The Most Spiritual Thing

The most spiritual things I do in a day (if I were to rank spirituality, which in essence is impossibility, but suspending that for a bit), I would say that homekeeping is my most spiritual work.  Every morning I empty the dishwasher, let the dog out, make the coffee, scramble an egg for my daughter, put in the laundry, hang up the damp shirts to dry, fill up the dishwasher again, run a cloth along the counters.  This practice of homekeeping, the every day work of tidying and tending, makes space for us to experience God together.  It grounds me in God for it reminds me that the spiritual life is made up of the daily, ordinary beauty and work.  But I don't do the work for the work itself, but instead because it creates space for relationship.  So the spiritual life is ordinary and daily, and the tending of the soul creates space for relationship.    The spiritual life is so practical and basic, as simple and constant as making coffee every morning.  The work of the soul is just as consistent as the dawn of each new day.  We keep doing the work of the spiritual life, we keep creating space, we keep tending the soul--not because we arrive and complete this kind of work, but because it creates space.

Thomas More says it like this:  "Tending the things around us and becoming sensitive to the importance of home, daily schedule, and maybe even the clothes we wear are ways of caring for the soul."