Cleaning the Toilet/Finding God

In order to secure an additional stream of income, I clean residences in downtown Indianapolis. I do this in between working at a bookstore and trying to care for my family life and to be active in my community.

For many of my friends and family, it seems strange that I clean houses as part of my living. I mean, with a long work history and graduate studies, why would I want to do this? For one thing, it is good and reliable money. For another, I just like cleaning . . . I have never viewed it as a "lower form" of human endeavor and enjoy keeping my own place clean and orderly. Then, it provides a wonderful situation where I can exercise without going to a gym: You crouch, squat, lift, move muscles in all directions. And finally--maybe most importantly to me--there is the silence.

All day long I enounter noise. At the bookstore there is overhead music and a constant flow of announcements to customers and staff. But I only clean houses when my clients are away at work and when their pets are at the dog or cat sitters. In silence I am able to work cleaning and to work thinking and reflecting.

What do I think about while polishing a coffee table or on my hands and knees using Murphy's soap on an old hardwood floor? Well, often it is about people in my life: My kids, partner, best friends. . . Sometimes it is about the practicalities of life: Is the Visa bill paid on time? What do I need to fix for dinner? Have I set my annual doctor's exam?

The silence also lends itself to some of the bigger questions that concern a person of my age and situation: What comes about in death? After death? Why does so much injustice and suffering seem to be increasing around me? Is there such a thing as human or historic progress? Why do I often retain anger after I think that I have forgiven someone? Am I a poser or "the genuine thing"? These are big questions and often then can't be thought through in solitude or even in silence. But at least cleaning time is a period when I can let the questions surface and when I can play with them from different angles. Maybe later I will ask Nelia or Frankie or Tyrone or my mom to give me some insights.

I have a friend who is struggling with his work, his own core identity and his future. Over dinner in our neighborhood pub his asked me where I find God. This question is not new to me because everyone who knows me knows that I reject a purely secular approach to life as simply not big enough for life itself. Many if not most of my friends are secular and so the question tends to come up often. Usually, I answer with some statement like "I find God in the life of Jesus" or "I find God in the struggles of those who suffer." But this time, without knowing why, I just blurted out "I find God while cleaning toilets." My friend demonstrated surprise, and a little unease, at this answer. And I surprised myself as well!

I guess that I was trying to say that I find God--whatever or whoever God is--while engaged in small, menial work. And I wanted to say that if you can't find God in that situation, then you probably can't find him/her/it at all. As good as the majestic sunset, the rugged mountains, the fine music of the mass or other sublime moments may be for communicating God, those moments are infrequent. But the small moments of our daily-ness, busy-ness have to be conveyors of God as well.

So, that was how I astounded and probably confused my friend. Another friend, Steve, who practices Zen and is involved in serious social advocacy, told me that my answer (but not the explanation that I have provided you, my reader, in the above paragraph) was worthy of a Zen teacher. I loved this comment. Maybe just saying that God is to be found in cleaning toilets is a comment that can and should stand on its own without any explication.

In the Christian tradition, Brother Lawrence has evoked some of the theme I am trying to discuss in this blog posting. Also, George Herbert has written the following verses to a hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal (#592): "All may of thee partake, nothing can be so mean, which with this tincture, "For thy sake," will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this cause makes drudgery divine: who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine."




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