Seeking God in the Cleaning

Friday, Jun. 23, 2023

“God walks among the pots and pans.”

So said Saint Teresa of Avila. She also encouraged her nuns to frequently recall that Christ was present to them at all times, and that it was better to take an hour to say one Our Father rather than reciting “many prayers very quickly, like one who wants to get a job done.”

I had all this in mind last week when I cleaned the kitchen. It wasn’t my usual lick and a promise; it was the deep cleaning I try to do a couple of times a year. Usually during this undertaking I turn on the television as a distraction, but this time I decided to see if I could find God among the pots and pans, as it were, so I worked in silence and asked the Holy Spirit to grace me with his presence.

As usual, my thoughts failed to stay with the program. When I moved the oven and saw the crud on the floor underneath, I muttered some words I should never say, and wondered how on earth that sticky stuff had gotten there, because I couldn’t remember anything boiling over on the stove top.

I did a little better when I emptied the crumbs from the toaster. Thinking of bread and God first took me to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, then to the realization that many people in today’s world lack not only what Christians consider the Bread of Life but also enough bread or other sustenance to live. So I said a prayer for those who hunger, either for bodily or spiritual nourishment, and continued cleaning.

St. Teresa devotes an entire chapter of The Way of Perfection to the first phrase of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven. Surprisingly, to me at least, she doesn’t focus her comments on what it means to call God “our Father.” Rather, she notes that Christ, by making himself our brother, obliged God to be our father, “which is no small burden because in being Father he must bear with us no matter how serious the offenses. If we return to him like the prodigal son, he has to pardon us. He has to console us in our trials. He has to sustain us in the way a father like this must.”

I’m well-versed in the teaching of the merciful God, and during my cleaning I did give thanks for many of his gifts as the thought occurred: Wiping down the refrigerator shelves, I gave thanks for the plentiful food that filled them; trying to remove the calcium deposits in the sink, I gave thanks for the clean drinking water that is available at the turn of a tap; scrubbing the floor, I gave thanks for the education and employment opportunities that have meant I never have had to be a maid. Rather than dwell on gratitude, however, I considered the words “our father.”

First of all, by starting the prayer with “our,” Jesus implicitly made himself a brother to humankind, and made us all members of his family. It’s easy to forget that when I recite the prayer thoughtlessly, as I often do, but as a Christian I am called to consider every person as a sister or brother. 

It’s also worth noting, as many commentators have pointed out, that Jesus often spoke of his father with a word that is better translated as “daddy.” To me, addressing a parent as “Father” implies a formal relationship, whereas “Daddy” is familiar and loving. But Teresa says that because Christ desired that God the Father consider us his children, “he must be better than all the fathers in the world because in him everything must be faultless.” 

Human fathers have faults, but Christ gave us a faultless father, and what a wonderful gift that was and is.

I had other such thoughts as I cleaned. None of them were profound, and I don’t know that I found God among the pots and pans, but as a result of my efforts I think I got more than a spotless kitchen.