Good morning. I’m Julia Wilson. I’ve been a member of JUC for five years. I’m not a seminary student or a visiting minister. I’m the summer beach novel of sermons: short and light. Here goes.
When asked to do this sermon, I decided to explore a dysfunctional relationship that has caused me damage for years. It’s the relationship between me and my laundry. Your issue may be money or public speaking or body image. Mine is laundry. Now it’s not the only one. But it’s a biggie. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I love traveling. I can only create a limited amount of laundry with a standard sized suitcase. There is this pile in my basement rising up from the landing pad of the laundry chute. It’s my monolith of sports bras and princess dresses and Fred’s never ending supply of white socks. My children like to hide in it, like a pile of autumn leaves, squealing in delight as they bury one another. At times I’ve found the bare floor below the last pair of jeans. But in a few days, the dirty clothes return again like apparel bindweed. So usually I look at this heap and think, “How can I possibly tackle this?” Then I march out of the laundry room and ignore it for another day.
Why am I stuck in this vortex? Why am I making this everyday task harder than it needs to be? In the book, Sweeping Beauty – Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, 22 writers explore the “recognition of our most basic needs and our efforts to resist them.” I believe everyone has stuff in their lives they resist, they get stuck on. In Marci’s chalice lighting, we heard about her struggle with remodeling her home. It wasn’t the work of the project. Marci was stuck in what remodeling her grandparents’ home meant. Writing this sermon got me thinking. There must be more to those crusty socks in my laundry pile. There must be some meaning I’m struggling with.
Of course, my first reaction is to go back to the default source,my mother. Now, I love my mom dearly. When I was a kid, she was the Queen of Clean. I don’t know why we even owned a hamper as I never saw anything in it. Clothes just magically reappeared in my closet pressed and smelling of Tide. When my dad was out doing the fun stuff: cutting wood, pulling a stump up with the tractor, my mom was in the hot utility room communing with the washer. Or worse yet, she was IRONING. In my mind, there was no worse subjugation of women than the screech of the ironing board opening up. Sometimes I would walk in on her pressing her 10th pair of bluejeans (she had four children and ironed everything) and she would be caught in this magical, meditative state: she would be softly singing. This song would float through the small hot kitchen where she parked the ironing board. I would sit in that sound and absorb the beauty of my mom. When she finally noticed me watching her, she’d abruptly close down her one-woman show. I’d beg her to sing some more. Quietly, shyly, she’d hum a bar. A grin, those so few grins when work was to be done, would crack across her face and she’d open up and let her voice out. I’d pick up the melody and jump in. We’d share a space there in the kitchen, just us, singing some old hill tune from her childhood. Then the screen door would slam with a hungry brother and the moment would evaporate. She would be back to head down, get the work done mode and I’d miss her. I’d want her back. I hated the ironing for taking her away from me. And I loved the ironing for letting me find her in song. Thus began my history of rebelling against the laundry and the plethora of other chores that I decided got in the way of connecting to Mom. I branded my soul with the mantra that I was never going to miss out on life, on my kids, because of laundry. Wrinkles would be my badge of honor.
After thinking this last week about those times spent with Mom, I now realize I assigned a big old ugly meaning to laundry. Laundry was more important to Mom, than I was. No wonder I don’t want to tackle my heap of dirty clothes. So do you ever get stuck connecting meanings to events? Say you’re at your in-laws house, loading the dishwasher after a family meal. Your mother-in-law suddenly takes over. Maybe you create a meaning in your mind attached to this event. “She doesn’t think I’ll do it just right. She thinks I’ll break her wine glasses. She thinks I’m not worthy of her son.” Her dishwasher becomes an icon of your meanings. Anyone relate to this? So once you recognize that you are assigning the meanings, you have the power to let them go, right? How do we do that?
On a recent visit to my parents’ home in the Ozarks, I noticed a local church had a great statement on its sign out front: “Be a fisher of man. You catch ‘em. God cleans ‘em.”
Now instead of a kneejerk reaction to this idea of being cleansed of sin, what if we look at this statement from a different fishing philosophy. What if we take a “catch and release” approach? “Be a fisher of meanings. You catch ‘em. You release ‘em.”
Take a minute right now and find that sparkling lure that you can’t resist biting at (your father, your finances). Take a good strike. Then when the pain of the barbed hook starts to set it, see that tempting goodie for what it is – bait, meaning, that you dangle before yourself. Are you reacting to a story, a meaning that you choose to carry?
Now your story may feel like a completely accurate assessment of the experience. It may be a huge event: An infidelity, a violent act, a lie directly toward you. Even then, if you’re done learning from the experience, if you’ve squeezed out all the empowering lessons you can find and are only left with the pain and vengeance, even then you can let it go. Catch… and Release. This may sound simplistic. How can you just forget a painful experience? You don’t. You rewrite it.
