Asked to describe the religious background of his childhood, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie* told a story of helping his mother set the table every Friday for Shabbat. He would use her best dishes and scour the neighborhood for flowers to make it pretty. That he, the latest in a long line of famous rabbis, would choose to characterize his spiritual upbringing in this simple way testifies to the connection between our aesthetic sensibilities and our awareness of that-which-is-greater than our material, surface lives. The presence of the sacred is a will o' the wisp in everyday existence, easily missed, but always profound when noticed. Beauty is one of its markers, so we seek and make beauty to place ourselves into the larger, deeper flow of life coursing through and beyond our immediate moment. By cleaning, decorating and "making special" we point to and enhance the elusive spirit that animates our lives.
"Setting the table" is a metaphor for creating context. As he literally set his mother's table Rabbi Lau-Lavie made a place for his family to celebrate their religious beliefs through time-honored ritual. By taking care and exercising his creativity he upheld and burnished the importance of Shabbat, but it is the actual acts of care-taking and beautifying themselves that he remembers most clearly and connects to his spiritual heritage. This shows the power hiding in the mundane, daily maintenance of our world....the repetitive, lowly tasks of cleaning and creating the atmosphere in which we exist. Mending, dusting, polishing and arranging are the unappreciated activities that keep our surroundings linked to the beauty of the sacred and create the context that helps us see it.
* From an On Being interview with Krista Tippett, of course.