Monday, Monday

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January feels like a month full of Mondays. 

Maybe it’s the ongoing pandemic, or that there isn’t another break in the calendar until Spring, but for whatever reason, it's been more difficult than ever to return to work this year. Everything just seems pedestrian, one day folding into another ad infinitum. The bills need paying, the dog needs walking, the emails need sending, the kids need bathing. Rinse and repeat. 

In Medieval times, the first Monday after Epiphany was called Plough Monday, the day on which agricultural workers resumed their labors after the Twelve Days of Christmas. The day was filled with festivities as the rank and file paraded their farm equipment through the village and even into the church to receive a blessing for the coming years' labor. This liturgical act was the annual reminder that though much of life consists of ordinary, repetitive tasks when seen contemplatively, the daily grind becomes sublime. Or in other words, divinity is hidden in the daily. 

No one exemplified this way of being more than Nicholas Herman, better known as Brother Lawrence. 

Born in 1618 to a peasant couple existing on the fringes of French provincial life, Nicholas escaped poverty by joining the army. Imprisoned and permanently disabled in the service, he left the military in search of work. One winter day as he made his way from one town to another seeking employment, he came upon a tree stripped bare by the biting frost. Pausing to take notice, he recognized the presence of God in that very moment, in that particular tree. There was nothing peculiar about it beyond the realization that in just a few short months this barren sapling would spring to life, flower, and produce fruit simply by being. Its very existence resuscitated by grace. From that day forward, Lawrence understood that God was in all things. 

Though he was never a scholar or theologian, Brother Lawrence dedicated his life to practicing the presence of God. He entered a monastery in Paris and performed simple kitchen duties–a job he disliked intensely but embraced thoroughly–until the day he died. History should have forgotten his hidden little life save his simple, singular spiritual practice of recognizing the divine in ordinary things. For Brother Lawrence, "common business," no matter how mundane or routine, was the medium of God's presence. God is not “out there” somewhere apart from us, She is in all, through all, and with all things. We need only have the eyes to see that ordinary things are the hiding place of God.

But as post-evangelicals, this way of seeing is difficult for us. We were malformed from infancy to separate the sacred and secular, the divine and the ordinary, the soul and the body, heaven from earth. But doing so has left our souls dormant, closed off to the gift of grace that transforms the humdrum into heaven. 

As you re-enter your work-a-day routine after the holiday break, what might you require to have the eyes to see divinity in all things? What liturgies or habits can you incorporate into your routine life to help you see that nothing is ordinary after all? As author Frederick Buechner implores, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” 

Amen.