My Monastary is a Minivan: Where the Daily is Divine and Routine Becomes Prayer is a collection of essays on the topic of mothering written written by Denise Roy, who is the mother of 5. The essays, covering a myriad of topics, are written in a conversational tone that many contemporary mothers could identify with. The author writes very candidly and references a wide variety of spiritual practices which make her writings appeal to women of all faiths and backgrounds.
I must confess that I had high hopes when I got this book from Loyola Press (a Catholic publisher) and read the title. I am always on the lookout for books about achieving holiness while deep in the trenches of motherhood. Especially since I’m currently so far from it :).
Unfortunately, I just didn’t like it that much. First, she was what a lot of women call ‘real.’ As in, she doesn’t sugar-coat the frustrations that exist in being a mother. A few of her stories were quite funny but after a while I felt like she either didn’t like being a mom or was writing them after a long period of time where she could become detached about the subject of the essay. I read the book twice and still couldn’t put my finger on why I felt that way. Suffice it to say, I had a hard time identifying with her.
Then I hit the essay where she declared that she got her Masters of Divinity and thought that when the Church opened the priesthood to women she would be first in line. I’ve read it twice and still can’t figure out if she still thinks that. I tried to not let that color my opinion, but I also couldn’t get past all the references to alternative spiritualities that she references, either. She mentions zen teachers, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan nuns and monks, Buddist monks and other spiritual leaders.
The first half of her book is rather what I expected given the subtitle–daily divine and routine prayer. As it goes along, however, it starts becoming a lot less catholic and a lot more eastern religious and then toward the end, I just see a lot of pain and no real explaination of the divine or spiritual in it. There were also some things that just dumbfounded me (like singing “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” with bedtime prayers) and I just wasn’t able to get past them.
So for good reasons or bad, I just couldn’t love this book no matter how much I wanted to. If, like me, you are an orthodox Catholic mom looking for stories that inspire deep love for your vocation and appreciation of the church, well, this isn’t the book for you. But it’s an excellent book for women who are mildly spiritual of all faiths–she mentions all sorts of spiritual practices so it’s hard for me to imagine someone calling her preachy. I imagine if you are extremely orthodox in any religion, this may not be your cup of tea.
This book was provided for review by the folks at Loyola Press.
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