Washing Dishes is Not a Spiritual Practice
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In college, I majored in Women’s Studies. My sense that I lived in a world that objectified and devalued women was strong. And, like many college students, I was passionate about social justice issues. On Saturday mornings I stood outside an abortion clinic to counter-protest the anti-choice group that met there. I went to campaign rallies and protest marches. I went to hear justice speakers and panels on campus. I was involved.
In the spring of my last year in college there was a scandal that high-school-age boys at a California school were using a point system to keep track of and compare their sexual attacks, including attacks on very young girls. This group made national news, and the boys were treated like celebrities. They were arrested at one point, but were not ultimately prosecuted.
I was deeply affected by this news. After four years of college and activism, this felt like the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. The world seemed overwhelmingly terrible to me. These high school boys treated girls like they were nothing, and nobody seemed to really care. I cried and cried.
So when I graduated college, which is already a stressful time, I welcomed the chance to unplug from social activism. I was busy looking for a job and figuring out big questions like what do I want to do with my life, and with whom, and where should we live? I did look into meeting with the League of Women Voters, but their meetings were at a time I couldn’t attend, so…that was that.
To be honest, justice work had exhausted me, and I was glad to retreat from it. I remained a responsible voter, but when it came to other kinds of involvement and activism, I wasn’t involved. There are names for this withdrawal. Activism fatigue. Activist burnout. Compassion fatigue. I certainly reached a point where I felt recovered from the exhaustion and hopelessness I had felt, but the memory of it stayed with me. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I felt like I had learned that I shouldn’t do justice work.
It was just over ten years later that I joined a UU church and began once again to be involved with something bigger than just my own life and concerns. It was a big deal for me to join in protest again, but this time was different. In religious community, our gathering began with an interfaith prayer service. And then we marched in silence through Balboa Park, carrying signs to convey our commitment to peace and our opposition to war. It didn’t just feel good to take action, it felt nourishing. I didn’t feel depleted by our protest, I felt restored.
I continued to get involved, joining a group at the church called Allies for Racial Equity, committed to doing anti-racism work together. I wasn’t a justice leader as a congregant, but I was involved when I felt called to be involved.
So what was the difference? At the time I would have said that it felt different to do justice work in community, but then, I was in community in college. I was surrounded by people I knew, doing justice work with friends. Or I might have said that I was simply more emotionally mature, that there’s some wisdom and balance that comes with age. There might be some truth to that.
But as I look back, I see more clearly now that what made the difference for me in making justice work and activism more sustainable—and making me more resilient—is that I had a regular spiritual practice. I attended church every Sunday.
Regular spiritual practice has been shown, again and again, to have many benefits. These include increased clarity, focus and equanimity; improved mood; and stronger self-awareness.
Okay, but what is spiritual practice? The idea of spiritual practice gets thrown around a lot these days, and there’s a tendency to describe almost anything as spiritual practice. I’ve heard that washing dishes can be a spiritual practice.
There are many different criteria used to define spiritual practice, but here’s mine: an activity whose primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and—this might be the most controversial part—is nonproductive.
Let me say those again: The primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and is nonproductive.
By nonproductive, I mean there’s no reason to do it except that it’s a spiritual practice. Your practice may produce something—a piece of art, for example—but you create the art because doing so quiets the mind and brings you into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence.
This is why something you enjoy doing—like creating art—so often stops being fun when you decide to do it for money. Once it becomes a productive task, it loses some of the benefits that spiritual practices bring. Spiritual practices are things like prayer, meditation, worship, journaling, chanting or singing, playing music, sitting in silence, dancing, walking a labyrinth.
For me, things like washing dishes are not spiritual practices, because their primary purpose is not to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Their primary purpose is practical matters like clean dishes.
I think we tell ourselves that washing dishes is a spiritual practice because we want to check off the box that we have a spiritual practice, but we don’t have much time, and we have to get the dishes washed, and if we could just make that one thing, wouldn’t that be convenient?
But spiritual practice isn’t really meant to be convenient. It’s not even necessarily meant to feel good. Sometimes it does, but ask anyone who meditates regularly. They’ll tell you: a lot of meditation is sitting, convinced that you’re doing it wrong, or not good enough, and how much longer do I have to sit here?
It is the daily aspect of spiritual practice that is ultimately so powerful and transformative. Now, you’ll recall that I said attending worship every Sunday was my spiritual practice, and I do count worship as a spiritual practice. I don’t attend worship every day because that’s not an option, but the hourly gathering, attended weekly, can also have a transformative impact on people’s lives. I know that from my own experience, and I know that because other people have told me it’s their experience.
My spiritual practice was to attend church every Sunday. Not many Sundays. Not almost every Sunday. Every Sunday. We did not wake up on Sunday to see how we felt and then decide whether or not to go. We just went. It was a discipline. That’s what made it a spiritual practice.
Church attendance is still my spiritual practice, but I’m also working on a daily prayer practice. And I want to encourage you to consider developing a regular spiritual practice if you don’t have one already.
Here’s why—because the news is terrible. Every day that you open the newspaper or turn on the news or look at your phone or computer is a struggle to stay hopeful. Because we’re so tired and busy and everything is different and it’s a challenge to go to the grocery store and it’s easy to feel completely knocked over by small things.
It’s called “spiritual practice” because what we’re doing is practicing. We’re practicing what it is to try and be calm and quiet and centered because so much of the time, we aren’t calm and quiet and centered. We practice and we feel awkward and like we’re not doing it right, but if you keep at it, like building a muscle, you’ll find that you do not feel so knocked down by what life throws at you.
Your practice doesn’t have to be long, just a few minutes a day. Whatever practice you might like to develop, start small and build up. The discipline of daily practice is more important than the length of what you’re doing. Five minutes of meditation each day is better than an hour of meditation once in a while.
We’re carrying a lot these days. Which is why spiritual practice is so important. Please don’t wait until the day you feel you cannot get out of bed. Find a daily practice to work on. Do what you can to take good care of yourself. Do the dishes, but also take care to refresh your heart and soul so that you have the strength to move forward in this difficult world.
Rev. Sharon is one of the co-founders and leaders of SpiritRest Silent Retreat, a five-day facilitated retreat held each summer in California. She serves on the Youth Board of the Pacific Southwest District of the UUA. She is president of the San Diego Regional Interfaith Collaborative.
She’s been with her partner, Peter, since 1994, having met in college. They were married in 2013. She is a vegetarian, tea aficionado, movie lover, and guardian to two cats.
- Washing Dishes is Not a Spiritual Practice - July 1, 2020
I have an interesting relationship with doing the dishes. I am not alone, I’ve asked my Anxiety and Depression group if they do too. And they do. I have stronger spiritual practices but, since I have a difficult time getting my dishes done, it has been helpful to me to envision this washing practice as a spiritual endeavor. My anxiety is triggered by doing the dishes and if I think of it as washing the baby Buddha, my anxiety abates.