreation and worship.

Her scattered life looks as if she were going around in circles. And why not? What other way is there to go, ultimately? The longest trip that we can set out upon...is to go around the world. And in time, we go around the year--spring, summer, autumn, winter. Within that larger cycle of time is the daily one--early morning, high noon, sundown, night. Each new day can bring redemption for us, even as each springtime brings renewal for tree and flower and grass.

Old earth is a sphere that travels around the sun, as the moon in its orbit travels around our earth. The very course of blood through our veins and arteries is known as the circulatory system. The emblem of divinity is a halo. Why disparage going around in circles? Any other route suggests imbalance, a jumping-off place, abyss. Perhaps the hen's pace is a wholesome one in rhythm with the universe.