Diapers and Dishes

I was just back from a week with my children's newborn; a week where my focus narrowed to diapers and dishes and what's for dinner. Sitting in St. Mary's on All Saints Sunday, I listened to the woman preacher exult in the investiture of the first Episcopal woman Primate--and no, we're not talking monkeys here.

In between the preacher's litany of academic, ecclesiastical and aeronautical accomplishments, I looked at a stained glass window of the annunciation and a beautiful wood carving of Mary with her arms around a 12 year old Jesus. I reflected that the only thing She ever did was get pregnant, raise a child, hide things in her heart. Hail Mary full of grace.

My daughter in law would have been full of Grace if it had been a girl. But, as it was, she was full of Luke Atticus--and eventually so was the house and finally my arms.

Entering the newborn time warp as a grandmother, it is easy enough to see that this is the important thing; that rocking a baby all afternoon is one of Mother Teresa's "small things done with great love." Despite the allure of power and prestige which we all fall into, the giving up of one's life for another happens in bedrooms and living rooms through-out the world. Should this work come to a halt, we all are lost.

For a year I cleaned my bathrooms on Wednesday mornings, just before going to a monthly meeting of Evangelical Ministers. Once after inadvertently sitting at a table reserved for "senior pastors," I was asked to move. A bit later a letter went out for a prayer summit, which clearly uninvited those of us who were ministering beyond the pale. I stopped going to the fellowship so regularly. I didn't stop cleaning my toilets. Every so often, up to my elbow in sloshing water, I'd wonder how many of "those guys" had cleaned toilets before the minister's meeting.

Doing small things is not so hard. It's doing them with great love that is sometimes difficult.