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PDF versionThe 'buying diapers, keeping cheerful' quest
by Melissa Musick Nussbaum on May. 27, 2010
You say, “I’m not religious, but I am spiritual,” and then I head to the bar. I’m not spiritual but I am religious.
I know people who “do” Hopi rituals when they raft the Colorado River. They want to get in touch with Hopi spirituality, something perhaps best done by living among Hopis on the Black Mesa reservation in Arizona. But that involves land disputes, poverty, and high rates of obesity and diabetes.
I know Gentiles who pray covered with a tallith. They want to get in touch with Jewish spirituality, something perhaps best done by living the Jewish life.
Here’s the problem for those of us who want only the spiritual life: The life of the spirit and the life of the body are one. Any attempt to separate one from another does violence to both.
Take the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), for instance. They televise several versions of the rosary daily. One is of Mother Angelica, back when she was ambulatory, leading the sisters in prayer. Her voice is pitched to that of a crabby neighbor yelling, “You kids get off my lawn.” If she had a Texas drawl, Mother A. would sound a bit like my mother when she barks, “Get me my cane.” This isn’t a beautiful sound but it is a real sound, a voice cracked and corroded by age, by life.
Then it comes time to introduce the next mystery, and a cultured British voice pipes up, all plummy clipped consonants and broad vowels. “The Lord,” God’s name pronounced with an ‘r’ that seems to melt into its surroundings, “is with thee.” The voice makes the angel sound like Queen Elizabeth opening Parliament.
Is an upper-class British accent holier? Is it something like the way Alistair Cooke’s sonorous introductions of “Masterpiece Theatre” made us feel farther from “Gilligan’s Island” and closer to art? Does it get us in touch with the spirituality of the rosary? Of Mary?
But the rosary is a plain prayer, a prayer for workers in fields and kitchens, offices and factories. It’s the regular guy’s Divine Office. It belongs to the woman on the bus with the shopping bags and the metal rosary ring, the sort of woman on whose aluminum siding Mary is most likely to appear. And it ought to sound like the people whose prayer it is, and not like the people whose prayer we wish it were.
The EWTN voice reminds me of the days when my soon-to-be husband was a student at the University of Notre Dame. We’d go to Mass there, the fit and young together, praising God. It was, I used to say to Martin, just exactly the body of Christ I would choose if I were in charge.
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The Communion procession at my parish looks nothing like the one at Notre Dame. We’re a lumpy bunch, halt and awkward, weary and beloved. We don’t look like a recruiting poster for anything except, perhaps, mercy.
It is full-bodied spirituality, with a paunch and gel sole inserts.
My spiritual practices these days are bodily practices. I care for my small grandchildren -- keeping Lucy at home while her mother teaches, helping in Luc’s kindergarten class, reading aloud to Anna’s preschool class, driving to Denver for Eamon’s Grandparents’ Day -- and I care for my aged mother.
Digestion looms large. There are piles of soiled clothing to be washed. I check, and treat, a lot of rashes, bumps, bruises, cuts and swellings, some of them in embarrassing places. Though not, in truth, embarrassing for those in my care -- young and old -- who seem to share an Edenic view of nudity. Noses run and eyes tear and throats grow hoarse, and coughs, no matter how often I caution, “Turn away” and “Cover your mouth,” spew germs into the air like wedding rice. “Spit up” is a noun and a verb in my life.
I wipe faces, wrinkled and smooth. I speak softly to waking babies and loudly to my mother. I buy diapers in the widest possible range of sizes and shapes. I coax people born in different centuries on how to use the phone. Luc begins talking the moment I hand him the phone. I have to caution him to wait for someone to greet him. My mother looks confused at the phone-that-looks-nothing-like-a-phone in her hand and asks again, “What button do I push?”
I cook a dark green vegetable at every supper to help stabilize the Coumadin levels in my mother’s blood. I keep hot dogs in the freezer and rice cereal in the cupboard and bananas in the fruit bowl. Food for the toothless and the almost so.
I try to be patient. I try to be cheerful. I try not to overuse chips and salsa as psychotropic medication. I ask for help to see my mother through God’s eyes and not my own. I ask for wisdom.
