Disclaimer: Good writers get to use one exclamation point in their lifetimes. I nearly missed February’s post altogether so I’m using mine plus one extra. I try to write stuff here, honest. But as the “smoking materials” version of the adage reminds, “The road to hell is paved with a high level of intentionality.” I mean well. Really.

Here in the rain-soaked, winter gray Northwest, a lot of us work very hard not to jump off a bridge until February is over. We figure if we can stand the gloom, the gray, the high cost of heating oil until the Equinox, we may not want to kill ourselves after all. My husband, for instance, stares out the kitchen window on stormy days, as if his mood has to match the color of the sky. He laments, “Fishing season is nearly two months away. A guy could die waiting.”

Me, I’m trying to spring clean in the midst of a season’s worth of dust bunnies and black mold. How can anyone possibly survive indoors, I grouse, surrounded by a level of filth my grandma would never have tolerated? Now you understand why my writing is so neglected. And my spiritual life, my toenails and my tan. All clamoring for attention. So what do I do? Clean the gunk out of the window sills, of course.
Doing prayer, being prayer, all this sounds monkish, right? Cleaning house makes me think of a neighbor woman who’s from the Upper Midwest. Yet maybe there’s a kernel of wisdom here. So today I decided to bleach the mold off the bedroom wall (seriously, look behind your bed and try not to inhale) as a form of prayer. I pulled on the rubber gloves and wielded the old toothbrush and the Brillo pad to get rid of all this crud, and God said, “Yes, this is the life, isn’t it?” Wow. Is that spiritual, or what?
Well it has worked for every monastic order down through the ages. Baking bread, winemaking, even fruit cake production is a revered tradition in one monastery or another. Monks and nuns must get dirt next to their baseboards and cobwebs in their corners too. They’ve known for centuries that hard work is good for the soul. I never thought of elbow grease as a way to hang out with God until today, though.
I moved the bed out from the aforementioned disgusting wall. Before I could get cracking, though, I had to have music. I got a very hip little red mp3 for Valentine’s Day, so I got it going. Then I swabbed the drab eggshell-colored wall with a 90% bleach solution. If you try this at home please open a window first. I don’t know if it was the fumes, but suddenly I felt God all around. I sang along with an old Beatles’ tune and scrubbed my heart out. Godsong made it easy.
By the time I was finished, the wall needed repainting and I had a hole in the fingertip of my glove. But somehow, I was light and carefree and couldn’t wait to tackle the tumbleweeds of dust under the bed. I dragged my husband away from his gloom post at the window and showed him my handiwork. He didn’t think de-molding a wall held a candle to spring steelheading, but he conceded that Spring isn’t all that far off, and maybe he can last until then. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing we’d made it through yet another Oregon winter. As soon as it’s warm enough, I think I’ll paint the bedroom a bright shade of pink.