July 14, 2004
"The Quotidian Mysteries"
"The Quotidian Mysteries"
"For who hath despised the day of small things? . . . "
Zechariah 4:10
Dear Friends,
I first thought that there would be no "Jerusalem's Daughters" article this week. My son is getting married this Saturday, and the planning for that, including the expectation of out-of-town guests, etc., is taking much of my time these days. But then I came across the following post which caught my attention as it was sent (by me) to the "Keepers At Home" list on July 13, 2001--almost three years ago today. In reading it recently, I realized that I especially needed this reminder at this particular time. And I also decided to send it as this week's offering for Jerusalem's Daughters.
May we not despise the daily (quotidian) things, but rejoice in the God who deigns--even in the small things--to be a part of our history.
In Him,
Elaine
p.s. This JD article (excerpted from Kathleen Norris's book, "The Quotidian Mysteries") is a bit longer than usual because I am doing minimal editing due to time constraints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I learned a new word recently . . . "quotidian". I am copying the meanings of the word "quotidian" below from written sources.
Quotidian: occurring every day; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary. (Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary)
Quotidian: 1. Recurring daily. 2. Everyday; commonplace. [ME "cotidian" < OFr. "cotidien" < Lat. "quotidianus" < "quotidie", each day : "quot", as many as + "dies", day.] (The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition).
"Looking up the word *quotidian* in Eric Partridge's _Origins_, I am pointed to the realm of the holy, to the words _deus_ (meaning "God") and _dies_ (meaning "daylight" or "duration of a day"), which are closely related. They are both linked semantically in that, as Partridge writes, "the luminous sky...and daylight itself were apprehended as divine forces and manifestations," and [linked] phonetically in the Indo-European root, meaning "to shine, be luminous." One definition of a god was "the shining one." The element _quot_ brings the *quotidian* down to earth, as it were, with more pedestrian concerns; it is concerned with quantity, as in how many days?" (EH: I admit that the author lost me somewhat in these latter phrases but couldn't find a good "cut-off" place ... I hope the excerpt nevertheless "enlightens" you about the word 'quotidian' and helps to put a foundation under other passages from this little book). (Excerpt taken from the book: _The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work"_ by Kathleen Norris.)
Kathleen Norris, whose books I like to read (although I don't always agree with her) writes books that are full of deep insights written in sometimes sparkling prose. Favorites among her books that I've read so far include _The Cloister Walk_ and _Amazing Grace_. I have learned much from her in these writings (although there are a few things I could teach her also) :-) and can recommend them if they are read "with filters in place". I'm getting better at this, but it's not for the faint-hearted! Her books, IMO, are worth the effort if you can read leisurely and without distraction. (I can imagine you all responding in unison "Yeah, right.") :-) But the excerpts I am sending, from the book(let) quoted from above, don't require such labored concentration.
Here are some small samples from the book(let):
"Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import, and their significance for Christian theology, the way they come together in the fabric of faith, is not often appreciated."
Further, from the back-of-the-book "blurb": "In this insightful and deeply personal work, Kathleen Norris, . . . draws on her life experiences,...to discuss the mysterious way that the daily or "quotidian" can open us to the transforming presence of God."
"The Bible is full of evidence that God's attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us--loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is "renewed in the morning" (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, "our inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life--all the cooking and cleaning of a people's domestic life--might be envisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do."
"It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare [as one version puts it], "I will bless you, Lord, who hath given me counsel, and even at night direct my heart" (Ps 16:7). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the Scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty-gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God's love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us as it gives us cause for praise."
* * *
" . . . . I can easily identify with a comment made by Peter Jordan in a _Commonweal_ article on Dorothy Day: ". . . . Day had to steal the early morning hours for her spiritual exercise. She did this almost daily, year in and year out." And I love the simple, unsanctimonious and humble thing that Day herself said about her practice: "My strength...returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms." Workaholism is the opposite of humility, and to an unhumble literary workaholic such as myself, morning devotions can feel useless, not nearly as important as getting about my business early in the day. I know from bitter experience that when I allow busy little doings to fill the precious time of early morning, when contemplation might fluorish, I open the doors to the demon of acedia***[EH: more on this word at the end of this post]. Noon becomes a blur--no time, no time--the wolfing down of a sandwich as I listen to the morning's phone messages and plan the afternoon's errands. When evening comes, I am so exhausted that vespers has become impossible. It is as if I have taken the world's weight on my shoulders and am too greedy, and too foolish, to surrender it to God."
