Ordinary Arts at Home

 

Year 9- Day 27: Today, I am grateful for ordinary arts at home.

"The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest." -Thomas Moore

Changing the toilet paper. Feeding the fur babies. Filling the ice cube trays (Does anyone still do this?). Doing the laundry and dishes. Running the vacuum. Baking cookies. Matching up the socks. Washing the bedding. Each act is ordinary in every way... until it is done with love.

Do we look at the ordinary arts we practice every day and truly access their value and impact. In 2020, we appreciated toilet paper more than most of us had in a lifetime.

Mama Ina Mae always encouraged us and modeled ordinary arts with extraordinary love. Acting with intention and grace requires practice, until it becomes a habit. We all need time to rest and restore, but there is an exhilaration that only comes when we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.

'And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” -Mark 12:30-31

Allow me to suggest... just for the pondering... that when we learn to "love our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength", loving our neighbors as ourselves is a natural response to being filled with His Holy Spirit. No longer seeing with human eyes, but His eyes of love and compassion. It becomes "second nature". Not our original, natural response, but a second nature born of loving God with our whole hearts. It becomes more innate than intentional.

Think about it. A "second nature" is defined as a mindset, skill, or type of behavior so ingrained through habit or practice that it seems natural, automatic, or without a basis in conscious thought.

Allow me to confess... I still have plenty of work to do. Learning to love our neighbors... all of them... has a direct correlation to how much we love our Lord. One of the best places to practice love and grace is in the ordinary arts at home.

Practice love. Practice forgiveness. Practice changing the roll of toilet paper until it becomes second nature.

Today, I am grateful for ordinary arts at home.