my eyes are not raised too high...

Yesterday I finished cleaning the house after our time away: it always sets my heart to rest to do this work. Like baking bread, the quotidian mysteries of cleaning, cooking, and laundry bring a measure of order to my world. And in times like our own even the illusion of order is a welcome friend. Outside it is freezing cold with a multitude of uncertainties swirling about like dried leaves caught in the wind. The wetlands are grey and barren. Our politics continue to veer towards chaos. And the new covid variant carries more questions than answers, more fear than solutions. Is it any wonder I take solace in scrubbing the wood floors?

Sr. Joan Chittister has written in her guide to contemporary monastic insight, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, that the practice of "an ordered life" slowly trains our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls in the ways of peace. "Just about every person I have ever met who was serious about spiritual things," she tells us, "thinks that... daily life is the stuff of which high sanctity can be made. But just about nobody I have ever met... really thinks this is possible."

The idea that sanctity is as much a part of a married life or the single life as it is of the religious life or the clerical life is an idea dearly loved but seldom deeply believed...Over and over again, cures and cults and psychological exercises are regularly tried and regularly discarded while people look for something that will make them feel good, steady their perspective, and bring meaning and direct to their lives...But if we are not spiritual where we are and as we are, we are not spiritual at all. We are simply consumers of the latest in spiritual gadgetry that numbs our confusions but never fills our spirits or frees our hearts... (That is why) Benedictine spirituality seeks to fill up the emptiness and heal the brokenness in which most of us live in ways that are sensible, humane, whole, and accessible to an overworked, overstimulated, overscheduled human race. (Wisdom, pp. 2-3)

The quotidian mysteries, as Kathleen Norris discovered, are pathways into serenity. "The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.” Me, too - except I would add vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing floors. I continue to be drawn to both the 16th century kitchen monk, Brother Lawrence, and the 17th century Carmelite nun, Sr. Teresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Their focus on small acts of love make sense to me. So, too, Psalm 131: 

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child with her mother's breast; like a child at rest is my soul within me.

I don't understand most of the science shared every evening in the NY Times. I read it and applaud their commitment to keeping us connected to the best wisdom available during this phase of the pandemic. But the truth is I don't get most of what I read at all. I am at a loss when otherwise smart people choose to dwell in ignorance and actively encourage others to resist vaccinations. And God knows our media's obsession with labeling the negotiations of politics as life and death conflicts when this used to simply be part and parcel of striking a compromise bewilders me, too. Our addiction to bottom lines is in play, I know. So, too the spiritual darkness born of frustration, anger, economic loss, and despair that sporadically encourages witch hunts, pogroms, and lynchings. But when I am thoroughly honest with myself, I really only understand hospitality, tenderness, and being present in the moment. 

And so I clean. And do laundry. I prepare simple suppers every night and strive to shape our home with beauty and a modicum of order. Sr. Joan teaches that "the spirituality we develop affects the way we image God, the way we pray, the types of ascetism we practice, the place we give to ministry and community in our definition of the spiritual life." She goes on to say:

Spirituality draws us beyond ourselves to find significance and meaning in life. It is our spirituality that defines our life values: self-abnegation or self-development; community or solitude; contemplation or action; personal transformation or social justice; hierarchy or equality. The spirituality we develop, in other words, is the filter through which we view our worlds and the limits within which we operate. (Wisdom, pp. 5-6)

What I have found over the years for myself is a "spirituality of living an ordinary life extraordinarily well... transforming life rather than transcending it" in order that I may live: "Calmly in the middle of chaos, productively in an arena of waste, lovingly in a maelstrom of individualism, and gently in a world full of violence." A prayerful practice, if you will, that finds beauty in a clean floor, joy in a satisfying meal, sacramental trust in clean sheets, commitment in a well-scrubbed toilet bowl. These things I understand. Even cherish. I suspect that same is true for making music: rarely are my songs or arrangements complicated; often, I pray, they are refreshing and loving. Simple and real. That is why I am drawn to the creations of Canada's Alana Levandowski.  

This Advent I have quit trying to understand politics, science, even religion in order that I might be present, grounded, and open to tenderness with those nearest to me. I still read the NY Times each morning and watch part of the PBS Newshour in the evening. I take-in a few important newsletters by Times authors, too so that I'm not totally left in the dust of this era. But mostly I am walking with the poems of Mary Oliver (and a few others) along with the appointed gospel texts of the season as I work to keep a measure of order in my small corner of creation. Today the sun is out but the wind is howling. When I got up to put Lucie out this morning, for some reason she had peed on our new rug. Later, I received a touching email from an old friend seeking forgiveness and reconnection. And I have prayers and songs to share via Zoom with my community in L'Arche Ottawa. So, I prepared our breakfast, cleaned the pee, practiced a simple song of peace, and reread this Hanukah poem by Brad Aaron Modlin called "One Candle Now, Then Seven More."

I grew up in a family that did not tell
the story. I am listening to it now:

Even the morning you see a robin
flattened on the street, you hear

another in a tree, the notes
they’ve taught each other, bird

before bird before we were born.
And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle

carries the doctor all the way
across an island. He arrives in time.

Somewhere his sister adds water
to the soup until payday. And

over the final hill in a Southwestern
desert, a gas station appears. No,

the grief has not forgotten my name,
but this morning I tied

my shoelaces. Outside I can force
a wave at every face who might

need it. We might
spin till we collapse, but we still

have a hub: Even at dusk,
the sun isn’t going anywhere.

We have lamps. The story insists
it just looks like there’s only

enough oil to last one night.