“At a certain level housekeeping is a regime of small kindnesses, which taken together make the world salubrious, savory and warm. I think of the acts of comfort offered and received within a household as precisely sacramental. It is the sad tendency of domesticity, as of pity, to contract and of grace to decay into rigor and peace into tedium. Still, it should be clear why I find the HomeStead Act the most poetic piece of legislation since Deuteronomy, which it resembles.” ~ Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books
Full disclosure ~ I had to look up the word “salubrious.” It means favorable to the health of mind or body…. All the same I read this page on a day full of the easy, happy tasks of housekeeping. I put away lots of winter clothes and carted off the rest. I mailed a care package to one kid and picked up contact lenses for another. I rearranged houseplants and cut some tulips. I sold some eggs and took some shoes to be repaired.
When I sat down to rest and read there was Robinson, reminding me to take none of it for granted. But rather, savor every salubrious moment, treat every tiny task as a sacred kindness, in its giving as well as its reception.
I find it profoundly comforting to imagine how many people, at any given time the whole world over, are making tea, folding sheets or rocking a baby. Or of all the cups and saucers and toys and tools being handled and washed and repaired, taken out and put away. Day after day after day. That these small acts, repeated mostly without thought are the very things that bind us together as human beings. Because in their exchange we are honoring each other’s most humble needs, most humble selves.
I pray the day finds your hands at fine work and your hearts at good grace.
~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette
Full disclosure ~ I had to look up the word “salubrious.” It means favorable to the health of mind or body…. All the same I read this page on a day full of the easy, happy tasks of housekeeping. I put away lots of winter clothes and carted off the rest. I mailed a care package to one kid and picked up contact lenses for another. I rearranged houseplants and cut some tulips. I sold some eggs and took some shoes to be repaired.
When I sat down to rest and read there was Robinson, reminding me to take none of it for granted. But rather, savor every salubrious moment, treat every tiny task as a sacred kindness, in its giving as well as its reception.
I find it profoundly comforting to imagine how many people, at any given time the whole world over, are making tea, folding sheets or rocking a baby. Or of all the cups and saucers and toys and tools being handled and washed and repaired, taken out and put away. Day after day after day. That these small acts, repeated mostly without thought are the very things that bind us together as human beings. Because in their exchange we are honoring each other’s most humble needs, most humble selves.
I pray the day finds your hands at fine work and your hearts at good grace.
~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette
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