{"id":1725,"date":"2016-03-31T16:06:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T16:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/?p=1725"},"modified":"2016-04-01T11:17:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T11:17:49","slug":"old-chore-new-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/old-chore-new-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Chore, New Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s always a gift when you find\u00a0a way to see something with new eyes.<\/p>\n

Dirty Dishes<\/strong>
\n“My life will always have dirty dishes.
\nIf this sink can become
\na place of contemplation
\nlet me learn constancy here…”
\n— Gunilla Norris, Being Home<\/em><\/p>\n

The above is an excerpt from a meditation by Gunilla Norris<\/a> in her 1991 book Being Home<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em> I bought the book years ago in my search for a way to be at peace with the myriad of endlessly repetitive and menial tasks that are a fact of life when tending a home with young children. I loved the children part, but not so much the housework.<\/p>\n

\"Dishes\"

Jumble<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a92016 Elizabeth Fram<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s a soothing little book with lovely black and white photographs by Greta D. Sibley. In fact, I think those photos did more to help me\u00a0reframe my perspective on daily chores than the meditations. Well, in all honesty I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to achieve\u00a0a better attitude about\u00a0housework, but Sibley’s\u00a0images absolutely\u00a0contributed to the way I observe the details of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

\"MeasuringCup-&-Waterbottle\"

String of Circles<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a92016 Elizabeth Fram<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a wonderful\u00a0irony in the fact that the piles of dishes that had no redeeming qualities 25 years ago have indeed evolved into a source of contemplation. They now assume another mantle, that of a place of study — of shape, value, pattern and composition — a place “to be<\/em>“, as Norris says in her introduction, “in the extraordinary beauty of dailiness”.<\/p>\n

\"SInk\"

Sink<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a92016 Elizabeth Fram<\/p><\/div>\n

And she was right, my life\u00a0will<\/em> always have dirty dishes. But at least now I can also see them as the basis of a new still life that awaits me every day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always a gift when you find\u00a0a way to see something with new eyes. Dirty Dishes “My life will always have dirty dishes. If this sink can become a place of contemplation let me learn constancy here…” — Gunilla Norris, Being Home The above is an excerpt from a meditation by Gunilla Norris in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[121,21,44],"tags":[211,212,210,209,213,214,215],"class_list":["post-1725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-discussion","category-drawing","tag-being-home","tag-dirty-dishes","tag-greta-d-sibley","tag-gunilla-norris","tag-housework","tag-meditations","tag-photographs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5kO5z-rP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}