In "Disorderly Disciplines," an article published in the May 2007 Christianity Today, Jenell Williams Paris makes a compelling argument for child-rearing as a source of spiritual disciplines -- a source usually neglected in the 2000 years of Christian history. Christian spiritual writing has been mostly done by either men (who have rarely if ever changed a diaper in their life) or celibate woman (same deal with the diapers). Monastic experience doesn't always translate to family life, especially when children are factored in.

Paris proposes some of the following as spiritual disciplines:

• Breastfeeding: "It's the most disciplined thing I've ever done...every three hours, around the clock, for nine weeks.... Breastfeeding is my daily office."
• Diaper-changing: "cultivates endurance."
• Crankiness: "can nurture quick forgiveness."
• Exhaustion: "calls for humility and community."
• Babies: "provide unlimited chances to live in gratitude and joy."

Men (substituting bottle-feeding for the breast) can practice these disciplines as well. However, the underside of this argument, as my fiancée pointed out, is that, if one isn't careful, promoting the value of child-rearing by women (as noble as that is), can subtly (or unintentionally) undermine women returning to the workplace after giving birth -- another practice that is needed to continue chipping away at institutional sexism.

In an surprisingly related story, Patricia Bennan, an ecologist, has just published an article about duck genitalia. Male scientists studying ducks had long noted (no pun intended) that male ducks sometimes have an extremely large phallus. But, enter a female scientist, and you get a different lens, new questions, and new discoveries: "Gazing at the [male] enormous organs, she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before. 'So what does the female look like?' ...Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.'" And, indeed, "When Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. 'There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals,' she said. Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before." That somehow being what happens when you don't have women in charge.