Day 6: my monastery is my minivan

 A good friend gave me a book entitled "My monastery is my minivan. " to be perfectly honest,  I haven't opened it yet.  It sits on my nightstand daily reminding me of two things.  One,  I am joyfully looking forward to a season of life where I can read more and two,  there is something very holy about the rituals of daily life. 

It is easy to simply do all the things - laundry, dishes, school work, sweeping,  cooking, making beds, washing hands and faces, changing diapers and etc again and again and feel like it is a futile repetition of chores that endlessly trap me in some sort of domestic prison. Especially now, when like rapunzel, I have little contact with the outside world. 

But, if I shift my narrative and view my daily routine as a cycle of service,  a simple monastic discipline of faith, I can find purpose and call in this season that is holy and noble. 

Raising the next generation is tedious work. Motherhood is tedious.  But it is holy and noble. Wearing grace and peace and meditation in the daily chores teaches unspoken lessons to my children.  I'm not perfect at it,  but rededicating myself daily to the call of motherhood opens my heart to that rhythm of grace. Making our home a sacred space for love, acceptance, grace, peace and sanctuary. 

I recently posted a plastic playground on Facebook for free.  The boys had outgrown it and it was time for it to bless another family. Within minutes, I had a long line of mothers reaching out, hopeful to at it to their spaces for their Littles.  They would disassemble, lug, clean, prepare a space and finally set up the new playground in their sacred spaces. Nurturing their Littles. 

I was reminded of the monasteries all over. The rituals of morning cereal and snuggles, the selfless act of holding a toddler while peeing, the 800th time crawling under the table to clean up cheerios. In this, we live out our call to be the face of Christ to the smallest and meekest. 

I think about other seasons... where my call is at my profession. Living out God's purpose through meetings where I show up with a stake in making the world better, supporting colleagues, prayerful in my commute.

Our monasteries are waiting for us in the mundane rituals of our every day. They can serve as prisons of mindless motions or rich tapestries of faith living out our calls in the unequisit ordinary of life.