"Having discarded contemplation, I render it and the worship that is its fruit, meaningless, futile, without issue. And this dry sterility is the stuff of acedia. Like John Bunyan's pilgrim, having been captured by Giant Despair, I languish in the dungeon of Doubting Castle and need to be reminded that the key that would set me free is already in my possession. Worship has often proved to be that key; although on the surface it seems useless, it is also necessary, a means of reconnecting with other people when acedia or dejection has isolated me. Worship grounds me again in the real world of God's creation, dislodging me from whatever world I have imagined for myself. I have come to believe that when we despair of praise, when the wonder of creation and our place in it are lost to us, it's often because we've lost sight of our true role as creatures--we have tried to do too much, pretending to be in such control of things that we are indispensable. It's a hedge against mortality and, if you're like me, you take a kind of comfort in being busy. The danger is that we will come to feel too useful, so full of purpose and the necessity of fulfilling obligations that we lose sight of God's play with creation, and with ourselves."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few notes concerning the word *acedia* from other parts of the book:
***"The word *acedia* is not much in use these days--the _American Heritage Dictionary_ defines it as "spiritual torpor or apathy; ennui"--but I wonder if much of the frantic boredom and enervating depression that constitute an epidemic in modern life are not merely the ancient demon of acedia in contemporary dress." ". . . Any person called to a vocation that is inner-directed and requires one to spend a good deal of time alone is subject to periodic attacks of acedia. . . . At its Greek root the word *acedia* means "lack of care," . . . Care is not passive--the word derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Care asserts that as difficult and painful as life can be, it is worth something to be in the present, alive, doing one's daily bit. It addresses and acts on the daily needs that acedia would have us suppress and deny. . . . when it comes to prayer, perfectionism is a born ally to acedia, . . . "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:21-23). Reminding ourselves that God's love for us is daily *and* everlasting can go a long way toward helping us live through the rough spots in our lives. And we also need the daily love of other people to reassure us that our lives have value. When we are too grieving, bitter, or depressed to pray, they can pray for us and carry us along. And when we ... pray, we can pray for them."
"This is why our praise of God, like the praise contained within Jeremiah's lament, is not private, not personal, but communal. This is why the play of hope and lamentation, despair and gratitude that is so central to the prophets and the Psalms has not lost its relevance for us. When we pray, we pray out of our common condition, as reflected in the image of a weaned child in Psalm 131: "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child." which inspires the psalmist to cry out [as one version puts it]: "O Israel, hope in the Lord, / both NOW and FOREVER" Now. And forever. Together, as a people. That is all that is required of us by the quotidian mysteries. Or, as Psalm 61 expresses it, "So will I sing praise unto Thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows." (Ps 61:8)
"I have come to believe that the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self. They may be young parents juggling child-rearing and making a living;...If they are wise, they treasure the rare moments of solitude and silence that come their way, and use them not to escape, to distract themselves with television and the like. Instead, they listen for a sign of God's presence and they open their hearts toward prayer."
* * *
"This is incarnational reality, the sanctity of the everyday. . . . "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
" ...it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that...religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, . . . . Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.
" ...It is in ordinary life that our stories unfold, tales of conceiving, bearing and giving birth, of trial and death . . . Christianity is inescapably down-to-earth and incarnational--I say "inescapably," as most of us, at one time or another, try to avoid the implications of an incarnational faith. The Christian religion asks us to place our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in ... God who ... [became] human and [died] [and rose again], . . .
" . . . In our life of faith, then, as well as in our most intimate relationships with other people, our task is to transform the high romance of conversion, the fervor of a religious call, into daily commitment. Into the sort of friendship that transcends infatuation and can endure all things. Our desire is to love God and each other, in stable relationships that, like any good marriage, remain open to surprises and receptive to grace.
