There are important people in our world who don't get all the rewards of big salary, career prospects, noticed by the so called movers and shakers, often don't even get noticed. So today is noticing day. One of them is the woman who cleans our College. The great thing about the College being on the campus is the interaction with a whole slice of human life the churches seldom if ever get near, or go near, or it seems at times, want to. At one of the cafes, in the library, along the corridors, up the High Street and random places in between all these, there are folk just getting on with their lives, and in their work helping us all get on with ours.
So our cleaning person ( we use gender neutral as the default discourse here 🙂 is here before me and I get in a wee tad early myself. We take time to chat and laugh and complain and grump, then she gets on with making the world cleaner and I get on with making the world…..well, making the world what?
This cleaner isn't content with the hoover, the jay-cloth and the mop. She washes our mugs; she puts on the kettle; she makes sure there's milk in the fridge cos she knows theologians are a bit otherworldly, and though they may demythologise the land of milk and honey, they soon discover the benefits of a land (or at least a fridge) where at least there is non-mythological milk – provided by the grace and goodness of someone else.
Ecclesiasticus has this wonderful litany of praise for workers – and at the end, when the ploughman and the blacksmith, the carpenter and the metalworker, the potter and the vine dresser, have all been commended for their part in the shaping and making of the world, there are the lovely lines: "All these maintain the fabric of the world, and their prayers are in the work of their hands." Quite so. And that clean mug every morning, the boiled kettle, the conversation that sets the world right, and the milk in the fridge – tell me they aint sacraments…..
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