Knight
“Fall is my favorite season.” I hear that a lot this time of the year.
Brisk mornings and sun bright afternoons. Summer heat mostly gone. Occasional blustery winds. “Sweater weather,” some call it. I must admit, it is hard to beat autumn’s thermometer charms, especially in Indiana. At least, as of right now, fall is also my favorite season.
Fall in our fair state also means autumn leaves. Beautiful, breathtaking vistas of leaves in uncountable variations of reds, and browns, oranges and yellows. The yellows seem to dominate in the woods where we live. Becky and I love living amidst the palette of changing leaves. Eventually, though, the leaves fall to the ground, and we track some of them into our house. That is why I am broom sweeping for the second time this morning.
Even though we have a battery-powered vacuum sweeper which I sometimes use, I find I prefer sweeping with a broom if I have the time. I think it does a better job on hardwood floors, but maybe that’s just me.
A Zen parable tells us about the Master who advises the Novice: “When you sweep, sweep!” The message, I assume, is whatever you are doing, be in the moment as you are doing it. That is not quite what I do when I sweep. My mind is not necessarily focusing moment by moment on each stroke of the broom as I corral the leaf debris into piles. It is more like my mind wanders from thought to thought as I am doing such repetitive tasks. It is similar to when I do the dishes in the sink by hand instead of loading the dishwasher. I focus on each particular glass as I am pondering a book I have been reading.
The book I am currently reading is Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris. I was sure I had looked up the word “quotidian” sometime in my past, but it was gone from my memory. Fortunately, Norris gives the definition: “Occurring everyday; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary.” This makes sense considering the book’s subtitle: “Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work.’” The book examines these and other quotidian tasks as opportunities for spiritual growth, as pathways to mysteries.
As I am sweeping, I am thinking of a passage where Norris refers to God’s “good joke” he made as he gave us work to do as punishment for our disobedience in Eden. It is work we must do day in and day out, never to be completed. “It is precisely these thankless, boring, repetitive tasks that are hardest for the workaholic or utilitarian mind to appreciate, and God knows that being temporarily mindless as we toil … allows us to approach the temple of holy leisure.” Norris is saying that when I am sweeping the kitchen floor or mulching leaves in the yard I have the opportunity, the gift of letting my mind explore and learn. She readily admits that when she is confronted with a sink of dirty dishes, “I generally lose sight of the fact that God is inviting me to play.” Well, I can certainly understand the challenge of maintaining that attitude.
Okay, finished. The floor is now swept for the second time. But Becky is out running with neighbor Kelly, and in a while she will be home bringing inside another sample of yellow leaves from our yard. This will provide me with another chance to play.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
