"I have a farmer friend who would definitely side with my grandfather on the subject of time's economies. He uses draft animals instead of a tractor. Doesn't it take an eternity to turn a whole field with a horse-driven plow? The answer, he says, is yes. Eternal is the right frame of mind. 'When I'm out there cultivating the corn with a good team in the quiet of the afternoon, watching the birds in the hedgerows, oh my goodness, I could just keep going all day. Kids from the city come out here and ask, "What do you do for fun around here?" I tell them, "I cultivate."'A good friend and spiritual guide reminds me that God is found in the tasks of daily life. I grasp tightly to that lesson on Sunday nights, when an entire week of routine chores awaits. I try to remind myself that work is a blessing, that ritual is necessary and my profession is fulfilling. Some nights that is harder to remember than others.
Now that I'm decades older and much less clever than I was in college, I'm getting better at facing life's routines the way my friend faces his cornfield. I haven't mastered the serene mindset on all household chores (What do you do for fun around here? I scrub pots and pans, okay???), but I might be getting there with cooking. Eternal is the right frame of mind for making food for a family: cooking down the tomatoes into a red-gold oregano-scented sauce for pasta. Before that, harvesting sun-ripened fruits, pinching oregano leaves from their stems, growing these things from seed - yes. A lifetime is what I'm after. Cooking is definitely one of those things we do for fun around here."
But here's a goal for me: to not rush through each and every task before me, but to take my time and find joy in those efforts. Recently, in the mornings I've been trying to do more yoga breathing and stretching, to find comfort in that early hour, rather than just feeling exhausted. It's become a treasured time.
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