In recent years Americans have had a renewed love affair with their homes, so it's no surprise to discover new attentiveness to cleaning them. This collection of tidbits from essays, fiction and poetry that reference housecleaning, compiled by an editor and producer in the television industry, explores everything from Booker T. Washington scolding Negroes who kept house poorly to the "big mess" made by the attacks on the Twin Towers. The book, from a multifaith and multicultural perspective, includes everything from the obvious and well-known (Thich Nhat Hanh and Brother Lawrence on washing dishes) to the less expected (Jarvis Jay Masters writing about cleaning his cell on death row). Some pieces have only the most tenuous connection to housekeeping, much less what's sacred about it, such as the excerpt from Baldwin's
Go Tell It on the Mountain, where cleaning serves primarily as backdrop. While many excerpts are intriguing, the collection is largely unprocessed, with only brief introductions to the sections on washing dishes, laundry, sweeping and so forth, and no introductions to the individual excerpts. While each piece includes some aspect of housekeeping, the reader is left not quite knowing what to make of the whole.
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"An eclectic and ecumenical treasury of writings--ancient and modern, poetry and prose, secular and sacred.... Dissolves the boundaries between drudgery and dharma, celebrating the opportunities for transcendence that can be found in the everyday. Feng Shui for the heart, mind and soul." --
Arthur Goldwag, author of The Beliefnet Guide to Kabbalah"Finds meaning in the ever-present reality of housekeeping.... It is at once lovely, inspiring and thoughtful." --
Karyn D. Kedar, author of The Bridge to Forgiveness: Stories and Prayers for Finding God and Restoring Wholeness"Lovely.... Articulates what many women know but hesitate to admit: housekeeping has a unique spiritual quality, if only we will tap into it. Simply read and enjoy whenever you need to find the sacred in housekeeping once again." --
Marcia Ford, author of Finding Hope: Cultivating God's Gift of a Hopeful SpiritAs the Book of Ecclesiastes says, there is "a time to keep, and a time to throw away." And a new collection of writings about the serenity -- indeed, the spirituality -- to be found in creating order at home suggests that the time for the latter is now.
"Next to Godliness" (Skylight Paths Publishing, $19.99), compiled and edited by Alice Peck, is not a guide to how to clean but a thoughtful, surprising anthology that aims to inspire us to think differently about how we keep our domestic space.
"The selections I've chosen are determinedly eclectic and ecumenical," she writes, to show "the spiritual possibilities within the routine of housekeeping." Contributors include Dominique Browning ("Doing the Dishes"), Louisa May Alcott ("A Song From the Suds"), Allen Ginsberg ("Homework") and Luke (Chapter 10, verses 38-41).
In "Bathing a Newborn Buddha," Thich Nhat Hanh writes about becoming aware of each sacred moment while washing the dishes. Pablo Neruda's "An Ode for Ironing" is gorgeous enough to make you empty the dryer right now. And Marilynne Robinson offers the kind of insight into sweeping and folding that could turn drudgery into a comforting pastime.
As you read on, the collection's focus broadens, moving from housekeeping tasks to the spirit of one's home to the condition of our cities, our planet. It's not all sweetness and light. Booker T. Washington has harsh words for a minister whose house "presented the most dismal and disappointing appearance." Yitzhak Buxbaum writes that "dirt and disorder are usually an external manifestation of your inner condition." Andrea Barrett conveys the unspeakable horror of Sept. 11 by wiping ash off the walls of her apartment.
Sometimes the urge to clean arrives in completely unexpected ways. Marc Poirier writes about the surprising impulse that came over him when he was battling cancer: "Cleaning up became an ongoing affirmation of my own sense of belonging, and of the essential goodness of my life." And in the anthology's longest essay, Louise Rafkin describes her trip to Japan to wash toilets in search of spiritual awakening.
What's missing from this collection is a little skepticism. Unrepentant slob that I am, I kept wanting someone to play devil's advocate. These poems and essays are lovely, but most of them are preaching to the choir -- whose robes, you'd better believe, have been washed in holy water and ironed with the rock of salvation. I was relieved to read Jeannette Batz's admission that "when you're exhausted after a day in the outside world, a scrub brush is a burdensome collector of hair and dead skin, nothing more." But even she concedes that "the chores I'd branded oppressive and mundane are creative and profound . . . when they're done with love."
That insight -- the importance of loving family, self and something transcendent -- ties these writings together, no matter what the faith of the authors. And it's hard to resist that message no matter how messy your house tends to be. After all, though it may be we came from dust, that doesn't mean we have to live in it. -- Ron Charles, Washington Post, May 17, 2007
