Today is chore day, Sunday or not. I spent yesterday happily doing holiday shopping and visiting w/ my sister & niece. So today? Bright & early, following a Skype call to Younger Son, my beloved & I were off to buy tree lights. And a couple of sweaters for the grandson. And some gold ribbon. And…

Still, those chores are a LOT more fun than cleaning out litter boxes. Two cats that don’t get along = two litter boxes. Sigh… Not to mention the birds need feeding, the plants need watering, and eventually? Even the things you love need work to maintain.

That’s the point, I guess, to Jack Kornfeld’s ‘After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.’  What we do daily is our practice. Well, more how we do it than the particulars, I’m thinking. Kornfeld may have his own take on this. 🙂

But surely how I do my chores is more important than what they are? Does it matter if it’s dry-cleaning or hand-wash? Litter box or feeding birds? Aesthetically, certainly. And I’m careful to wash all I can — cutting down on noxious dry-cleaning chemicals.

So let’s take cleaning litter boxes, one of my LEAST enjoyed tasks: if I do it w/ gladness I have Hector now, and acknowledgment that the two litter boxes are for the comfort of these two beings I love, that’s sooo much better (for me, at least) than grumbling through the whole thing. And if I stop in the middle to play with Hector, teasing him w/ a pencil under the newspaper as I fold it for a floor covering? I hardly notice the messy job.

It’s the same way with laundry — I’m trying to look at all the everyday maintenance of my life as a way to practice. Hokey sounding, but true. I’m not exactly humming as I fold the bottom sheet (I HATE bottom sheet folding!!), but it’s a start.

What do you do, every day, that you can open up to? Most of us find time to meditate almost as rare as peach-coloured sapphires (rarer than diamonds!). But the laundry has to be done every week, and the sheets changed, and the litter box cleaned, and the car serviced. Not to mention grocery shopping (another chore I don’t care for), and dishes, and lawn care. All of that is everyday life. What would happen if every time I do these things, I thought of them as practice?

Wow. I might be enlightened before next Christmas!! 😉