At the end of this month, my oldest sister and I are taking our mother to Muleshoe, Texas, to visit her sole surviving sibling. My sister says it will be “Thelma and Louise Drive Miss Daisy.”
I remind her that Thelma and Louise were last seen driving off a cliff.
It will not be a spirit quest, though it may turn into the clean, handicapped-accessible bathroom quest. It will not be a spiritual trip, but it will be a good trip. My mother and her sister will look at pictures and discuss, again, how mean Aunt Maxine was to Pa. I will wonder, again, about the statute of limitations on family wrongs, real and imagined.
And when my mother snaps, “Where is my purse?” in a tone that suggests I have stolen and hidden it, I will think of Mother A and the sisters praying the rosary, plain as mud fences, and I will be glad.
[Melissa Musick Nussbaum is a writer, speaker on church and liturgy, and coauthor, with Jana Bennett, of Free to Stay, Free to Leave: Fruits of the Spirit and Church Choice.]
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After Pentecost, we bring you a week of Spiritual reflections
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Thank you, Melissa, for this
Thank you, Melissa, for this great article. The days are long in my house also and sometime I do not see the forest for the trees. I also ask for wisdom and was happy to hear that you do that too.. Again, Thanks,
Ginny
Good thoughts. About that
Good thoughts. About that trip...watch for highway signs that say 'Hospital' for those accessible restrooms.
You're welcome, Melissa!
You're welcome, Melissa!
It is good there are folks
It is good there are folks that please God in so many ways.I will be thinking of you when I am changing my wife's Depends & ostomy pouch as we wander down dementia lane together.Not exactly my choice for our "golden years",but at least it is never boring.
Bill
Dear goodness me, now that is
Dear goodness me, now that is a lesson on contemplation in action.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the
I have thoroughly enjoyed the new M.M. Nussbaum blog. She has hit the nail on the head. A truly human look at the People of God sans all of the enforced dualism. A fine look at, what I have always called, "Our Lady of The Holy Asssortment." Kudo's, once again, for your choice of Melissa Musick Nussbaum as an NCR contributor!
I laughed, I
I laughed, I cried...Melissa's column was Musick to my ears and (Nuss)baum to my soul...
Congratulations on the
Congratulations on the addition of Melissa Musick Nussbaum to your line-up.
I can't recall when I have read anything so sound in the pages of NCR.
Does this mean that you are reaching further out to what I'll call the John
Allen contingent? What a refreshing move that would be!
Beautiful essay. Thank you!
Beautiful essay. Thank you!
Thank you Melissa for your
Thank you Melissa for your refreshing music! From a Missionary of Africa old enough to be retired and yet caring for a community of ten senior "workers of the Gospel"!
Jean-Pierre Chevrolet
CH 3968 Veyras (Switzerland)
Alas, I'm getting to be more
Alas, I'm getting to be more and more like her mother and Maxine. I thank God daily for he love and patience shown to me by my son and dear daughter in law. . . . especially my DIL.
Thank you for sharing you
Thank you for sharing you embodied spirituality...one of the better things I have read this week. Your life caring for those at opposite ends of the continuum of life with love, great patience amid moments of grumbling and exhaustion is your own version of the rosary.
Reading in this article, about the humorous (at least to me) process of praying the rosary on EWTN, I thought about another similar humorous experience I had. I always had great difficulty praying, in particular the rosary. However I remember very clearly that the light went on for me when I read what Martin Buber was getting at with his concepts of "I" and "Thou". My mother tongue, my first language is German, and when I read Buber's German version and realized that it was good to address God as "Du". "Du" is the most informal word of address in German, and also the worst social offense never to be used for people of stature, certainly not used to address God. However, for the first time I really got "it". Praying to God, addressing him as "du" made all the difference. God became accesible to me in prayer. God ? Studying Liberation Theology, I learned that God is found among the poor and among the ordinary. God is also found in the day to day very ordinary, mundane and often "dirty" work of wiping noses, changing diapers and cleaning up yet another spill. Finding God in mystical union in the silence of a cloistered environment is a real vacation in comparison to touching God in the hard daily grind of living among God's demanding children.
