What Can We Learn From Martha and Mary? — Tileston on the Better Part
⏱ 13 min read
There is the version of the story you grew up with, where Martha is the busy one and Mary is the quiet one and the lesson is that you should be more like Mary. You have heard this lesson a hundred times. It has not, by itself, changed the way the late afternoon feels when there are still four things on the list and the people who live with you still need feeding and the small, persistent inward voice still says you should be sitting at His feet instead. The lesson has become a reproach. Mary is held up; you, in the kitchen, feel quietly indicted. The Sunday-school version of the story has been used against you for years.
This is the slow version. Mary Tileston, an American devotional editor who in 1884 compiled Daily Strength for Daily Needs — a year of slow readings drawn from the older voices of the church — would not let the story be used against you. She kept turning the lamp back on the better part phrase, because the way it has been preached has hardened into a small piece of household legalism. The better part is not the renunciation of the kitchen. The better part is an inward posture that can be carried into the kitchen. What can we learn from Martha and Mary in the Bible, read slowly with Tileston at your elbow, is closer to the woman in the apron than the Sunday-school version of the story let it be. The Everspring Devotional for Women in Their 40s was built around this kind of slow reading, if you want a place to carry the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
If the morning has been the time the busy thoughts are loudest, a quick morning devotional for the tired mom is the small companion piece. And if it has been the anxiety underneath the busy-ness that has been the actual problem — Christians and anxiety walks the older voices on the quieter root.
The Martha you actually are
Read the original story carefully and you will notice something the Sunday-school version flattens. Martha is not condemned. Jesus, in Luke ten, names what is happening to her — thou art careful and troubled about many things — and then names, gently, what is lacking. One thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good part. The word translated needful is the same word the Greek philosophers used for the one essential thing in any human pursuit. Jesus is not telling Martha to stop being Martha. He is telling her that the one thing — the inward posture, the better part — is the thing the activity needs to be done inside of. Without it, the activity becomes the careful and troubled shape Martha is in. With it, the activity becomes service that is not abrasive to the soul of the one doing it.
You know which woman you are. Most readers who pick up this article are Marthas. The Marys, in my experience, do not need the article; they are already at His feet and have been for years and are usually wondering whether something is wrong with their seeming inability to be useful in the kitchen the way the Marthas are. The article is for the Marthas. For you. For the woman whose hands have been full for so long that the one thing needful feels like a foreign language. Tileston, gently, would put the foreign language back into your mouth.
The first passage: steering safely through every storm
“And we shall steer safely through every storm, so long as our heart is right, our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God. If at times we are somewhat stunned by the tempest, never fear; let us take breath, and go on afresh. Do not be disconcerted by the fits of vexation and uneasiness which are sometimes produced by the multiplicity of your domestic worries.”
— Mary Tileston, Daily Strength for Daily Needs
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Tileston is quoting an older spiritual director — the passage carries the cadence of the seventeenth-century French school — and the audience is, unmistakably, a woman in a household. The multiplicity of your domestic worries. The original recipient was probably a young noblewoman with a large house and a small chapel; the passage has nevertheless travelled, through Tileston’s anthology, to your kitchen, your inbox, your end-of-day fatigue. The domestic worries clause is the part most modern devotional anthologies would have trimmed, and Tileston deliberately kept it. The domestic is the very ground the inward life is being grown in. The kitchen is not the obstacle. The kitchen is the soil.
Notice the first sentence. Four conditions for steering safely. Heart is right. Intention fervent. Courage steadfast. Trust fixed on God. None of them require leaving the kitchen. None of them are conditions only Mary at the feet can meet. Martha, in the apron, with the four things still on the list, can meet every one of them — if the better part has been sown in her inwardly. The steering is done from the same heart whether the hands are folded or are kneading bread. Tileston does not ask the Marthas to put down the bread. She asks the Marthas to make sure the heart kneading the bread is the heart of the woman at the feet, even while the hands are doing the kneading.
