When I first encountered Kathleen Norris's Quotidian Mysteries several years ago, her insights came as a great revelation to me. She really got my attention with this: "I became aware that the demands of laundry might have something to do with God's command that we worship, that we sing praise on a regular basis. But laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. but both are the work that God has given us to do." I'm not a theologian, but I am an expert on laundry so I love this!I invite you to read Kathleen Norris on finding the fabric of faith in the mundane, the quotidian, (Devotional Classics, p. 363) and consider what spiritual significance you might discover in your life just now, today. I offer several questions for your free response:
- Why does Norris say that the miracle of the manna and incarnation of Jesus Christ are scandals? (section 2)
- What do you make of Kathleen Norris's statement, "The Christian perspective...views the human body as our God-given means to salvation, for beyond the cross God has effected resurrection. We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we wish we were."
- What feelings do you have about the repetitive tasks in your own life?
- In what way is repetition "the very stuff of ecstasy"? (section 4)
- What do you find notable in the passage from Exodus?
This is our final offering of Vintage Online for the academic year 2007/08
I would greatly appreciate any feedback you could offer,
so I may better serve you through this group.
Please email me at karen@theological horizons.org THANK YOU!
I would greatly appreciate any feedback you could offer,
so I may better serve you through this group.
Please email me at karen@theological horizons.org THANK YOU!
3 comments:
Today, I am in a panic to get so much done -- at work & home & paying the gas & electric bill & getting a baptism present & the leaves from last fall & the blasted recycling, the laundry that got dried out b/c I forgot to take it out of the washer [ :o( ] & etc, etc all needed today -- that I am rushing (& speed-read the selection). Hopefully, I might make some sense. I cannot think clearly enough to comment on the questions, but even before I noticed that Brother Lawrence is the next reading after Kathleen Norris, I was thinking about his "ordinary" way.
As for the "scandals," that concept went over my head. Perhaps I need to noodle on that for a bit ... perhaps while doing laundry. :o) I care for my invalid, 88yr-old mom who's in a hospital bed at home. That means A LOT of laundry (& unmentionables), "chucks ... underpads" & "Depends," etc.). This thought leads me to remember my husband, who died from cancer in a hospice in December 07. I also had my mom in the LaZyBoy chair in his room there. Double duty. Weird as it may seem, I found it touchingly humorous. Kathleen Norris' idea that God had a sense of humor when giving us labor as a punishment resonated for me because of my experiences.
Thinking back on those five days in the hospice, I recall that the people there who cared for him did so with such tenderness ... changing the sheets, which were so pristinely laundered. They were like shrouds. They rolled him, lifted him, bathed him, smoothed his hair ... all so simply, elegantly, gracefully, and reverently. Ceremoniously mundane. Had he been the very Body of Christ, they could not have done more. The caretakers, if they had been angels, could not have been more prayerful in their actions.
Odd as it may seem, God could not have given us a better way.
Karen has a quote from Thomas Merton about the purpose of contemplation ("Spring of Contemplation"). I forget exactly how it goes, but it's something like this:
"The purpose of contemplation is not so much to become of aware of God or truths about God but so that God can see the Trinity reflected in us in our particular identities."
As we lovingly do ordinary things that are necessary to maintain life, how much we are being made into the image of God who loves us down to our DNA which are such simple repetitive chains of ordinary molecules. We are participating in Creation from all time and into eternity. How cool is that? If it's not too irreverent to say, Lawrence's idea about God as sculptor leads me to add new & higher meaning to being "stoned."
Happy Weekend, All. Gotta go
There is such a temptation to ignore our bodies or to dismiss those physical tasks as necessary chores with no spiritual significance. I love the way preceding comment as well as Kathleen Norris's text reminds us that our physical selves, that Christ's physical self, are where our salvation happens: through the resurrection. What new respect that gives me for my created being!
Anonymous of the first comment ...
Back! Anonymous2, thanks for your comment about the process of resurrection. I had not ever thought about resurrection in any other way than mystical.
Well, yes, Jesus is the INCARNATION ... HERE FOR US AS BODY & BLOOD, THE LIVING SACRIFICE. This whole exercise reminds me of His Mother sweeping the floor, getting water in an urn, washing clothes with a rock.
Once, some time ago, some one led a group meditation on bread & wine. It went something like:
Look at the loaf of bread. See beyond its size & shape. See the field in which the wheat seed was sown. See the sunlight & rain & the nourishing earth & how the seed took root & grew into sheaf of wheat & how the kernals were harvested. See the hands that tended the fields. See the feet. See the backs that carried the baskets of grain. See the milling & grinding & the flour that is created for the making of bread.
See the same process for the grapes to wine.
See the bodies working to remove rocks, to till, to plant, to weed, to water or irrigate, to harvest, some even to glean.
See the real bodies, the muscles strain.
xxx
MORE LAUNDRY! Once, Liz Hopkins (Notre Dame of MD 1967) wrote a poem about a woman who was ironing a shirt for her working husband. I don't remember it exactly, but it describes the tender way the wife arranges the shirt on the ironing board and in the last line she reflects on how he will be working in it & how it will look soon. It ends, "wet with love." Stunning. If I ever find a copy again (things get lost with me), I'll try to remember to share it here.
At the end of the day, I've only accomplished about half of what needs to be done. But, I try to remember that the body can only do so much. Yet, the important things have been done. Maybe the laundry will get done tonight. :o)
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