"Human beings need routine. Even the homeless, I have been told by those who minister to them, establish routine as best they can, walking the same streets, foraging in the same dumpsters, sleeping in the same spots, in an attempt to maintain basic relationships with people and places. In this sense routine can be a lifesaver. But, especially for those of us who have more material wealth, it can also be a depressant, a killer. People grow bored with their marriages and their jobs, their coworkers and their spouses. I have long suspected that much of the self-destructive behavior and even the suicides of people who seem to have all that anyone could want, are the result of sheer exhaustion, the inability to continue in the daily round of getting more. ... hear the anguish of a man in his early fifties, deemed obsolete by the company where he has worked for nearly thirty years. He has spent an entire year resisting attempts to make him quit his job before his pension would kick in. His daily routine has become a torment; there is no longer anyone among his colleagues at work that he feels he can trust. He says that his marriage and two children have become his salvation, and while he still worries about providing for his family, he has found that their unconditional love, even the children's desire to play with him when he comes home from work, is enough to get him through the day. This has sanctified his marriage and his life at a time when in most of his waking hours he has been made to feel worthless."
* * *
"It is a paradox of human life that in worship, as in human love, it is in the routine and the everyday that we find the possibilities for the greatest transformation. Both worship and housework often seem perfunctory. And both, by the grace of God, may be anything but. At its Latin root, *perfunctory* means "to get through with," and we can easily see how liturgy, laundry, and what has traditionally been conceived of as "women's work" can be done in that indifferent spirit. But the joke is on us: what we think we are only "getting through" has the power to change us, just as we have the power to transform what seems meaningless--the endless repetitions of a litany or the motions of vacuuming a floor. What we dread as mindless activity can free us, mind and heart, . . . and repetitive motions [can be] conducive to devotions-- such as the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.") ...
"One prayer that I treasure, no matter what I am engaged in, comes from the great lyricist Isaac Watts in his rendition of Psalm 23, entitiled "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need." Watts interpets the ending of the psalm--"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."--not as some future event, but as existing in the light of the present, the every day. Watts writes:
The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days.
O may Thy house be my abode
And all my work be praise!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(From _The Quotidian Mysteries: Liturgy, Laundry, and "Women's Work"_ by Kathleen Norris. 1998)
Dear Friends,
I first thought that there would be no "Jerusalem's Daughters" article this week. My son is getting married this Saturday, and the planning for that, including the expectation of out-of-town guests, etc., is taking much of my time these days. But then I came across the following post which caught my attention as it was sent (by me) to the "Keepers At Home" list on July 13, 2001--almost three years ago today. In reading it recently, I realized that I especially needed this reminder at this particular time. And I also decided to send it as this week's offering for Jerusalem's Daughters.
May we not despise the daily (quotidian) things, but rejoice in the God who deigns--even in the small things--to be a part of our history.
In Him,
Elaine
p.s. This JD article (excerpted from Kathleen Norris's book, "The Quotidian Mysteries") is a bit longer than usual because I am doing minimal editing due to time constraints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I learned a new word recently . . . "quotidian". I am copying the meanings of the word "quotidian" below from written sources.
Quotidian: occurring every day; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary. (Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary)
Quotidian: 1. Recurring daily. 2. Everyday; commonplace. [ME "cotidian" < OFr. "cotidien" < Lat. "quotidianus" < "quotidie", each day : "quot", as many as + "dies", day.] (The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition).
"Looking up the word *quotidian* in Eric Partridge's _Origins_, I am pointed to the realm of the holy, to the words _deus_ (meaning "God") and _dies_ (meaning "daylight" or "duration of a day"), which are closely related. They are both linked semantically in that, as Partridge writes, "the luminous sky...and daylight itself were apprehended as divine forces and manifestations," and [linked] phonetically in the Indo-European root, meaning "to shine, be luminous." One definition of a god was "the shining one." The element _quot_ brings the *quotidian* down to earth, as it were, with more pedestrian concerns; it is concerned with quantity, as in how many days?" (EH: I admit that the author lost me somewhat in these latter phrases but couldn't find a good "cut-off" place ... I hope the excerpt nevertheless "enlightens" you about the word 'quotidian' and helps to put a foundation under other passages from this little book). (Excerpt taken from the book: _The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work"_ by Kathleen Norris.)
