Family Monastary: Work

 I absolutely hate cleaning out the dishwasher. It is the household task I hate the most.  I would rather clean toilets, scrub floors, vacuum out a car, fold laundry, etc etc rather than clean out the dishwasher.

And yet, I do it several times a day.

I often ask the kids to do it, but now that they are in "school" or sitting in front of screens all day trying to learn things, I do it several times a day.

Much of parenting these people involves mundane labor.

I doubt I have many readers who don't have chldren or who don't know what is involved in the caretaking of children but it is a lot of cleaning, reminding, picking up, setting up, cleaning, reminding, picking up setitng up, organizing, planning, picking up, setting up, wiping up, and on and on and on.

Caretaking of small children is so mundane and undervalued our society tends to hand the work off the the less valued of society (messed up!) immigrants, women of color, and the general poor.  As though these folks aren't doing highly valued work (they are!). 

Christian monks live a life around the 2 values of prayer and work.  The work of monks, though, is often profoundly ordinary.  Farming...keeping bees or tending fields and gardens.  For some it some sort of cooking- making chocolates or breads or jams or beers to sell and earn income for the monastary.  For others it might be caskets or baskets or simple woodworking or whatever.  Monks engage in work that is not neceesarly congnitively enriching. Monastic labor is simple work, sometimes hard, often boring and also vital to their community.

This too is the labor of parenting.  Simple work, sometimes hard, often boring, and vital to the family.