Well, like so many Catholic bloggers this Lent and last, I am planning to give up blogging for Lent. I figure, everyone will lose interest & forget about me and my sitemeter stats will drop, but vanity is certainly not a good reason enough reason to stop me. I may get blogworthy ideas, but if they don't keep, perhaps I will focus on other things. Which brings me to the ambiguity. . .
No doubt I will miss blogging, and reading blogs (since that occupies more of my time than writing), and I will feel cut off from the community and the friends I have found, but when I considered posting about this a few days ago, I was thinking about my reasons for giving up blogging. Do I think that by giving up blogging and blog-reading, that I will devote more time to prayer, meditation and contemplation? Will this sacrifice bring me closer to God? Not to shock the Catholic blogging community, but no. Not even remotely. Not blogging will not make me saintlier, and that was nowhere in my motives for giving it up. Which caused me to pause. Was I giving up blogging the way others (like myself in the past) give up favorite food items--because it'll be healthier overall, kind of hard, and perhaps have the unanticipated benefit of weight loss? Well, it was true that I figured I would make my life more productive--I would be focusing on what I really should be doing--taking care of two little girls, a big brother, and (dare I say?) my husband and the house, working on the dissertation, and working for my assistantship--but isn't this more of a New Years resolution? Perhaps not, since I don't want to give it up permanently, but going cold turkey might help me regulate it more when I start back up after Easter. But isn't the Lenten sacrifice about turning back to God and making oneself holier? Reading the Catholic blogs probably makes me think about God more in a given day, albeit in a more cerebral or smug way (depending on the blog--mostly the ones whose authors don't read mine) than humble and spiritual. Well, this is what I figured. . .
I have talked a bit about vocation on this blog, here and there, from time to time. I am certainly called to motherhood and marriage, but there is this small matter of the dissertation, and the fact that I need to complete it in order for my family to move on from here, and for us to be able to pay the loans that have allowed us to pay the other bills and. . . well, you get the idea. And as for the argument (and I've seen it around the blogs) that the husband should be the provider, sometimes you have you go with the person who can do the narrowest job search instead of trawling the country for any job within a certain salary range for which one is qualified, and moving one's family accordingly. So the way I figure, the dissertation, at this point in time, is part of the family vocation. And, well, blogging is a kind of guilty pleasure in the middle of all of this. I really need to channel my creative energy into the dissertation, and these 40 days or so of Lent give me a chance to do that in an intense way, with few distractions. So how does this relate to a path to holiness? Because it relates to my vocation. And perhaps even to discernment of vocation, which I see as an ongoing process, though we've got to be settled sometime, right? My family just can't keep waiting indefinitely for the rest of our lives to begin.
So perhaps I will discover some spiritual elements in the pursuit of intellectual activity that is the dissertation, instead of the pursuit of intellectual activity that is the blogosphere for me. And perhaps by getting closer to my family vocation, I will move closer to God. Or maybe this is just my rationalization to force myself to do some work this Lent. You decide!!
P.S.--I will still be doing email, so if you feel like emailing, I wouldn't mind! (Please email me!!) ;)
P.P.S.--I will still be updating the family blog.
11 comments:
For starters you might check out the post Darwin takes issue with, here:
http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2008/01/unequal-pay-for-equal-work.html
But I see it from time to time: the assumption that a traditional family is one in which the husband works to support th wife and children, Now, to be fair, there is truth in this, qtd. by Melanie:
"prior to the feminist revolution not even men understood work as a way to self-fulfillment, an end in itself. Men understood work not as an end, but as a means: a way to have a family, a home, a neighborhood, a place and a community to come home to and be a part of."
http://www.thewinedarksea.com/comments.php?id=1286_0_1_0_C
I think there's a lot of truth in that...
But I'm not sure it's a Catholic thing. It's more a conservative Christian thing. When it's the mother advocating staying home, I'm generally fine with it and support their choices. But I've read a lot of men who seem angry about women encroaching on their territory who would use religion to justify their insecurities and bias.
Having said that, I believe that children thrive most naturally in an environment in which the person caring for them is doing so out of real affection for the child(ren). That's not to say they can't also thrive in a day care setting--children are remarkably adaptable. It just means that do so most easily when surrounded by their families more of the time, especially when they're young. But then, most of you who read this blog already know my opinion on the matter!
Okay, those links again:
http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com
/2008/01/unequal-pay-for-equal-work.html
http://www.thewinedarksea.com/
comments.php?id=1286_0_1_0_C
Do note that Darwin disagrees with the rather bizarre argument set forth by Zippy that has nothing at all to do with Catholicism.
