Quotidian Mysteries

Guest Writer Twylla Alexander

Quotidian Mysteries

“The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread and doing laundry.”

~ Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work"

I’m a walker – a fast walker in the mornings for exercise, a trail walker anytime nature beckons, and a labyrinth walker when my body and soul crave meditative movement. So, I can easily relate to the first item on Kathleen Norris’ list of everyday, or quotidian, contemplative actions. Baking bread? – not so much. There are too many factors that can go wrong. Not enough or too much yeast, water temperature too hot or too cool, kneading technique too vigorous or half-hearted. The whole process makes me anything but mindful.

Laundry? If you had asked me two weeks ago if doing laundry was a contemplative activity, I would have replied with a firm, “No.” Popping dirty clothes in a washer, then scooping them out and tossing them in a dryer were actions I squeezed in while doing something else — sweeping the floor, chopping veggies, writing a poem.

Then, I joined my husband in Montenegro, where he's working this year. Like everyone else in our neighborhood, as evidenced by clotheslines and drying racks adorning porches and balconies, we have no dryer. Nostalgic memories of Laundry Day with my grandmother flood back, her hands spreading damp sheets across slightly saggy lines, pinching my grandfather’s socks together, and anchoring her unmentionables in discreet spaces. Even my 10-year-old-self recognized this routine for something more than the commonplace.

Now imitating Grandma, I intentionally touch each piece of laundry as I place it on the rack and secure it with a clothespin. I listen to the birds, feel the breeze, soak in the sunshine. Time slows. I am aware of each action. I am mindful. And I am discovering that mindfulness – being aware of what I’m doing as I’m doing it – can transfer from the clothesline to the cutting board to the blank sheet of paper.

Perhaps quotidian mysteries aren’t that mysterious after all, but they do require one thing of us. Our attention.

Twylla Alexander, author

Book - Labyrinth Journeys ~ 50 States, 51 Stories

Blog - Labyrinth Journeys . . . and more

May Spiritual Friends

Gerald May 8 Spiritual Friends

“At the deepest level of our hearts we are all aching, for each other and for the same eternally loving One who calls us. It would be well, I think, if we could acknowledge this more often to one another.”

Gerald May, Will and Spirit, p. 321.

Graduation night for Spiritual Directors from Haden Institute at Kanuga

Gerald May in Will and Spirit, writes that regardless of our tradition, the spiritual journey should not be undertaken alone.  May quotes Kenneth Leech who opens his book about spiritual direction, Soul Friend, with the Celtic saying, “anyone without a soul friend is a body without a head.” A spiritual friend or guide is not one who gives directions, but points directions, a person who knows something of the terrain from having traveled some of it and who can say, “I think there may be trouble over there, perhaps try this way.”

  Professional training or qualifications of a director, counselor or friend are not nearly as important as fundamental qualities of basic positive intent, humility (not to presume to know more than one knows), and willingness (a desire to travel a rough road and willing to allow the guidance to come from God rather than trying to engineer it), and responding simply and directly to the needs of others as they are presented.

 May cautions us that if we expect to be spiritual friends by learning techniques of discernment and using them on other people, the outcome will be nothing but a blind sales pitch or slightly pastoralized psychotherapy. He describes psychology as a means to seek to help a person solve the problems of living while spiritual direction deepens the Question of life itself.

Joannajoannaseibert.com

May Surrender Willingness Spiritual Narcissism

Gerald May 7 willingness, control and surrender

“The gentlest form of spiritual narcissism is the idea that one can accomplish one’s own spiritual growth. This is the belief that ‘I can do it’ ..Assuming Paul was correct that God created human beings to ‘seek God’, the search is not ultimately ours. It was not our idea…We do not wake up one morning and spontaneously decide, ‘Hmm, I think I’ll go out and look for God for the rest of my life.’ The striving, even if we try to own it, was planted in us. It comes from somewhere very deep, from a depth at which one can no longer say, ‘This is me and only me.’”

Gerald May, Will and Spirit, p. 115.

 In Will and Spirit, Gerald May writes about struggles in our world today as well as our many struggles within ourselves with will, willingness, control and surrender in our spiritual lives. Whenever we start our spiritual journey with willingness, as soon as we become aware of some spiritual growth, we become vulnerable to spiritual narcissism, the unconscious use of spiritual practice to increase rather than to decrease our self-importance, trying to become holy, the idea that we can accomplish our own spiritual growth. This becomes willfulness masquerading as willingness.

An awareness of the degree of self-interest involved in charitable acts also can make a big difference in how these actions and gifts are given and received. Sin occurs when self-image and personal willfulness become so important that one forgets, represses, or denies one’s true nature, one’s absolute connectedness and grounding in the divine power that creates and sustains the cosmos.

May encourages us to allow attachments to come or go rather than constantly clinging to them. We must be aware of our need for self-importance as he cautions us about immediately leaping to shore ourselves up. He places less emphasis on coping and mastery, and more on waking up to whatever is happening in the present moment.

As we surrender some of our self-importance, we begin to make friends with mystery. Even though we may not necessarily always find God when we sacrifice our self-importance, May believes that as we lose our need for self-importance, we will realize that God has already found us. We will experience more spontaneity and awareness when we do not need to perform, when we do not need to be defined through self-judgment or evaluation of our actions, where we can let things flow.

 May reminds us that spirituality cannot be a means to end our discomfort. Spiritual growth has to be a way into the world, not out of it, in the world not of the world, and unfortunately often may be uncomfortable.

This statue of the return of the prodigal son in the Bishop’s Garden at the National Cathedral can be an icon for surrender and willingness.

Joanna    joannaseibert.com