Author KATHLEEN NORRIS
Publisher PAULIST PRESS
ISBN 0-8091-3801 2
This short book of 88 pages is the text of a lecture that Kathleen Norris gave in 1998 in the Center for Spirituality, University of Notre Dame Indiana. Quotidian is a word meaning ‘daily’ and the substance of what we find here is that God is to be found in the daily, ordinary, regular and sometimes so called menial activities of life. Because the lecture was particularly for women the idea of laundry and cleaning figures and the book begins quite beautifully and tellingly when the author takes us to the first time she attended a Roman Catholic mass and saw the officiating priest washing and cleaning the utensils he had just used when administering the sacrament of the wafer and wine. The mix of the sacred and the ordinary struck a chord in her thinking. The transforming presence of God in the ordinary is the concentrated theme of the book and, in her usual style Kathleen Norris meanders between personal reminiscences and daily experiences, some poetry and the Benedictine monastic tradition as well as a few scriptures references to bring home her message. It is a necessary one and although she is a mild feminist in her viewpoint she readily admits that the feminist movement went over the top in advocating career work for women and needs to agree that daily tasks that became an anathema of drudgery and soul destroying do not need to be regarded as in any way demeaning or defining of the person, women in particular. It is most certainly true that evangelicalism has erred in producing a dualistic view in which ‘spiritual works’ are to do with church and its machinery and have become detached from what has been regarded as ‘secular’ and rather ordinary work. The latter is regarded as an intrusion to be borne and not conducive to the maturing of Christian life. Helpfully this author is on her favorite theme and there are some good things to be found here and the overall picture presented can only help the reader as they are shown that there is spiritual life to be nourished in the kitchen and laundry as well as in Bible reading and the attending of Christian services. Laundry and liturgy are the two words that capture something of what she is saying.
