Just Faith, Everyday

Looking up to the altar, my head began to spin--the vision of the monks gathering, the smell of incense, the blue and violet of the windows all began to swim together, and I found myself sitting down to make it stop. I was overheating, but did not know what to do. It’s not overstatement to say that the woman standing next to me suddenly seemed to know what I was thinking and what was happening to me. She leaned in and whispered “I can go out the door with you if you would like. You look like you need to rest--are you ok?” I looked up at her blurry face, thankful she understood my embarrassment at interrupting the service, and could only choke-- “But I want to take communion.” She knew better. “Ok--I will take you to the front--on the side there’s a chair you can sit on and wait, and it might be cooler there. I’ll get you some orange juice. Don’t worry.” I nodded, and took her hand, like a child, and let her lead me. She disappeared, and suddenly I found myself involuntarily cry...

It’s so easy not to be present. I think of all the times I have watched TV and had a conversation, or talked to someone on the cell phone and walked and managed something else at the same time. Looking around, I see people do this everyday (much to my dismay when I see people chat or text as they drive). How many things do we miss as we fill our moments with multitasking? I recently had the privilege of attending a retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers , where I learned about St. Benedict’s Rule, and found myself reflecting on the tenet of “attending the present moment.” This sense of attending is an important part of the deal--this requires commitment on our part. There’s something refreshing about a retreat, where we can set aside our usual worries of the everyday in favor of tending to our souls. I thought of this in my “monastery moment”--I sat in the courtyard of the abbey and listened to both the birds and the monks sing. The steady cadence of the chante...

I have always hated folding laundry. I used to scrunch socks together and not really care how shirts got folded in an effort to get them into my drawer, if I was industrious, as quickly as possible. The drudgery and time consumption of household tasks used to really irritate me, and I know I am not alone. Since getting married, though, and sharing some of this work, I have found, oddly, a kind of Zen to folding--sitting quietly on the bed neatly arranging, finding sock mates (mostly), folding and rolling shirts in my husband’s military style. I accomplish this order out of chaos while my husband might be grilling our dinner or vacuuming and feel a two-fold sense of accomplishment: teamwork and then this uncanny feeling of accomplishment with even the small things of everyday life. Reflecting on the next Benedictine tenets--balance and flexibility--fits in nicely with doing laundry and folding and accomplishing the everyday in part because we all need to do these ordinary things, b...