A few years ago, I went to workshop called the Landmark Forum. We talked about all this stuff. At one point, I had had it and stood up to challenge this leader. This event had happened to me in my life and by God, I was right and that person back then was wrong and how could I every just let it go? This workshop leader grabbed a tissue box and told me it was as easy as dropping the box. I just needed to choose to, I couldn’t believe I had paid good money to this guy. We went at it over and over. I was hooked big time and fighting the line like a crotchety old bass. He kept saying you can’t change the event that occurred. But you can change the meaning you attach to it. After a long heated discussion, I got it. This event had happened. But I was making it still happen, still run my reactions. So I let go. It wasn’t forgotten. But the meaning, the power was gone. I was left empty, but beautifully so, ready to choose my meaning… or choose no meaning to carry forward into my future. This power of choice, of release, really works.
Catch and Release. Let go of the hook. Don’t gut yourself and hop in the frying pan. Catch – and Release. And while you’re at it, let anyone else you’ve snagged in the process off the hook, too. Then fish for the love of the sport. Enjoy finding what your bait is. Enjoy catching yourself when you are about to bite. Savor that beautiful moment when you choose not to get caught again.
So this week, I chose to let go of my resentment for laundry and the other chores that consumed my mother’s life and, now that I have children, consume my life. I chose to let go of old meanings. I got to sing with my mom when she did laundry. That’s what I’m carrying forward.
Chosen meanings can be powerful. I recently met a smart, funny woman named Chris. She owns a mansion with 11 bathrooms, has a live-in maid, and still has one toilet that is just “hers” to scrub. Toothbrush level scrubbing. Cleaning the bathroom means something to her. You might guess a story like “I’m bad for having a huge house,” but her story is “I want to play with my dad and sisters.” What she remembers from childhood is her dad cleaning the bathroom and her being right there with him. They bonded over bleach and scrub brushes. It was a family affair with little sisters putting on plays behind the shower curtain. So meaning can add richness to tasks. You can create a ritual, a rhythm to enter into, a path through ordinary tasks.
Now I’m pretty much an internet theologian, but this sounds like Taoism to me. From my best understanding, this ancient Chinese spirituality is all about the path, or theway. It refers to a “power which flows through all things. It embodies the harmony of opposites. There is no light without dark, no male without female." And I would add, there are no mud pies or chocolate sauce… without laundry. Harmony of opposites. The Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang. Dirty clothes, clean clothes. They don’t all have to be clean. And they don’t all have to be dirty. If I find the balance of the two, maybe I can channel this power that flows through all things. Maybe Mom found this path, this way, in her chores.
The novelist Joyce Carol Oates says, “If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.” I believe we all can tap into that space. I think that space is synonymous with the Taoist concept of the path, the way. I tried this out this week. In the laundry room, I have space to listen to my breathing while I sort. I watch the washer fill with water, watch the clothes suds up and spin. My mom deserved this quiet time to reflect and be in herself. I now believe she needed her respite in the laundry room to survive four kids and the molded role of women in her era. I can use that same space to find connection – to Mom, to caregivers throughout time, to the memory of picking raspberries with my girls as I scrub out the stains.
My mom died at home on hospice 2 ½ years ago. It was a hard last day of pain and morphine in the hospital bed stationed in the living room. It was a day of complete internal and external chaos. About 8pm that night, I hit a breaking point. I retreated to the kitchen and made chocolate chip cookies. Their smell coated the house with the richness of life rather than unbearable tension. I entered the living room with warm, gooey relief on a plate. My brother, sister-in-law, father, and I sunk in to this simple pleasure and released our grip on an unmanageable scenario. We chuckled and sighed and let my baby girl crawl over our tummies as we enjoyed our being together. And I folded towels.
Then Mom’s hazy breaths stopped. My dad took her hand and patted it. He said, “I think she’s gone.” And she was. I now believe through the normalcy of cookies and laughter and laundry, we created a peace, a sense of home where my mom could finally let go. Laundry helps create home. It creates a sacred space where real living happens. My mom left me with this immense lesson on her final day.
Now I see laundry for what it is: life going on. It is the continuum of eating and drinking and kids peeing their pants. It is me still being alive. At this moment in my life, laundry may be monumental in volume, but I choose for it to be rich with value.
I invite you to try out these lessons in laundry for yourself. First, be aware of the stories, the meanings you choose to give a task, an experience. Next, release that built-in story if it no longer serves you. Let the meaning of the laundry or your finances or your weedy lawn go. Let yourself off the hook. And let others off the hook, too. Finally, choose the path, the way, the power of these tasks. Find your Tao of driving in rush hour traffic or balancing the checkbook. Choose your meaning.
Sometimes our work will be vast. Sometimes it will be momentarily completed. And someday, it will not exist anymore. Between now and my last sock, I challenge myself to Catch, Release, and walk in the way, the wisdom of the moment before me. May you discover this as well. Amen.
*****
CLOSING STATEMENT:
Let go of those stories, those meanings, that don’t serve you.
You catch ‘em. You release ‘em. You choose.
May we all find the quiet space that remains.