St. David's United Church

St. David’s United Church
Rev. Dan Chambers
March 21, 2010
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-45

God and the Laundry

The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman mixed in with
three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.
Jesus
(Matthew 13:33)

My sister-n-law is a grade four teacher. She also has published a couple of books on literacy and travels around Canada speaking to teachers and parents about how to help children understand what they read. But she’s first a teacher, and a good one.
If a student complains about being bored or finding a subject booooring, she’ll have none of it. “Only a boring person with a boring mind is bored,” she’ll zing, followed by, “…and you’re not a boring person. You have an interesting mind. What can you find that’s interesting even here?”
It’s a very handy turn of phrase. “Dan, I found your sermon today quite boring.”
“Well, you know, my sister-in-law says…”
Of course, we all have sat through sermons, lectures, speeches, movies, plays, books, conversations that were, for lack of a better word, boring. We also know from experience that some things are simply less interesting than others: I would rather body surf in Kauai than wash the windows of my house. I’d rather climb Grouse mountain than clean-out and organize our shed in the backyard and I have proof of that.
Naturally, we have preferences. But I think that my sister-in-law is right: sometimes boredom says more about the mind than the activity. Even the most tedious task, approached as a spiritual practice rather than sheer drudgery, can be an avenue to grace. It’s a choice we make about how we live our life.
There’s a deep vein of spiritual practice found in the chores of the day. We don’t have to be in church or fall on our knees to pray. Each moment can be a kind of prayer. The temple of our kitchen or bathroom or garden can be a house of prayer.
To find ways to be aware of the holy in the ordinary work of our day is an ancient practice in several spiritual traditions, including Christianity and Buddhism. In the Christian tradition, St. Benedict articulated it most clearly and simply. 1,500 years ago, he wrote, “To work is to pray.” He taught that “in all things, God may be glorified.” So intertwined were prayer and work, he referred to spiritual practices as “the tools” and the monastery itself as “the workshop.”
What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like a mustard seed that takes root and grows; it’s like a pinch of yeast that makes the bread rise. The realm of heaven is found in the smallest, most ordinary thing.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a well-loved teacher of Buddhism, and, in particular, the practice of meditation and mindfulness. Originally from Vietnam, he was nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was a friend of the Catholic author and monk, Thomas Merton. In the Buddhist monastic tradition, gathas are short verses recited through the course of the day to help the mind stay alert. A gatha counters the tendency to “go through the motions,” and helps us have ears to hear and eyes to see. We often become so busy that we forget what we’re doing or even who we are. He asks, “How many days slip by in forgetfulness? What are you doing with your life?”
A gatha helps us appreciate each moment. Here’s a gatha to be recited at the start of the day:
Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

I’m a minister. I would like you to imagine me a holy person, beginning each day with a beatific smile, waking with bright eyes and my hair already combed. But I’m sorry. Often I wake not with a smile but with blurry-eyes, hair a tussle and a body aching for a little more sleep. There are some days which are better: waking to silence, appreciating the dawn of a new day, the people around me, the coffee waiting to be made. In touch with gratitude, I try to remember the guidance of Thich Nhat Hanh and others who suggest there is no better way to begin the day than with a prayer. It does make a difference to how I greet my children when they finally come down for breakfast and how I step into the day.
☺☻I ♥♥ u. ( a note inserted from my daughter)

