The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work

In this insightful and deeply personal work, Kathleen Norris, an award-winning poet and author of both Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk, draws on her life experiences, her poetry and her love of the Benedictine tradition to discuss the mysterious way that the daily or "quotidian" can open us to the transforming presence of God. This volume is the text of the 1998 Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, sponsored by the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana.

Library Journal

Laundry may seem an odd element in the realm of religious worship, but poet and author, Norris (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, LJ 12/92) has a talent for weaving seemingly disparate fragments of life together to see them as naturally connected. She points out that "women's work" such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning, done repeatedly on a daily basis and seemingly never to completion, can be approached in the same manner as liturgy. If seen as endless and dreary repetition, these domestic rituals become mindless activities to be gotten out of the way. When considered in terms of their enormous life-giving importance, the feeding and clothing of a family and maintaining of a household can be undertaken in the contemplative spirit. They become, like prayer and worship, acts of love that transform us and, in turn, the larger world around us. An uplifting book of inspiration, this is filled with humorous insights that will be enjoyed by readers unfamiliar with Norris's other work.

Kathleen Norris is the author of two books of poetry, Falling Off (1971) and The Middle of the World (1981) and has received awards from the Guggenheim and Bush foundations. She lives in Lemmon, South Dakota, with her husband.