This is the part of the Martha-and-Mary teaching that has been quietly lost in modern devotional culture. The better part has been preached as a location — go to the feet, away from the kitchen — when Tileston, and the whole older tradition behind her, would preach it as an inward posture that can be carried anywhere the hands happen to be. The woman at the feet has the easier route. The woman in the kitchen has the harder route. Both can arrive at the same inward place. The harder route is the one most modern Christian women are actually walking, and the older voices Tileston anthologised understood that.
(If the morning has been the small entry point you have been quietly missing, a Bible scripture for the day walks ten different verses for ten different kinds of days, including the morning that is already two hours into the apron.)
If at times we are somewhat stunned by the tempest, never fear; let us take breath, and go on afresh. This is the merciful sentence in the middle of the passage. Tileston does not pretend the Martha-life is calm. The tempest is real. The multiplicity of domestic worries is real. The stunning is real. The instruction is not to avoid the stunning. The instruction is to take a breath and go on. The breath is the small inward return to the better part, in the middle of the kitchen, between the two next tasks. The going-on-afresh is the resumption of the activity — but from inside the recovered posture. Tileston is teaching a portable, fifteen-second devotional practice, hidden in a sentence most readers skim past. Take breath. Go on afresh. The whole better-part teaching is in those six words.
The somatic that goes with Martha’s body
Pause here. The Martha-body is a particular kind of body. The shoulders are up. The hands are moving even when there is nothing in them. The jaw is set in the small unconscious tightness of the woman who is mentally pre-running the next three tasks while her hands are still on the current one. The body of the careful-and-troubled woman has its own posture, and the posture is so chronic it has become invisible.
Sit somewhere quiet for a moment, even if somewhere quiet is the corner of the kitchen with the kettle off and the door closed. Put both feet flat on the floor. Lay one hand lightly on the place between your shoulder blades — or, if you cannot reach it easily, lay the hand at the base of the throat, where the small unconscious tightness usually sits in the Martha-body. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale — slower than the inhale, until the lungs are almost empty — let the held place soften by a small fraction. Not a full release. A fraction. Tileston’s take breath, and go on afresh is exactly this. The breath is the better part entering the apron. The going-on is the activity, taken back up inside the recovered posture.
Then take the hand away and read on. The body learning to soften, even by a fraction, in the middle of the kitchen, is a small piece of the better part already happening. Martha is being re-formed inwardly by the fifteen-second pause. The kitchen is not abandoned. The kitchen is, slowly, becoming the ground the better part is being grown in.
The middle: the devotional the slow practice has its home in
The slow reading you are doing right now is the shape of the Everspring Devotional for Women in Their 40s. One short passage a day. One slow turning of one phrase — take breath, and go on afresh, fix our trust on God, abide steadfast — over in the heart, in the corner of the kitchen, between the two next tasks. Room on the page for the honest evening sentence, the one Tileston would have approved of, about where the careful and troubled was loudest today and where the better part surfaced anyway. No pep. No checklist. The format of this article, walked one short page per evening, for the woman whose hands have been full for a long time and is ready, slowly, to let the inward woman come back online inside them.
The second passage: abiding steadfast and clinging simply
“Whatever happens, abide steadfast in a determination to cling simply to God, trusting to His eternal love for you; and if you find that you have wandered forth from this shelter, recall your heart quietly and simply.”
— Mary Tileston, Daily Strength for Daily Needs
Read it twice. The second reading is where the verbs land.
Notice the verbs. Abide. Cling. Trust. Recall. All four are quiet verbs. None of them are the verbs of performance. None of them are the verbs the Martha-mind reaches for. The Martha-mind reaches for manage, complete, organise, optimise. The verbs Tileston anthologises are the verbs of the better part. They are interior, slow, repeatable. They do not require putting down the apron. They require, instead, a small inward turn — repeatable as often as the heart has wandered.
Recall your heart quietly and simply. This is the merciful line. Tileston knows the heart will wander. She does not ask for a heart that does not wander. She asks for a heart that, when it has wandered, can be quietly and simply recalled. The Marthas have been taught, by a thousand small Christian-women messages, that the wandering itself is the failure. Tileston, anthologising the older voices, would correct that gently. The wandering is the structure of the careful-and-troubled life. The recall — quiet, simple, undramatic — is the practice. There is no shame in the wander. There is only the small repeated return.
