When I stop comparing and allow myself
to be ordinary—folding tea towels
and T-shirts into neat squares, rinsing out
the sticky jar that once held honey—I taste
a piece of eternity. Giving myself to the task
at hand, the chore becomes a privilege:
I get to scrub last night’s pasta pot, I get to
sweep pebbles and pine needles from the mudroom.
This is how we enter the timeless motion of those
who came before us—by accepting the assignment,
which is to beautify and repair our own small
corner of the world. Afterward, I am stained
like the inside of a favorite coffee mug
with evidence of my delight in these daily rituals
that can never be washed away, the ordinary
being at least one gateway to the holy.
—James Crews
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