An Altar in the World
by Barbara Brown Taylor
Cleaning refrigerators and toilets helps you connect with the food cycle at both ends. Making beds reminds you that life-giving activities do not take up much space. Hanging laundry on the line offers you a chance to fly prayer flags disguised as bath towels and underwear. If all life is holy, then anything that sustains life has holy dimensions too. The difference between washing windows and resting in God can be a simple decision: choose the work, and it becomes your spiritual practice. Spraying the vinegar and water on the pains, you baptize the glass. Rubbing away the film, ye repent ye of your sins. Polishing the glass, you let in the light. No task is too menial to serve as a path. If you are able to sustain other lives along with your own, then all the better.