Incidently, I think the Catholic position o the family has to do with the inherent differences between men & women, maintaining and strengthening the traditional family, and recognizing the family as the Domestic Church. However, Church teaching on these matters does leave a lot of room for interpretation & discernment.
Church teaching on these matters does leave a lot of room for interpretation & discernment
Right again you are. Isn't it great being a Catholic? By the way, in all my rantings I forgot to tell you this: Happy Lent and happy hiatus!
-LilyBug
If Lent shakes us up and makes us think about our priorities, then it's a pretty good thing.
It's gonna be a long one, ain't it?
Yup.
Just for anyone who might be trying to make my post into a platform for their own ideas only to delete them later, the following was not something I was using as an argument for or against anything, it was just an interesting point: that "prior to the feminist revolution not even men understood work as a way to self-fulfillment, an end in itself." Perhaps somewhere there were men who lived to work rather than working to live, but that likely wasn't the norm--at least if they liked their families. Of course, work has always been an escape for those who did not like their spouses and couldn't handle their children. However, I'm not sure that was what was being considered here. And in the future, C/Lilymom/John, if you want to hijack my blog and turn a perfectly amicable series of comments into a snark fest, do me a favor--DON'T.
I don't make a habit of deleting comments, but when they're not well-intentioned and completely off of the post, I reserve the right!
Sorry, I really didn't mean to be snarky. And, I really did admire the content of your post. You know I just get riled up when the issue of womanhood, work and Catholicism all interconnect. I'll keep mum in the future :).
-C
"And, I still don't get the point here. Was it women, then, that forced men and women to realize that work can be satisfying as well as productive? Too bad men hadn't figured this out before? Geez. This argument makes men sound pretty darned stupid as far as I'm concerned."
C,
You're definitely missing the point that I was trying to make (I can't speak definitively for the original author). Though to be fair, when words are taken out of context that's easy to do.
The point, as I see it, is a pretty basic philosophical one: that we should never confuse something which is an end in itself with something which is a means to an end.
Yes, work can be satisfying. I don't see this passage as denying that. And throughout history I am certain there have been countless people who have found satisfaction in their work. But to say that such satisfaction is the purpose of work, its telos or end, is to distort the meaning of work and its proper place in human life.
What does "self-fullfillment mean? As a Catholic, I'm going to have to say the purpose of human life is union with God. That's our proper end and the only means to true fulfillment. If you disagree with that basic premise, then the rest of the argument is pretty much meaningless anyway, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Work was never meant to be the purpose of human life or the primary end for which we live. (That's one of the reasons why God established the seventh day as a day of rest, it's a sign that reminds man of the supernatural order and the necessity of placing work in the proper context.) The proper end for man is God and only in seeking God will we find ultimate fulfillment. Though work is necessary for human survival and while it can be a means by which we seek our union with God (ora et labora), we should never mistake it as the way in which we will find our true happiness.
For single people and especially those living a consecrated life, their work can become a primary vehicle for union with God, but for married people the Church teaches us that the family is always their primary vocation and that other work should be placed in service of the family.
I'll agree that to lay all of the blame for contemporary society's distortion of the meaning of work at feminism's door is overstating the case. But I do think that feminist rhetoric has often pushed both men and women in the wrong direction. I certainly had the impression growing up that a job should be more than just a way to provide for ones needs, that it should in some way be my identity.
lc,
I'll miss the blog during Lent. I always look forward to seeing what you have to say. But I understand your priorities and it sounds to me like you're doing what you need to do.
I grew up learning (from my family, not from society) that work should be consistent with one's identity--so my mom would have never asked me to be a lawyer, for example, even if she considered that I would be good at it, if what I really wanted to do was write poetry, for example. I learned early that work should ideally be something we enjoy. But my mother's priorities rested (and rest) with her family, so I never thought that one should take precedence over the other. Quite the contrary, I learned to resent those who would judge a woman's (person's?) worth according to their earning power.
As Melanie suggests, I was focusing on the "work as a way to self-fulfillment" not being true for men historically as it is now for so many women.
Thanks, Melanie, for the explanation. The idea of work being "in service of the family" is a great tidbit--one that I will hold onto. It makes sense in terms of what I've been trying to articulate to myself & on the blog.
I will miss reading your posts and comments, too! Hopefully, I will have good things to report when I return!
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