For the Martha in the kitchen, this is what the better part actually looks like in practice. Not a single dramatic moment at the feet of Jesus once a week. A hundred small recalls a day. The recall when the kettle whistles. The recall when the email arrives. The recall when the child interrupts. The recall when the small wave of resentment rises about the unfair distribution of the household labour. Each recall is the better part choosing itself, quietly and simply, in the middle of the multiplicity. Mary’s posture, scattered into a hundred small Martha-moments across the day. The two sisters reconciled, inside the same woman, by the repeated quiet return.
(For the sibling Tileston piece on a woman whose obedience required the same kind of inward steadiness, what can we learn from Mary mother of Jesus is the close companion. And for a woman whose praying was the better part embodied even when the answer was long delayed, what can we learn from Hannah’s prayer walks the slow obedience of a woman whose hands were full and whose heart still found the inward shelter.)
The third passage: the peace serene and holy
“In the heart’s depths a peace serene and holy / Abides, and when pain seems to have its will, / Or we despair,—oh, may that peace rise slowly, / Stronger than agony, and we be still.”
— Mary Tileston, Daily Strength for Daily Needs
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly. The verse is a small Victorian hymn, four lines, and the meter is doing its own slow work. Let the meter slow you.
The peace, the verse says, abides in the heart’s depths. Abides — Tileston’s favourite verb, recurring across the anthology. The peace is not produced. The peace is already there. The peace is the better part sown in the soul at conversion and growing quietly through the years of small Martha-days. The work the verse describes is not the manufacturing of the peace. The work is the slow rising of the peace from the depths, in the moments the pain has its will or the woman despairs. The peace was always there. The grief, or the fatigue, or the late-afternoon fog of the multiplicity, brought it up.
This re-frames the Martha story entirely. The better part is not absent from your kitchen. The better part has been sown in you — in the day of your conversion, in the years of small faithful practice, in the slow accumulation of the small recalls. It is present in the depths. What the careful-and-troubled life does is keep the surface so busy that the depths cannot rise into the surface. The slow practice is the practice of letting the depths come up. The fifteen-second pause. The hand on the throat. The breath. The recalling of the heart quietly and simply. Each of these is a small thinning of the surface, so the peace that has been abiding all along can rise.
Oh, may that peace rise slowly, / Stronger than agony, and we be still. The last clause is the Martha-line in the whole verse. And we be still. The stillness is not the absence of the kitchen. The stillness is the inward quiet that can be present even when the hands are still moving. The peace, when it rises, makes the hands move differently. The bread is still kneaded. The dinner is still made. The list is still walked. But the woman doing it is no longer the careful-and-troubled woman. She is the woman with the better part risen, inwardly, into the very activity the better part used to seem to be in competition with.
What we can actually learn from Martha and Mary
If you came here looking for a single sentence — what can we learn from Martha and Mary in the Bible — the slow Tileston answer is this. We learn that the better part is an inward posture, not a location. That it can be carried into the kitchen. That the wandering of the heart is not the failure; the failure is the failure to quietly and simply recall. That the peace abides in the depths and rises slowly when the surface is thinned by the small daily practice. That the breath, taken between the two next tasks, is the better part re-entering the apron. That the two sisters, properly understood, were never meant to live in two different women. They were meant to live in the same woman, in repeating moments, across a single day.
The story does not condemn Martha. It diagnoses her. The diagnosis was always merciful. The cure is portable. The kitchen is not the obstacle. The kitchen is the soil. The better part, slowly recalled, grows there.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Devotional for Women in Their 40s. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily recall that holds the Martha-heart in proximity to the better part, until the better part rises slowly and the multiplicity does not abrade the soul the way it used to.
The Everspring Devotional for Women in Their 40s carries Tileston’s slow vocabulary — abide, cling simply, recall the heart quietly, take breath and go on afresh — into a daily companion built for the careful-and-troubled woman whose hands are full and whose inward Mary is, at last, ready to come back online.
