Honor the Everyday in Every Day
Strive to be aware of the holy in the most mundane of things and you will see it open up before you: the everyday is the abode of the eternal.
-Steven Charleston-
Growing up on the farm, we had our everyday clothes that we put on before we went out to do the every day chores like gathering eggs and the seasonal ones like mowing lawn or weeding in the garden. I didn’t mind doing chores, though I recall sometimes fighting over whose turn it was. That wasn’t as much about the chore itself as it was about being right or being difficult just to keep things interesting.
Those every day chores in everyday clothes helped instill in me both a work ethic and a love and respect for Nature. I love the outdoors and strive to spend some time out in it each day. It never bores, always energizes.
The picture above was taken as sunset neared last Friday at my brother’s farm, one of the two farms I grew up on and that have been in our family for decades. Sunsets happen every day, but they are anything but everyday. Each one unique. This one made more unique because of the clouds. A fence line and a harvested field of corn, trees in the distance. The color, the clouds, the changing light. It was a moment worth a pause. A holy pause. A moment of reverence.
I considered the mundane as I headed out for a run the other morning. The mundane of frost on countless blades of grass, the glints and sparkles of that frost in the street lights, the mundane of seeing the Little Dipper in a clear early morning sky. Every day, the Little Dipper is in the sky. It has guided travelers for thousands of years and intrigued stargazers too. It is not always visible to me, but sometimes that is because I simply fail to look.
That is what Stephen Charleston reminds us. Be aware. Awareness is the portal to awe and gratefulness. To a deep sense of belonging in this massive universe. And belonging here among fellow humans.
One of the inside chores we did every day growing up was washing the dishes. We had the everyday dishes, and the special ones that only came out for holidays or when we had visitors. They all got washed, dried and put away by a pretty effective cleaning crew. We fought over those chores too, but we also laughed and sang and made plans.
As I washed some breakfast dishes for my husband and I recently, memories came back, and so did a strong flow of gratitude. Standing there at the sink, hot water from the faucet, a little soap, hands that work, a stable floor beneath me, the simplicity of washing the dishes was transformed into a holy moment of the eternal.
Pause every day to find the treasures in the everyday. Honor the everyday in every day.
