tasks

Folding Clothes

by Gunilla Norris

"Out of the dryer the clothes come

smelling of soap and fabric softener

The underpants cling to the nightshirt.

The towels crackle.

Everything is mixed up with everything else.

I want to turn this heap

of electrical excitement

into some kind of order.

I want it to become

a means of prayer, a litany.

The hand towels come first.

Each day a new one goes on the hook.

Let the folding of these towels

be an invocation.  I thin of the hands

that have been dried on them.

Tentative, strong, confused, determined hands.

Grant that our hands will find ways

to do your will.  Keep us in Your love.

Now the sheets.

My friends slept in them last night.

Let the folding of these sheets

be an intercession.  Fold my friends

into your tenderness.  Keep us in Your love.

Then the personal clothes.

One sock is rolled together with its mate.

One sweater sleeve foes over the other,

an image of repose.

Let the folding of these garments

be a confession.  Help me to surrender,

to give up all those false excitements,

clinging attachments, static insistencies.

Help me instead to be folded into You.

Help me to be clothed by You, to dwell in You,

to make my life and obedience.

Keep us in Your love.

Let the completed task be offered...

such a small thing...yet let it be offered

as thanksgiving.  Your amazing mystery is here

even now receiving this smallness,

Keep us in Your love."

laundry and folding clothes...those tasks that never seem to have an end.  Yet, to look at all of these tasks as a way to commune, to reach deeper, make meaning, make it count, love others, see God...how different these tasks would be...





"In a new way cultivate every task of the day to be a sacred mystery to the Lord.  However, mundane your duties, for you, they are a sacrament."  Richard J. Foster

dentist play time...I always wonder, how did it get messy so fast....



I love that I opened the refrigerator and to my surprise was greeted with a helicopter!

So you have just finished cleaning up the living room and moving on to another room and you go back in and see that your ever creative moving daughter has taken all the dye cuts graciously given to her by Lou Lou and they are spread all across the room.