“The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry. ”
The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women’s Work
By Kathleen Norris

It’s spring. And I take great joy in hanging the clothes out on the line to dry.
It’s an art.

grandmother laundry

I try to hang the largest first and end with the tiny things.
(It usually ends a bit lobsided.)
I know others who hang their clothes by colour.
And some who make delightful rainbow lines.

 

It was Kathleen Norris first, and later, Barbara Brown Taylor,
who taught me to offer little prayers of gratitude
for each piece of laundry,
little breaths of blessing
for the wearers of the clothes
or the occasions for the wearing.

A line of laundry
like little prayer flags in the breeze.

(The picture is an old family print. It is my grandmother, Loretta (Mutch) MacLean hanging out her load of laundry.)