Browsing category: Chapter 31-Qualifications of the Chef

  • Helpers For The Chef

    Household Chores

    If the community is rather large, he should be given helpers, that with their assistance he may calmly perform the duties of his office.  Necessary items are to be requested and given at the proper times, so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in the house of God. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.17-19)

    Who wants to do chores? Isn’t it demeaning, a waste of talent, for an educated person to pick up dirty socks off the floor? If there’s one thing that drives people away from domestic life, it’s the perception of household tasks as endless drudgery.

    Is the drudgery in the tasks themselves, or in the disdain with which people view them?

    A functioning household depends on these mundane, routine tasks. What happens when family members consider them unimportant and undesirable? Whoever does them receives not thanks but contempt. Someone who has worked hard without any recognition eventually from sheer discouragement gives out. Pride, resentment and humiliation damage the fabric of the family. When the members of the household despise the very things that hold it together, sooner or later it falls apart.

    So even if you can afford to hire outside helpers, everyone should still participate in chores, according to ability and opportunity, but not according to rank or privilege. Parents should lead by example to show that the household itself is worth maintaining. There is no formula except to aim for some balance of fairness intrinsic to the family. The willingness is all. Each person contributes cheerfully to a worthwhile enterprise.

    Children like to be helpers, and the problem when they’re little is that they so eagerly make all sorts of mistakes. It’s easier to do the thing yourself, but it’s important to take the time to include them. They need to learn not just the skills but the crucial principle of active participation.

    It’s true that most households have to manage limited resources. But ultimately those resources and the children themselves belong to God. Parents are not owners of their children but stewards of souls entrusted to them for formation. Children are not chattel, and parents are not at liberty to dispose of them like property. Parents who use their children like objects will answer to God for what they have done, and for what they have failed to do.

    Since everything that exists is sustained by God and belongs to him, we are all helpers accountable to him for what he has entrusted to us. But the steward of God is not a slave. Nor is God an employer who is just scraping by himself, squeezing everything he can get out of those he controls. God’s resources are limitless, and he promises to come alongside and be our Helper.

    When your home is a pleasant place to return to, glamor does not lure you. Home is your refuge. You can refrain from excess and be generous toward those in need.

    The trick is to be content. This is the whole end game of the domestic life and the thing that eludes so many unhappy people.

    Contentment is a spiritual state. But it’s also about managing your resources, so that you’re not constantly pushed to the very limits of your strength.

    Which is why, again, you need helpers. The goal is not to survive on your own without depending on anyone. The goal is to live happily together, sharing life’s burdens and joys.

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  • Good Taste

    He will provide the brothers their allotted amount of food without any pride or delay, lest they be led astray.  For he must remember what the Scripture says that person deserves who leads one of the little ones astray [Matthew 18:6]. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.16)

    The chef serves. When you take charge of the food, you assume the role of a servant, and in this you imitate Christ. If you resent this role and complain about it, you teach your children to despise and resent service to others. You set them against Christ, who came not only to serve but to feed us.

    God designed us to eat daily, and what we eat, we taste. The sense of taste offers the first of comforts to the newborn and the last of consolations to the dying. You can be blind, deaf and immobile, yet still taste, and feel refreshed.

    So the formation of taste is important. Lots of things are edible, but not all digestible things are healthy. If you teach your children that healthy food tastes disgusting and that unhealthy food tastes delicious, you form in them a self-destructive habit of thought. You set inclination against principle.

    This is folly. The sinful aspect of a guilty pleasure never deterred any but the most devout and self-controlled among us.

    Far, far better for a happy life is to align inclination with principle, so that the healthy food is also delicious. Then the unhealthy loses its power of appeal.

    Disgust is a visceral reaction, orders of magnitude more powerful than any reasoned argument. If something disgusts you, not only will you not want it: when someone tries to push it on you in the name of pleasure, your revulsion only increases. The person who tries to tempt you with a disgusting thing becomes repulsive herself.

    This is how the formation of taste plays into the formation of morals.

    Children are mimetic. They will mimic your actual behavior. If you tell them that sodas are unhealthy and off limits, but then they observe you guzzling sodas every chance you get, they will conclude that sodas are desirable but forbidden.

    But if you reject sweet drinks yourself when you could have them, your children will notice what you choose instead and reach for that.

    The problem is that you’re up against powerful forces in this world, all dedicated to making unhealthy foods alluring. The only possible way to train children in good taste is to provide them with good food regularly, as a matter of course, as the norm. Make a case for healthy food by ensuring that what you serve is also tasty.

    But don’t ban sweets or anything else as evil. Beware the trap of the forbidden fruit that human beings will crave exactly because it’s mysterious and off limits. Let children taste everything, so that no food or drink inspires awe. Let them become connoisseurs, and invite them to judge for themselves. One day you’ll find that your children’s standards are higher than your own. You will have set them on the right path, and they will outstrip you.

    An ordinary Christian household is neither ascetic nor gluttonous. There’s a time to fast, and there’s a time to feast. If you get this balance right, you will have calibrated the dynamic between inclination and principle that will influence all of your children’s decisions throughout life.

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  • Character Of The Chef

    Temperate Definition

    There should be chosen from the community someone who is wise, mature in conduct, temperate…. If any brother happens to make an unreasonable demand of him, he should not reject him with disdain and cause him distress, but reasonably and humbly deny the improper request….knowing for certain that he will be held accountable for all of them on the day of judgment. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.1-9)

    The cellarer is the person in charge of the food. It may come as a surprise that St. Benedict required this person to possess such a long list of interior traits. We’re accustomed to discerning the qualities of the food, not the qualities of the chef.

    So, is the person in charge of the food really carrying out a moral task? Does this job matter to God?

    St. B decisively affirms that the tasks associated with food are intimately tied to principles of charity and hospitality. So, the person in charge of the food is nurturer and host. A community rests on these pillars.

    But such lofty qualities seem far removed from the experience of raising children. They are constantly making unreasonable demands as to what they want–or don’t want–to eat. If you always give in to their demands, you train them to be selfish. On the other hand, if you enforce rules angrily and impatiently, you drive them away from the family table. How does a human being get from the howling chaos of infancy to the temperate maturity of happy adulthood?

    If you want your children to develop good habits, you’ve got to work on your own habits. This means that you make wise choices about what you eat yourself. Think of yourself as the mature version of what your children will become. Do you need to correct your own behavior, for their sakes? Temperance is the virtue of refraining from excess. Too much food, but also too many restrictions are intemperate.

    So, Mom does not open a bottle of wine every afternoon just before the kids come home from school. Likewise, she does not eat excessively. She is not irritable or doctrinaire, not impatient or tyrannical. She is not lazy or wasteful, but views her stewardship of the food budget and meal planning as work done before God. In other words, she is a saint.

    In order even to want to aim for this standard, you must actually believe that there is a moral quality to the food habits of your household. It’s not that food has any moral value in itself. But food habits form the foundation early in life for all other forms of consumption.

    In short, the goal is for the children to internalize good principles so that they willingly make healthy choices and eventually become responsible adults. To get there, they have to learn to make temperate decisions. This is a project that takes years of effort and perseverance. If you can do this, you can do anything.

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