Kathleen Norris, whose books I like to read (although I don't always agree with her) writes books that are full of deep insights written in sometimes sparkling prose. Favorites among her books that I've read so far include _The Cloister Walk_ and _Amazing Grace_. I have learned much from her in these writings (although there are a few things I could teach her also) :-) and can recommend them if they are read "with filters in place". I'm getting better at this, but it's not for the faint-hearted! Her books, IMO, are worth the effort if you can read leisurely and without distraction. (I can imagine you all responding in unison "Yeah, right.") :-) But the excerpts I am sending, from the book(let) quoted from above, don't require such labored concentration.
Here are some small samples from the book(let):
"Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import, and their significance for Christian theology, the way they come together in the fabric of faith, is not often appreciated."
Further, from the back-of-the-book "blurb": "In this insightful and deeply personal work, Kathleen Norris, . . . draws on her life experiences,...to discuss the mysterious way that the daily or "quotidian" can open us to the transforming presence of God."
"The Bible is full of evidence that God's attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us--loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is "renewed in the morning" (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, "our inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life--all the cooking and cleaning of a people's domestic life--might be envisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do."
"It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare [as one version puts it], "I will bless you, Lord, who hath given me counsel, and even at night direct my heart" (Ps 16:7). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the Scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty-gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God's love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us as it gives us cause for praise."
* * *
" . . . . I can easily identify with a comment made by Peter Jordan in a _Commonweal_ article on Dorothy Day: ". . . . Day had to steal the early morning hours for her spiritual exercise. She did this almost daily, year in and year out." And I love the simple, unsanctimonious and humble thing that Day herself said about her practice: "My strength...returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms." Workaholism is the opposite of humility, and to an unhumble literary workaholic such as myself, morning devotions can feel useless, not nearly as important as getting about my business early in the day. I know from bitter experience that when I allow busy little doings to fill the precious time of early morning, when contemplation might fluorish, I open the doors to the demon of acedia***[EH: more on this word at the end of this post]. Noon becomes a blur--no time, no time--the wolfing down of a sandwich as I listen to the morning's phone messages and plan the afternoon's errands. When evening comes, I am so exhausted that vespers has become impossible. It is as if I have taken the world's weight on my shoulders and am too greedy, and too foolish, to surrender it to God."
"Having discarded contemplation, I render it and the worship that is its fruit, meaningless, futile, without issue. And this dry sterility is the stuff of acedia. Like John Bunyan's pilgrim, having been captured by Giant Despair, I languish in the dungeon of Doubting Castle and need to be reminded that the key that would set me free is already in my possession. Worship has often proved to be that key; although on the surface it seems useless, it is also necessary, a means of reconnecting with other people when acedia or dejection has isolated me. Worship grounds me again in the real world of God's creation, dislodging me from whatever world I have imagined for myself. I have come to believe that when we despair of praise, when the wonder of creation and our place in it are lost to us, it's often because we've lost sight of our true role as creatures--we have tried to do too much, pretending to be in such control of things that we are indispensable. It's a hedge against mortality and, if you're like me, you take a kind of comfort in being busy. The danger is that we will come to feel too useful, so full of purpose and the necessity of fulfilling obligations that we lose sight of God's play with creation, and with ourselves."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few notes concerning the word *acedia* from other parts of the book:
***"The word *acedia* is not much in use these days--the _American Heritage Dictionary_ defines it as "spiritual torpor or apathy; ennui"--but I wonder if much of the frantic boredom and enervating depression that constitute an epidemic in modern life are not merely the ancient demon of acedia in contemporary dress." ". . . Any person called to a vocation that is inner-directed and requires one to spend a good deal of time alone is subject to periodic attacks of acedia. . . . At its Greek root the word *acedia* means "lack of care," . . . Care is not passive--the word derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Care asserts that as difficult and painful as life can be, it is worth something to be in the present, alive, doing one's daily bit. It addresses and acts on the daily needs that acedia would have us suppress and deny. . . . when it comes to prayer, perfectionism is a born ally to acedia, . . . "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:21-23). Reminding ourselves that God's love for us is daily *and* everlasting can go a long way toward helping us live through the rough spots in our lives. And we also need the daily love of other people to reassure us that our lives have value. When we are too grieving, bitter, or depressed to pray, they can pray for us and carry us along. And when we ... pray, we can pray for them."
