If you’re like me, we’ve reached the point in the new year where we’ve mostly settled back into our routines and our days have become refreshingly ordinary again. This week has been a normal week at school, I’ve reset my home after Christmas, and I’m back to the giant pile of laundry I managed to ignore in the gloriously restful days of Christmastide. These are the days of quotidian mystery, of laundry and meal planning, of making beds and tidying up. They are also the days of Epiphany, when the light that shone over the manger and led the wise men illuminates our work with the glow of Christ’s light and we take new delight in the daily tasks before us.
How fitting, then, that the feast day of Brother Lawrence is in this season. For those who are not familiar with him, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was a lay brother in the Carmelite order in Paris the 1600s. He entered the monastery in his mid-twenties, after serving as a soldier and suffering injuries that left him disabled. He worked in the monastery’s kitchen for 30 years, which he thoroughly dedicated himself to despite disliking the duties immensely. Having decided early on that “our only business in this life is to please God,” Brother Lawrence completed his daily tasks with a consciousness of the God that hallows them. His wisdom comes to us through his conversations and letters published shortly after his death, collected under the title The Practice of the Presence of God.
Brother Lawrence’s conversion came when saw God’s providence and power in the barren winter trees. It seems to me that God’s providence is also found in the tasks we often see as barren, the never-ending, seemingly fruitless duties that demand our attention again as soon as we have completed them. These are the moments in which Brother Lawrence practices the presence of God and, in God’s presence, recognizes the holiness of his work.
It is easy to buy into the idea some of our work is holy and some is not. Teaching Spiritual Theology to 9th graders? Holy. Evaluating math curriculum? Less holy. Remembering to take my laundry out of the dryer and hang it before it wrinkles (after the third time I’ve tumbled it, hoping to shake out the wrinkles left from the first time I didn’t deal with it right away)? It’s hard to see the holiness in that. It’s also easy to buy into the idea that God is present sometimes and absent others. It’s easier to “feel” Divine presence some times than others. But what if that absence is not an absence of God’s presence, but an absence of my awareness of it? I think this is the invitation Brother Lawrence has for me. If I feel like my work is not holy, could it be that I don’t recognize God’s work in it? If I feel like God is not present, could it be that I am missing His glory in the bare trees of winter?
Several months ago I picked up a booklet titled “Trees at Leisure” by Anna Botsford Comstock. I was delighted by the notion that trees would find themselves at leisure and that I could accompany them there at my own leisure, and was quite surprised to discover that the entire booklet was about trees in the winter. Then I realized that leisure is, of course, a time outside of “productivity.”
“In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it.” ~Anna Botsford Comstock
Perhaps it is in the wintering seasons of the ordinary, when we have shed the foliage of accomplishment and flashy works we deem “worthy” of holy approval, that we stand revealed to the uttermost before God, open to the presence of the One who loves us most. It is not what I have produced with my effort that becomes virtue, but who I am without those things, stark and unadorned in the light of the One who made me. I do work, yes, but it is not the work done that is holy; it is the presence of the Holy One that hallows it.
We light the Christ candle as a reminder that Christ is with us in this place, at this time, as He is with us in all places and at all times. But all light, in all places, reminds us of this truth if we are receptive to its revelation. Brother Sun and Sister Moon declare the presence of God and invite us to practice His presence with them. The quiet flicker of the candle and the incessant buzz of the florescent bulb declare the image of God in every inventor, every electrician, every person who reads and cooks and sweeps by their light. We cannot greet another person without discovering God in our midst, imaged in the very being of the one we meet. We cannot sit alone in a dark room without presence of God waiting to comfort us in our loneliness. It is not the foliage of the trees that makes them beautiful, even in Autumn, or the starkness of their branches against the bright sky in winter; it is the Light by which we see them that draws our wonder, our unbidden gasp, at the startling beauty when we see it.
It is the same Light by which we see the work before us, whether or not we recognize its Source. It is this Light that transformed the nature of even the most mundane, “unholy” work for Brother Lawrence. “The most effective way Brother Lawrence had for communicating with God was to simply do his ordinary work.” I do not know the relationship of the Carmelites to the Benedictines, but I hear in Brother Lawrence’s biographer’s words the echoes of the Benedictine motto Oro et Labora, Work and Pray. For these saints there is no distinction between work and prayer, but the distinction lies between doing the same work for God that we had previously done for ourselves. When our work is done in the presence of God and our prayers consist of resting in the presence of God, there is very little distinction indeed. God is always present with us; it seems that we are the ones who find ourselves absent.
Light of Christ, shine on us.
Recommended: Two Short Reads and a Podcast
If you have never before read The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, I highly recommend you pause your “important” work and read 50-ish pages of wisdom from the 1600s. I downloaded an inexpensive Kindle copy and read it in an afternoon since it had been some years since I read a borrowed copy, but I would suggest a more leisurely pace alongside some practice for this one.
Trees at Leisure by Anna Botsford Comstock is even shorter at 37 pages (and half of them lovely illustrations!) but slightly harder to come by as I’m not aware of a Kindle option. It is lovely, and will perhaps help you turn a keen eye toward the Light shining through the winter trees outside your window.
Along the lines of living each moment in the presence of God and practicing our work as prayer, I highly recommend listening to this episode of The Habit podcast with Jen Pollack Michel on reframing productivity, which our culture finds so enthralling. I am convinced that part of the struggle in praying without ceasing (which is companion to practicing the presence of God) is the constant pull of our attention toward using the time we are given “productively.” It is well worth 45 minutes of your time, especially if you’ve got some laundry to fold.
A Practice: Nature Journaling
For Epiphany a dear friend gave me a guide on Nature Journaling, in part, I’m guessing, because I made her listen to me ramble on enthusiastically about Trees at Leisure and Notes on Trees, both by Comstock. I have dipped my toe into the waters of nature journaling and am delighted to have more direction to my dabblings. One of the things I am enticed by in nature journaling is the way it shapes the journaler’s attention. You notice things differently when you are drawing them. I’m far better at paying attention to the world around me in summer and fall when it is delightful to be outside, so I’m considering this my invitation to practice observing through nature journaling in the next week. It’s your invitation, too, if you’d like to join me. If you’re looking for information on what nature journaling is or how to begin, here’s a good overview. May we notice the presence of God in more places this week!