It’s easy to mock the spiritual language that saturates today’s domestic discourses, but in fact, as Margaret Kim Peterson argues in Keeping House, there is something deeply theological at stake in housework. Peterson’s creative and compelling exploration of keeping house as a basic practice of the Christian life ranges from the practical (good knives should never be put in the dishwasher) to the spiritually incisive (if you think your house is too small, consider the ways in which, through practices ranging from fasting to marriage, “Christian tradition. . . has been inclined to see limits as a necessary component to human flourishing”; thus the cramped house may in fact be a place in which “to live out our dependence on God and our interdependence on one another”).
Contemporary Americans, argues Peterson, a professor at Eastern University, have been shaped by two different cultural conversations about housekeeping. The first tells us that housekeeping is sheer drudgery, that it is mindless, meaningless, and menial, and that if you possibly can avoid it, you should. At the same time, housekeeping has become fodder for fantasy””fantasy that sustains and is sustained by magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Real Simple. Such glossies tell us that housekeeping is not about “doing a good job at something that needs to be done.” Rather, housekeeping is an effortless exercise in fulfilling consumerism: buy this magazine/storage unit/boutique, organic cleaning product, and your house and life will be perfect. The truth is that housework is hardly effortless, and it involves, to be sure, some drudgery. But when viewed through the lens of the Gospel, rather than the lens of Better Homes and Gardens, housekeeping presents itself as a theologically meaningful site of Christian formation.
Peterson’s interpretation of housework is deeply scriptural. Keeping House is organized around what Peterson identifies as three crucial imperatives in the Bible””the injunctions to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless….
If one reads the prayers of the Celtic Christians, ancient and modern, one finds prayer for all aspects of daily chores, including prayers for working at the loom; for kindling the morning fire; for milking the cow; for fishermen putting out to sea and coming home again; for churning butter; etc. A lot of these were collected by Alexander Carmichael in the [url=http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/corpus/Carmina/]’Carmina Gadelica'[/url], in the 1890’s (check the section called “labor”). It was a shame he couldn’t also have captured the tunes to the songs as well. But the words are there.
So this is not a new concept, but it does need to be re-discovered.
Wouldn’t it be fascinating if all the energy invested by “traditionalists” on gays & lesbians was instead focussed on this ? An area that straight folks have much more ability to impact.
Bob,
LOL! Yup, you bet Bob – if they’d just stay home and clean house instead of going all political and working to stop the homosexual agenda in this country … LOL – keep the little woman in the kitchen! Don’t let them loose on the electorate!
Such chauvinism. You really can’t make this stuff up. LOL
Maryland Brian
Bob,
If your statement were true, then it would indeed be a good point. However, you know as well as everyone else the current struggle in TEC/Anglican Communion is not about homosexualiy, but about standing for orthodox, traditional Christian belief and practice.
Now, back to our topic:
Fisherfolk had a song back in their prime about praising the Lord in daily tasks. One verse I remember was:
Praising the Lord,
Praising the Lord
Washing the dishes, and
praising the Lord
MD Brian, how could Lauren Winner’s points be seen as chauvinism ?
Bob,
I was referring to your remarks, not the article. Your follow-on response is even more entertaining, as in, “I’m so tolerant I can’t even see my own bias.” What a hoot!
MD Brian