"This is why our praise of God, like the praise contained within Jeremiah's lament, is not private, not personal, but communal. This is why the play of hope and lamentation, despair and gratitude that is so central to the prophets and the Psalms has not lost its relevance for us. When we pray, we pray out of our common condition, as reflected in the image of a weaned child in Psalm 131: "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child." which inspires the psalmist to cry out [as one version puts it]: "O Israel, hope in the Lord, / both NOW and FOREVER" Now. And forever. Together, as a people. That is all that is required of us by the quotidian mysteries. Or, as Psalm 61 expresses it, "So will I sing praise unto Thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows." (Ps 61:8)
"I have come to believe that the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self. They may be young parents juggling child-rearing and making a living;...If they are wise, they treasure the rare moments of solitude and silence that come their way, and use them not to escape, to distract themselves with television and the like. Instead, they listen for a sign of God's presence and they open their hearts toward prayer."
* * *
"This is incarnational reality, the sanctity of the everyday. . . . "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
" ...it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that...religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, . . . . Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.
" ...It is in ordinary life that our stories unfold, tales of conceiving, bearing and giving birth, of trial and death . . . Christianity is inescapably down-to-earth and incarnational--I say "inescapably," as most of us, at one time or another, try to avoid the implications of an incarnational faith. The Christian religion asks us to place our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in ... God who ... [became] human and [died] [and rose again], . . .
" . . . In our life of faith, then, as well as in our most intimate relationships with other people, our task is to transform the high romance of conversion, the fervor of a religious call, into daily commitment. Into the sort of friendship that transcends infatuation and can endure all things. Our desire is to love God and each other, in stable relationships that, like any good marriage, remain open to surprises and receptive to grace.
"Human beings need routine. Even the homeless, I have been told by those who minister to them, establish routine as best they can, walking the same streets, foraging in the same dumpsters, sleeping in the same spots, in an attempt to maintain basic relationships with people and places. In this sense routine can be a lifesaver. But, especially for those of us who have more material wealth, it can also be a depressant, a killer. People grow bored with their marriages and their jobs, their coworkers and their spouses. I have long suspected that much of the self-destructive behavior and even the suicides of people who seem to have all that anyone could want, are the result of sheer exhaustion, the inability to continue in the daily round of getting more. ... hear the anguish of a man in his early fifties, deemed obsolete by the company where he has worked for nearly thirty years. He has spent an entire year resisting attempts to make him quit his job before his pension would kick in. His daily routine has become a torment; there is no longer anyone among his colleagues at work that he feels he can trust. He says that his marriage and two children have become his salvation, and while he still worries about providing for his family, he has found that their unconditional love, even the children's desire to play with him when he comes home from work, is enough to get him through the day. This has sanctified his marriage and his life at a time when in most of his waking hours he has been made to feel worthless."
* * *
"It is a paradox of human life that in worship, as in human love, it is in the routine and the everyday that we find the possibilities for the greatest transformation. Both worship and housework often seem perfunctory. And both, by the grace of God, may be anything but. At its Latin root, *perfunctory* means "to get through with," and we can easily see how liturgy, laundry, and what has traditionally been conceived of as "women's work" can be done in that indifferent spirit. But the joke is on us: what we think we are only "getting through" has the power to change us, just as we have the power to transform what seems meaningless--the endless repetitions of a litany or the motions of vacuuming a floor. What we dread as mindless activity can free us, mind and heart, . . . and repetitive motions [can be] conducive to devotions-- such as the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.") ...
"One prayer that I treasure, no matter what I am engaged in, comes from the great lyricist Isaac Watts in his rendition of Psalm 23, entitiled "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need." Watts interpets the ending of the psalm--"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."--not as some future event, but as existing in the light of the present, the every day. Watts writes:
The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days.
O may Thy house be my abode
And all my work be praise!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(From _The Quotidian Mysteries: Liturgy, Laundry, and "Women's Work"_ by Kathleen Norris. 1998)
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"Jerusalem's Daughters" - Elaine Housley