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When we moved into our house, a friend took in the black wrought iron fence, the house set well back from its perimeter, and grinned. “The Munsters.”
Our haunting, though, took the form of rust. And because somewhere beneath the layers of black Rustoleum was an embossed date in the 1800s, we tried hard to preserve the fence. Seventeen years and almost as many coats of spray paint later, our efforts were peeling off in thick chunks, and the rusted iron beneath them was eating itself thin.
The sudden urgency coincided with my husband’s recovery from major surgery, so he was off the hook, tucked up in bed. I took a deep breath and consulted with the guys at our favorite hardware store, who outlined my plan of attack.
First, I would need a power washer. I saw the price of one and bought a firefighter’s nozzle from Amazon instead. You guessed it: useless. But scraping and sanding would get rid of the dirt anyway, right? Resolute, I marched outside with a wire brush, a screwdriver, and sandpaper. With each section, I grew less thorough, until finally I was just flicking off the loose bits with my fingernail.
Time for the Rust Reformer, which was supposed to turn matte black when I brushed it on. Never happened. It did seem to adhere, though, so I let it dry and reached for the paint. Twelve cans later (did I mention how long this fence is?), my index fingers trembled, and I wanted only to swig a cold beer and take a shower. So when tiny snowflake patterns of—what? fungus?—clung to the metal, refusing to be scraped away, I settled their hash by spraying over them. Bits of mown grass flew up and stuck and I painted over them, too, calling it texture. As anyone who battles their weight already knows, black hides everything.
My mood at this point was ambivalent: though I was bored and impatient (the attitude I bring to most domestic chores), I was happy to be outdoors, the sun warm on my shoulders and the air cool and dry and thin, easy to breathe, a translucent wash of pale gold. When I rhapsodized about this glorious fall weather in an email (to a friend who lives in the Bay Area and is usually the one politely trying not to revel), I mentioned my fence-painting. It was so heavenly to be outdoors, I said, that I barely minded this herculean, paralyzingly repetitious project. In his reply, he described my chore with a lovely phrase: “sacred monotony.”
That gave me pause.
In a world constantly clicking and searching, settling into a dull project that repeats nearly ad infinitum easily qualifies as monotony. But sacred? I did sense what he meant, and I felt a pang of regret for my sloppiness. Chop wood, carry water. T’is a gift to be simple. Religious orders and sects have long assigned mundane, repetitive chores to quiet their members’ minds and bring them closer to God. (Also for free labor.) Rosaries, novenas, pilgrimages, and retreats move at snail pace, with only the slightest variations in routine.
But I have loathed routine since I was born. Seriously, since then. I refused to get up early even to watch cartoons; I used every possible trick to stay up past bedtime; I was thrilled by fire drills and field trips, any break in the expected schedule. Only now, six decades later, can I see the sweetness of repetition, the way it calms the mind and anchors one to the earth.
In Christianity, “sacred monotony” refers to the season after Pentecost, which does drag on a bit, no new colors or music until the start of Advent. “Ordinary time,” the church calls it. And, Christian or not, we all live in ordinary time. Distraction, vacation, intoxication—these are all attempts to escape the mundane. Yet the mundane is our natural habitat, the milieu in which we eat, sleep, and catch our breath.
Life’s only constant is change, Einstein warned us. But because monotony never changes, it steadies us. A monotonous voice is drained of emotion. It does not spike shrill or rumble; it simply lets the words unfold. Women’s work, factory work, farm work—all the work that sustains life instead of manipulating it is by definition mundane and often monotonous. Even glamorous, intense jobs, like modeling haute couture for the House of Dior or sculpting massive bronzes, have mundane stretches. So how does one make them sacred?
By not resisting them.
Back outside for a second coat (and all the spots I missed the first time), I let my impatience drift away. Slowed and emptied, my mind turns playful. How many people have painted this fence in the past century, I wonder. Did they find the monotony easier to endure? Did they even have power washers in the 1920s? The first painters were bound to be men. Did this annual chore soothe their angst over the Great Depression? They cared about their home, I know, or the house and fence would not be as spry as they are at age 110.
I talk to the ghost painters, commiserating, promising to do my part more carefully in future. To take my time and not fear the boredom. Sensationalism, I explain, blunts one’s sensibilities. “We live in this dazzling, shallow, rapidfire world that knocks you dizzy and steals your patience. Everything is fast and easy—except the important things, which are way too difficult. We’ve lost endurance.”
You have to sit a long time, in meditation, before you feel different. You have to practice piano for a long time before the music enters your body. You have to welcome sacred monotony like a gracious host, making it feel welcome and worth knowing, before it will show you its secrets.
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
