We are tempted to think holiness lives elsewhere — in cathedrals, retreats, mountaintops. But the saints have always taught the opposite: that the sacred is here, in the kitchen, the commute, the laundry. This sonnet listens for the quiet glory of the ordinary day.
The Sonnet
The morning kettle hums its small refrain, The window light falls plain across the floor, The dishes wait, the table holds its grain, A bird sings something I cannot ignore. I had thought holiness was elsewhere kept — In silent abbeys, on some distant hill — But while I waited, while I almost slept, The kitchen knew its sacred office still. The bread of presence broken every day, The cup that holds the small communions made, The threshold where I pause to greet or pray, The ordinary altar undelayed. So glory walks the carpet where I tread, And every common moment crowns my head.
Reflection
Brother Lawrence washed dishes in a monastery kitchen for thirty years and called it “the practice of the presence of God.” He had discovered something the contemplative tradition has always known: that holiness is not where we expect it. It is in the ordinary, if we have eyes to see.
The kitchen, the commute, the diaper change, the email — these are not interruptions of the spiritual life. They are the spiritual life, lived in the form God gave you. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation hovers over your sink. The same Christ who broke bread at Emmaus is present at your breakfast table. The sacred has not gone elsewhere. We have simply forgotten how to see it where it is.
Today, choose one ordinary act — making coffee, folding laundry, walking the dog — and do it as though it were a small sacrament. Because, in fact, it is.
