Spiritual

Spiritual

It all counts as practice—

the way you stack clean dishes 

in the drainer so they won’t break, 

how you wipe down the counter 

and fold the towels. How you talk 

to a co-worker, or your husband 

after a hard day, saying to him: 

You can lay your head in my lap, then 

spending the rest of the evening

rubbing his temples to release

the pain locked inside. And isn’t this

as sacred an act as bowing to a statue 

of the Buddha, or standing in line 

for hours just to touch the worn 

bronze toe of St. Peter in Rome, 

believing that single gesture might

bless the rest of your life?

I can sometimes forget that the whole point of spiritual practice—which for me includes meditation, prayer, and writing—is so that we live our moments with more presence, finding the sacred in the ordinary all around us. As Naomi Shihab Nye has said of the act of writing: “The poem is your life.” What we practice or create is not separate from how we spend our time or how we hold the simple tasks and chores and connections that make up a life. I wrote this poem after a period of deep fatigue and burnout, when I was in the process of returning to “the sacred everyday” after spending so many hours on planes, traveling back and forth across the country for work. I expected to be relieved when I arrived back home, but instead found myself depressed, overtaken with a tiredness that left me fearful for my health. Eventually, I realized that I needed to embrace the simplicity of daily life again, and find the holiness right here—washing dishes, folding laundry, rubbing my husband’s head after a long day of work. It was around this same time that I learned about pilgrims who still kiss or touch the foot of a statue of St. Peter when they visit the Vatican, so much that the bronze toes have worn away and lost their definition. If some of us can believe a single gesture like that might bless the rest of our lives, can’t we also believe the same of those things we touch and use as we move through our routines, letting every small thing bring us back home to the soul?

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: What are some of the ordinary chores and acts that might count as spiritual/creative practice for you right now? You might describe a moment where the truth of this poem found you too, when you saw that what you were doing in any given moment was just as much a form of worship as kneeling in church, sitting on a meditation cushion, or folding your hands in prayer. Feel free to begin with my first line, “It all counts as practice,” and see what comes to you.