I almost did not open this article with its title "buying diapers, remaining cheerful" but am glad that I did. I'm inclined to want to wrap myself in a prayer shawl and meditate in silence. However, I can relate to the author's life as I am a grandmother who helps out in the busy lives of her family. "Buying" as well as "changing" diapers has been a part of my life for over 15 years now. At the moment, we are in the process of potty training the last of our 8 grandchildren. When that milestone is met, not having to "buy diapers" will give his parents both unexpected pay raises, which will make them cheerful and for which I hope they will also thank God.
Melissa, am certainly
Melissa, am certainly enjoying your articles. Congratulations and blessings to you and Martin for all the work you have done for the Lord. Amarillo and St. Mary's misses you. Hard to believe you are grandparents! Deacon Bob and Madolyn Gutierrez
Oh, how you speak to us, the
Oh, how you speak to us, the women of the "oreo" generation.
Thank you.
Melissa, you have beautifully
Melissa, you have beautifully captured the idea of seeing/experiencing God in everyday life. You are living the Gospel in the trench of the daily routine (or lack of routine) and that is, at times, the hardest place to be Christ-like. Thank you for sharing.
A lovely column about (some
A lovely column about (some of) the realities of daily living. But I don't get the easy slap at people seeking some sort of "spirituality." Sure the Rosary is a plain prayer for the regular guy. But a lot of regular guys and gals say it because their parents and grandparents did so. It can be, like so many religious rituals, an expression of culture and upbringing with hardly any spiritual dimension. Other people may not have such rituals to cling to or fall back on or may find themselves seeking something else. Their Hopi rituals may be clumsy and inauthentic in many ways, but people who genuinely seek some sort of spiritual connection can be just as earthy, lumpy and weary as the folks in your Communion procession.
Because words reflect our
Because words reflect our conepts and because words form our concepts -- I draw attention to the use of the word "diapers" that Melissa says she buys for her mother and for her grandchildren. Older adults who are incontinent wear incontinence pads or briefs. Babies wear diapers. To use the term 'diapers' for older adults can lead to an infantilization of the aging person in our mental constructs and in our relating to older adults who are incontinent. There is a profound sacredness to each stage of life. Humor is important and may get us through the day. But the gift of companioning our mothers, our wives, our fathers our husbands or our sisters and brothers is one that reveals to us the gift of the other to us -- in the past and just as ceretainly in the present.
The Sacred Ordinary...I love
The Sacred Ordinary...I love it. Thank you Melissa.
Deep Peace and Every Blessing to you.
Dear Melissa: Thanks so much
Dear Melissa:
Thanks so much for this. It's lovely. I've been saying "I'm not spiritual, I'm religious" for years. I lived in Berkeley CA for 11 years! Yes, the bar is the right place to head in the face of some of this stuff. And of course, Native American women were having fits at Catholic feminists for appropriating their rituals decades ago. My husband and I just came back from a week with our 3 and 5 year old grandkids; that you do this sort of thing every day is breath-taking. Awesome, as the kids say. Keep writing. It's an inspiration.
Some days, most days, we live
Some days, most days, we live the gospel as best we can all the time hoping
even praying that tomorrow we will do it better ....remembering that in all
this is the "stuff" of sanctity. As Benedict charitably reminds us " God loves
everyone with a depth and an intensity that we can hardly imagine...knowing all our strengths and all our faults...In this great love God challenges us
to change and become more perfect." Bless the daily challenges that come from living with each other...they are more precious than gold.
That is a great article!
That is a great article! Thanks so much for it! God Bless!
We have humor, ladies and
We have humor, ladies and gentlemen. Hallelulia. It's a nice break from the often grim earnestness on NCR.
Thank you, Melissa, for your
Thank you, Melissa, for your practical down to earth guidance on the real lives we live, and the real spiritual work we must do in those lives.
Dear Melissa, It's good to
Dear Melissa,
It's good to hear you. I just found your blog and am trying to read up on your articles. They are very sweet. I loved this one. God bless you.
Your cousin, Lisa
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