Monday, Monday...

I have house guests arriving this Thursday.  Well, it's my daughter and her soon-to-be mother-in-law coming from Ohio, so family and almost family.  I want our house presentable, but it doesn't need to be 'company' clean.  Monday is usually a housework day anyway, and there's always a pile of laundry from the weekend.  I'm bad about procrastinating, but don't really hate the routine once I'm underway.  

Are you familiar with The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris?  It's about how the tasks of homemaking can serve to ground us, no matter whether we dread them or embrace them.  Norris  discusses how approaching a task mindfully, with our full attention, can take us into a spiritual dimension.  You can start by picking one job that must be done regularly, like making the bed, and treating it like a sacred ritual, aiming to perform it with intention and a quiet mind.  It can become prayer time once that focus becomes habit.  Folding the laundry takes me into that centered calm for a moment.  

I'm usually carried to a place of gratitude and my thoughts unfold in a flow.  As I pick up clutter, dust the surfaces, and do dishes, I'm aware of being grateful for my home.  We have lived in this house for 35 years, so this is where the promises of so long ago have been embodied - for better/for worse, for richer/for poorer, in sickness and in health...  This is where we brought our babies home.  These walls have contained my family's common life - the Christmases, the birthday celebrations, the sick days, the morning fights in the bathroom while my daughters were teens, the new puppies brought in to enrich our days.  We have laughed, cried, yelled, embraced - lived here. I think we could have managed a more mobile life if that had been our path, but it's nice to have so many memories tied to a place.  I've left the pencil marks on the door frame where we measured our girls' heights as they grew.  There's even a mark for Abby, the cabbage patch doll, near the floor.

I move outward in my song of gratitude.  Our neighborhood is peaceful, and we have friends here, for no reason other than proximity.  We live in a lovely college town with a quirky vibe, and it is situated at the southern end of a highway that spans Northwest Arkansas.  You can find everything from hippies to bikers to world-class art within a 30-mile stretch.  I'm partial to the food - coffee shops, fantastic BBQ, a wonderful Italian settlement to our north with great family cooks. We have an award-winning library, a boon for a bookworm like me. Our climate is moderate; we get all 4 seasons.  Thank you, God, for plunking me down in such a nice place.

My heart aches for those without homes.  My home is dear to me, a place of safety and respite.  What a raw existence to be without a home.  Perhaps to live in a place where war or famine or oppression or simple severity makes life an ordeal. Or to live in a home marked by violence or neglect of the helpless.  We have services in our area for women who escape with their children and nothing else.  God, help us. Empower me to give generously out of my abundance. Let me not turn away from the destitute.  Open my heart and mind to ways I can be of service to those you hold so dear.  

Yes, this ordinary Monday has been rich indeed.