To begin the day with this attitude is to be open to life, and to be open to life is to be open to God. That sacred dimension of life, that which is beautiful and good is not found anywhere else but here. Grace is not found at any other time than right now. Perhaps what both St. Benedict and Thich Nhat Hanh remind us is that prayer is not a special activity, but every activity can become a prayer like the children who led us in the call to worship through play. Prayer is found in the task at hand as well as the meditation hall.
What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like a woman kneading bread, or a mustard seed or any number of ordinary things that house the holy.
Some women from St. David’s understand this quite well. I discovered some notes I took and tucked in a file about a mothers group that met here almost a decade ago. Once a week Colleen Blair brought some mothers together to talk about parenting challenges and how to keep sane in the midst of the constant routine. Being open to the holy doesn’t excuse us from the laundry, traffic jams, diapers or weeding the garden. It simply means you shift your perspective on the everyday routine and engage it differently because even the most common chore might reveal the kingdom of God.
The women in the parenting group discovered this. One said,
“When I have to drive to Burnaby to visit my aging grandmother, I would find it very easy to complain and feel resentful about the lost time. Instead, I appreciate the time alone, the minutes of precious quiet, a chance to listen to the radio or a CD. Even if the traffic has been bad, I find I arrive replenished.”
Another said, “When the sun’s shining, I like to hang up sheets outside to dry. Rather than see it as a chore, I appreciate the fresh air, the warm sun, the clean smelling sheets. I become grateful.”
“I find the same,” another mum said. “When I have to wait for my child to finish her piano lesson, I could regret all the things I wasn’t getting accomplished that still called for my attention. But I’ve learned, for my own peace of mind, to appreciate the time when I don’t have to run around. Then it becomes easier for me to be grateful for the music, the teacher’s quiet voice, the gift of my child, growing so fast. I don’t want to miss all that!”
Whoever it is that said, “half the battle is just showing up for life,” was right. When we show up for life, life more fully shows up for us.
An author once wrote, I’ve seen so many people auditioning life, waiting for the right relationship, or the right job, or the right house, before deciding to live life to the fullest. People say, ‘When I meet the right person, I will show up fully for the relationship…when I have the right job, I’ll throw myself one hundred percent into it.’ We do not show up fully for life, and then wonder why life doesn’t show up more fully for us. (Marianne Williamason, Everyday Grace).

We know the difference between showing up for life, and holding back, wishing we were doing something else, lived somewhere else, were with someone else. When we do that, life never fully shows up for us, and we miss the holy tucked in the pocket of the ordinary.
When we do show up, when we stop grumbling and simply attend to the task at hand, there’s a peace in that way of being, and a joy. It’s how Khalil Gibran could write, “Work is love made visible.”
Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the spiritual practice of work:
Sometimes, when people ask me about my prayer life, I describe hanging laundry on the line. After a day of too much information about almost everything, there is such blessed relief in the weight of wet clothes, causing the wicker basket to creak as I carry it out to the clothesline. Every time I bend down to shake loose a piece of laundry, I smell the grass. I smell the sun. Above all, I smell the clean laundry…
Most of the laundry belongs to my husband, Ed, who can go through more clothes in a week than most toddlers. Hanging his laundry on the line becomes for me a labour of love. I hang each T-shirt like a prayer flag, shaking it first to get the wrinkles out and then pinning it to the line with two wooden clothespins (An Altar in the World, p.46). Hanging laundry on the line offers you a chance to fly prayer flags disguised as bath towels and underwear…No task is too menial to serve as a path. If you are able to sustain other lives along with your own, then all the better (p.151,152).
As a boy, I remember that if I didn’t like something, like green beans, I’d chew it really fast and swallow as quickly as I could so that the taste wouldn’t linger in my mouth. Sometimes I think that’s how I go through some chores: I rush through as quickly as I can to get them over with.
Moving fast isn’t the problem. I take pleasure in being able to move quickly or work hard. The release of energy is satisfying. But I would receive a low-grade from my mentors for mindlessly rushing through as a way of avoiding life in all its dimensions. Rushing can be a way of pulling back from the distasteful chore or the mundane routine, like chewing fast so you don’t taste the dreaded vegetable.
An attitude of faith invites us to walk differently through the world. Grace is more available when we see every task facing us as a prayer book waiting to be opened. Our soul work is to choose the labour, rather than dreading it, resenting it, or dismissing it as boring. When our work becomes “love made real,” we’re led deeper into the More that is our heart’s desire. (BBT, p.153).
Amen.