Do You Know What Quotidian Means? (And do you know how much it matters?)

Last updated on: March 24, 2011 at 2:42 am by Amy Julia Becker

Do You Know What Quotidian Means? (And do you know how much it matters?) 2011-03-24T02:42:28-04:00 Amy Julia Becker

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I recently reread a book by Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women’s Work. Thankfully, she includes a definition of quotidian as an epigraph. It means pertaining to the every day, and my life is consumed by every day activities, especially with a newborn. I wrote a post for her.meneutics as reflection: “The Divine Grace of Diapers.” It begins:

I sat in the chair with a sleeping baby on my lap. I held her close, and I prayed. I prayed about the things I wanted to be doing — responding to e-mail, taking a shower, writing an essay. And I admitted my fears to God: Those things feel so much more important than this. Yet I saw the lie I was succumbing to, and I looked once more at my daughter’s round face, and I prayed that I would have faith in the importance of holding my child.

It takes faith to be a parent. It takes faith for me to care for our three children day after day. It takes faith to believe that this 30-minute episode of crying, or this midnight, bleary-eyed feeding, or this time-out for hitting your sister, or this poopy diaper — that these will bear fruit. That they matter, and even eternally.

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