A Liturgical Life

I have a history of starting up time consuming projects before a major life change. One month before I graduated from my master’s program, I was obsessed with applying to adopt a golden retriever puppy named Piper. They took one glance at my rambling application and hit “deny.” Two weeks before I gave birth to my daughter, I decided that I wanted to learn how to do sourdough. I googled, I read articles, I searched instagram, and ultimately I didn’t do a single thing. Not a single gram of flour purchased. Not one jar or spoon or bespoke sourdough pan pulled out. Thank God the dopamine ran out.

In my brief, but intense, search for sourdough, one article stood out to me. The author wrote that taking care of his sourdough starter was a liturgical act. An everyday act of measuring, and stirring, and feeding, and assessing the little life growing in a jar on his kitchen counter.

That thought floored me. How a little act of taking care of this little life in a jar was not a burden or chore to the author, but it was a delight to the author.

There’s so much of life I want to fast forward in. The meals. The laundry. The constant sweeping. The constant cleaning. The constant diapers. The constant logistical problems to solve. I want to do all of it as fast as I can to get to my bed as fast as I can.  And I guess we just do this until we die?

I’ve been having conversations with my clients about finding more peace in the present moment. Which, is really hard to do if we keep resisting the moments we are desperately trying to have peace in. There is no scurrying to get to peace faster. That scurry only produces more worry. The carrot of efficiency ironically draws us away from the deep soul rest we can use in the present. The myth of working harder to solve your stress is so alluring and yet, stress begets stress.

I’m reminded of our neighbors who walk slowly around our neighborhood. They are delightfully inefficient. They truly stop and smell the roses. They amble, hand in hand, smiling at the children, and the dogs, and send the occasional text about our trees looking well. Their adult children and grandchildren live in the neighborhood and they run around in the deep green grass of their shaded yard. It seems restful. It seems liturgical. A mark of a life well lived.

And so I keep circling back to this very idea. Of the mundane as a liturgical act. What would happen if we were to see that each and every mundane act is important, maybe even sacred. This little life we lead is just a vaporous mist, and we are gone. Might as well find a way to enjoy the parts that we are desperately trying to hit, “deny.”

I texted the neighbor earlier to ask about trees, and I told her that we admire her life. She said, “it goes by in a blink.”