Family Monastery: Envy

One of the themese of our family that was gestating before Covid-19 and has emerged in full force amid Covid is the idea that our family is a monastery.

Sean's discernment to become a lay cistercian (monk) created a scenario where we were already talking about this. Now though, we are talking a lot about being in our own monastery.  We are thinking about ways that our kids become our superiors, ways that we are theres, ways that we foster community here, and ways that our lives are routinized around meals, prayer and work.  We are thinking about the mundane labor of family life and the ways that is sacred.  One of our nicknames for Esther is "little Abbess" as she seems to make decisions about a lot of things for us.  Anyway, I am going to write a lot about this in the next couple of months.

But today.

Today we were at the pool and Thomas was playing with some other kids. It was socially distant play and it was fine.  Anyway, those kids had some pool noodles. I saw for the first time in month a look on his face: envy.  I hadn't seen it in so long that I forgot what it looks like when your kid really really wants something another kid has.   It was a little bit heartbreaking.  I WANTED him to have a pool noodle too.

And, it occurred to me how being in Quarantine, and living this very cloistered family life, has distanced my children from the marketing that usually surrounds them all the time.  They don't watch TV with commercials, and almost never engage in any other screened devices they don't go shopping anywhere, and we don't even really hang out with other children.    So without fostering it intentionally, we have separated ourselves from the onslaught of "we need more" into a "we have enough" way of being. (I personally have not been so successful at getting out of this way of thinking).  

To be fair, envy has not left the buiding. As I write this there is a fight happening accross the room about a lego man torso. Apparently this torso is the shit because all 3 of the lego players want it.  The difference though that there isn't a story about the better thing being out there. The thing we want isn't something we need to buy or hunt for or whatever- the better thing is what we need to share.

This seems like a life lesson.

Something I desire to foster more.  And something I desire to pick up and carry from this wild time.