Pilgrimage through the Mundane

Here I am the day before Holy Week ironing pillow shams that Linda has sewn for the couches in the reception area of the new church. Ashley’s helping to cut out the fabric. Grant’s gathering up the week’s trash.

The chores are the same, but the tone is different than on other Saturdays. The phone is ringing with family making arrangements to join us for church and an Easter meal. Linda’s reminding us that she wants to have the pillow done by Easter. Grant’s looking over his work schedule for the Holy Week. Hope’s texting about when to be picked up from college for the holy days. The preparations are making the coming week less a matter of daily chores than one where the daily chores are becoming a pilgrimage, a ritual, a purpose.

We might have any number of activities that flow into our holy days. They seem to put some continuity to the passage of time, and separate the mundaneness of life from itself. Maybe that is why Moses read the law to the people on regular intervals, and the history of the Jewish people was (as still is) rehearsed every year, and why we let the otherwise mundane chores of what would otherwise be just another week begin to tally a new meaning. It’s a pilgrimage, a passage. Let it live in its fullness all the days of this week.