For anyone who has been to stay with Ched & Elaine in Oak View, you may know of their little system for napkin individualisation which is that you write your name on a peg, attach your peg to your napkin and it’s yours for the duration of your stay (or at least until it gets dirty!).  Once they have written a name on each side, these pegs graduate to the clothes line and every time they hang out the laundry they see the names of all the different people who have come to stay – “a great cloud of witnesses” in the sacred ordinary things.

Last night I ran prayers before our open community meal and we all wrote names of people we’ve journeyed with that we want to remember and pray for.  I’ve never been great at ‘prayers of others’ but I’m pretty good at keeping up with the laundry; although I will acknowledge laundry can be one of those jobs that feels never ending. Brother Lawrence was a monk in the 17th century who believed in practising the presence of God “…we ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” I’m going to do my laundry with love and mindful prayers for others.