bewildered by small changes - and grateful, too

This week is restorative for me: a series of small, quiet projects envisioned and completed in solitude. It has been raining in the Berkshire hills for the past 36 hours giving me the chance to write, read, pray, nap and scour the house. At times such as these my mind moves towards Kathleen Norris little book: Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work: “The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.” Norris grasps, like Brother Lawrence and countless others who move with a monastic groove, that most of our days are given to small, ordinary and sometimes tedious tasks. "Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person— even if you’re not totally engaged’ in every minute!” I like how she puts our little domestic rituals into a larger, sacred narrative.

The Bible is full of evidence that God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things... not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us—loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here—and—now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew—laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life—all the cooking and cleaning of a people’s domestic life—might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do. It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare, “I will bless you, Lord, you give me counsel, and even at night direct my heart” (Ps 16:7, GR). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty—gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God’s love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us even as it gives us cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that makes each day rich with the possibility of salvation, a concept that is beautifully summed up in an ancient saying from the monastic tradition: “Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Pior that every day he made a new beginning.”

It has taken most of my adult life to catch this vision. I have always hated clutter, and, I am inherently lazy. That's a deadly combination that often became a frenzied approach to household chores. They were neglected for weeks on end only to be attacked on a Saturday morning like Sherman's march to the sea. Take no prisoners! Devour every mess in my path! Enlist any and all residents in the house, too! Sometimes, if accompanied by the right music as soundtrack, these cleaning campaigns could be fun. But all too often, they were simply oppressive. They got the job done but without any joy and little satisfaction.

Oddly, I don't know when my perspective and practice changed. I know it did, but I have no idea when or even how. I just know that sometime while living here I began to enjoy cutting the grass. And washing the floor. And now baking the bread, working in the garden, pruning the trees, washing the clothes and cleaning the kitchen at the end of each day. It is quiet and meditative time. It is time to be focused on one task at a time, too. My bread baking, for example, has helped me learn to follow the recipe carefully. Repairing the lawn mower has given me a new appreciation for tools and owner's manuals. And working with a friend as we repair our deck has opened my heart to the world of power tools with a new commitment to safety. There can be no rushing when working with these resources. Every task takes as long as is necessary to get it done, right? And that is part of the contemplative life: the regular practice of mindfulness and prayer as the path into mature patience.

The past two days I have been sorting out more junk, washing more floors, dusting behind the furniture and finishing up our stacks of laundry. Now that the rain has stopped, I'll be out in the yard. And then painting bathrooms and even repairing a few stairs on the deck. A poem I read at the start of the day speaks to the gentle but mysterious transformation we sometimes discover has taken place in our lives:  on our way to some place else, we found what we needed. Dan Gioia calls it, "The Road."

He sometimes felt that he had missed his life
By being far too busy looking for it.
Searching the distance, he often turned to find
That he had passed some milestone unaware,
And someone else was walking next to him,
First friends, then lovers, now children and a wife.
They were good company–generous, kind,
But equally bewildered to be there.

He noticed then that no one chose the way—
All seemed to drift by some collective will.
The path grew easier with each passing day,
Since it was worn and mostly sloped downhill.
The road ahead seemed hazy in the gloom.
Where was it he had meant to go, and with whom?