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Excerpt
From Looking Around for God: The Strangely Reverent Observations
of an Unconventional Christian
Chapter
5
Embracing the Everyday Holiness
What
makes things or places sacred? I've wondered about this over the years. I
remember visiting some of the great cathedrals of Europe not long after World
War II when I was stationed in France with the Air Force. I was not very
religious in those days and, as a Southern Baptist in my youth, never had
a high regard for the Catholic Church generally, so I visited churches only
as tourist attractions.
But I remember how suddenly quiet and reverent I
felt as soon as I entered those mighty, cavernous spaces. I felt the same
way regardless of the church or the country. Many years later, when my wife
and I traveled to Europe, we stopped at every church we passed, most of them
Catholic, and lit a candle for our remembered family and for our son Ronald
(a practice completely foreign to our own Protestant experiences), and we
prayed silently. I felt always I was in a sacred place.
But why? Was it that the place was a church? Or that
worship services were celebrated there? Or that the structure had somehow
been sanctified through a ritual of the church?
No, I think it was simply because so many people
had come to the place over so many years, bringing with them the expectation
that they were entering a sacred place. In other words, in their quest and
in their expectations of a connection with God, the people created the sacred
space within the building, a space that was so palpable I could feel it when
I entered-even though I personally held no such expectation of the connection
with God. How do I explain that further? I don't. I just accept it, and in
that acceptance I've also come to realize that it is not just in houses of
worship that I should seek the presence of the sacred, but in everything
I do and experience, even the mundane stuff.
I've read that Hasidic Jews find the holy in the
everyday, whether washing the dishes, eating a meal, or making love. I admire
this attitude, and if what I believe is true, that the consciousness of a
connection with God in effect creates the holiness we feel in a church, then
why would this not be true anywhere?
In the past few years, I've come to understand and
embrace these possibilities more fully. In 1998, the winner of the Democratic
gubernatorial primary in our state asked my wife, Sally Pederson, to be his
running mate. Though she had never sought political office before, she is
now in her second term as lieutenant governor of Iowa.
The whole thing-the campaign and the subsequent life
as a public servant-has been a shock. Neither Sally nor I had the slightest
notion of what the public expects of its elected officials. To get past this
part of the story quickly, the answer is "a lot." Sally is busy almost every
day, seven days a week, with few days off.
From the day of her nomination, I have taken
responsibility for all housework and childcare, all budgeting and bill paying,
all doctor, dentist, and veterinary appointments, all automobile maintenance,
all lawn and garden work, and all grocery shopping and cooking. This is in
addition to my profession as author, consultant, and speaker.
It is a cliché, I know, but it is true that
every working spouse and parent should give the stay-at-home role a try.
The demands are incessant, the requirement for attention to detail rivals
any detail-oriented job on earth, and the responsibilities for other lives
far outweighs that of any business manager.
Beyond the intellectual realization that, in taking
over this role and supporting my wife and son, I am doing important work,
I also derive great emotional fulfillment from it, and in ways I would never
have suspected.
One way is in the simple satisfaction I feel after
cooking a good meal or cleaning the kitchen. I like the way my son's clothes
smell when they come out of the dryer, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment
when I put them into his dresser, ready for the next week of school.
I confess I get a kick out of defying the stereotype
of the clueless husband. Recently, I went to lunch with an old friend. When
she dug down into her purse, a panty liner fell out onto the floor. She didn't
notice. I retrieved it, handed it to her, and said, "Here's your panty liner."
"What did you say?" she asked in a tone of surprise,
almost astonishment.
"I said, 'Here's your panty liner.'"
She laughed and shook her head. "My husband wouldn't
have the slightest idea what a panty liner is."
Enjoying myself immensely, I responded, "I can even
tell you brands and types, light days or heavy days, scented or unscented."
By this time she was laughing.
"I buy these things for Sally," I said. "She doesn't
have time to pick them up, and I can't imagine her asking her security trooper
to stop by the store so she can run in for some panty liners."
"And you aren't embarrassed?" my friend asked.
"Of course not. Why should I be embarrassed about
panty liners and not about toilet paper or hemorrhoid cream or something
like that? This is just human stuff."
But while defying the stereotypes is fun, and while
I know the household work is important, there is more to it, something beyond
emotional fulfillment, something deeper, something about meaning and connection
with everyday holiness, something spiritual.
I think my desire to seek God in the details of everyday
life has a lot to do with facing and evaluating how I used to live. For years,
I made lists of chores for the weekends, and as I did them I dutifully checked
them off the list. There was a certain satisfaction in getting through the
list, but the psychological pitfall was that if I did not complete a chore
and check it off, it was as if I'd done nothing. It was almost like a failure.
I'd read a lot of the stuff about how the journey
is the destination and how growing spiritually is in the very process of
spiritual growth, but I had managed to put that in some kind of compartment,
as if spiritual growth was part of the list of things to do, stuck somewhere
in there with cleaning the gutters and mowing the lawn: "Okay, I've grown
spiritually, now where's the hedge trimmer?"
It took a while but I finally got it: What I'd read
was not about adding a spiritual growth compartment to my life but trying
to live all my life with the daily consciousness of a potential for holiness
in everything and with the realization that everything I do is part of something
larger.
I realized that my spiritual journey, my connection
with the sacred, could include such unlikely things as cleaning the gutters,
mowing the lawn, trimming the hedge, changing diapers, doing the laundry,
cooking meals, and even buying panty liners for my wife. Of course, it's
easier in some places and with some activities than with others. For instance,
working in my greenhouse or garden will always give me a holiness fix when
I need it. Still, it's possible anywhere.
Am I successful every day? Of course not. I still
become impatient and frustrated. I still give in to just getting through
the list and checking things off. But at least I am aware of when I'm falling
short of my intentions, and I have come to believe that awareness of those
failings may even be more important in the longer journey. As the Zen master
said, "Everything is perfect but there's still room for improvement."
© 2006 by James A. Autry and Peter Roy All
rights reserved. |
