Thursday, June 15, 2006

Quotidian Mysteries

According to the Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary, quotidian means "occuring everyday; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary." In her address given as the 1998 Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, Kathleen Norris writes of the importance of the ordinary. This lecture has been published as The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work". Here are a few quotes to stimulate your thinking.

"The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance."

"Life is what happens to you when you are busy doing something else."

"Both laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. But both are the work that God has given us to do."

"...the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self."

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