The Rhythm of Life: An Experience of Engaging in Daily Practice | Exist

Part deux of my Daily Practices paper - note: you might have seen some of this before!

From Hither & Thither

{ Exist }

            I often resent the mundane task. In what seems to be a continually increasingly busy life, the mundane tasks get thrown into the “have to” category on my checklist, and quickly morph into things I “have to” do. My resistance doesn’t simply come from a lack of desire to complete a tedious task—the language around the category dooms the task from the start. To me, “have to” leads to the death of the soul, while “get to” opens up the possibility of life. I used to work at a summer camp where we had no rules, only “get to-s.” You “get to” not run at the pool, you “get to” clean your tray, you “get to” have lights out by 11pm. A clever person would quickly realize that these in fact are rules, but the reframing of them as things you “get to” do invites a spirit of freedom to the task, rather than obligation.

            Last week, while working at the Mars Hill Graduate School bookstore, I “got to” 

stock shelves 

with a new order. I “had to” do the same thing the week prior, and  “had to” 

do it again. In fact I carried 

the outlook of having to do it for at least the first thirty 

minutes of the task. I was bearing the weight of all 

of the work that demanded my 

attention in the weeks ahead, yet  all

                                                                              I could

                                                                                                      do

                                                                         then

                                                                         was stack

                                                                                                      Reese’s

                                                                                                      Cups.

Of course my productive self found a way around this limitation by dwelling over the tasks that awaited me, and I quickly became angry that any dear time I might have had for myself was slowly fading away. But around this point, a voice of guidance beckoned inside me: “savor this mundane task.” It was a revelation, to say the least, and a prodding of the Spirit, most definitely. Here I was with this moment of complete and rhythmic peace in front of me—a task so mindless that it offered such freedom—and all I had to do was to surrender to its simplicity in slowness of pace to be set free.

            Kathleen Norris talks about the practice of surrendering to the daily task in The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work.”  “We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing, and even ecstasy,” she says, “but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we wish we were. We must look for blessings to come from the unlikely, everyday places….” Last Tuesday that place for me was in the bookstore stocking new inventory.

Like Norris, laundry is also one of those places for me (and I’m likely not the only one who relates), alongside washing dishes and the dreaded waiting for the bus. All these things are things I “have to” do most days. These daily tasks are as much a part of my life as my hair is brown and my skin white; they simply exist. So how can I practice, as I was able to in that revelatory moment in the bookstore, changing the way I see the everyday task from a prison of “have to-s” to an expanse of “get to-s”? Norris seems to do this by turning the leaf of mundane tasks over in into simple and slow moments of contemplation.

“What we dread as mindless activity can free us, mind and heart, for the workings of the Holy Spirit,” Norris implies, “and repetitive motions are conducive to devotions.”Something I must be reminded of everyday as I face life’s interruptions and perfunctory demands, Norris tells that when we surrender to the task that is before us, we then have the space needed to simply and slowly pause, to soak in God’s presence in the mundane task through contemplation, and through it all to flourish.