Book Review: The Quotidian Mysteries

Title: The Ouotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work"

Author: Kathleen Norris

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Finished Reading: December 30th

Why Chosen: Will read anything by Kathleen Norris

Own: Yes!

This is a text of the 1998 Madeleva Lecture Kathleen Norris gave at St. Mary's College in 1998. It's very short (88 pages) and skims over many topics covered with more depth in her books Dakota, Amazing Grace, and Cloister Walk. In this book, though, she shares some of her poetry and inspiration which I really enjoyed. Norris focuses on the mundane daily tasks that we all must attend to in one way or another and shows how these repetitive tasks can bring us into the presence of God. (Quotidian means occurring every day; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary.)

Some excerpts:

The often heard lament, "I have so little time," gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance. Everyone has exactly the same amount of time, the same twenty-four hours in which many a weary voice has uttered the gospel truth: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Mt 6:34 KJV). But most of us, most of the time, take for granted what is cloasest to us and is most universal. The daily round of sunrise and sunset, for example, that marks the coming and passing of each day, is no longer a symbol of human hopes, or of God's majesty, but a grind, something we must grit our teeth to endure. (pp. 16-17)

In contemplating marriage or any long-term commitment to others as a quotidian mystery, it might help to regard the gifts of our hearts as being like the manna God sent each day to the Israelites in their journey through a forbidding wilderness. God has made us so that abundant grace can flow from us in response to great need, but in order to fulfill its God-given purpose, such grace must be received and used up, as it is of the present moment and will not keep even overnight. (pp. 51-52)

Teresa of Avila implies in her Autobiography that it is through other people that God chooses to reach out to us. "If Christ Jesus dwells in us..." she writes, "then we can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend. And I clearly see that if we expect to please him and receive an abundance of his graces, God desires that these graces must come to us from the hands of Christ, through his most sacred humanity, in which God takes delight." In our life of faith, then, as well as in our most intimate relationships with other people, our task is to transform the high romance of conversion, the fervor of a religious call, into daily commitment. Into the sort of friendship that transcends infatuation and can endure all things. Our desire is to love God and each other, in stable relationships that, like any good marriage, remain open to surprises and receptive to grace. (p. 78)