scrubbing the floor is a quiet, meditative task and it gave me time to think of and pray for the people in my life.  i know a lot of people and i had  2/3 of a spotless kitchen floor by the time i'd finished.  the juxtaposition of a clean floor next to a dirty one pretty much sums up the reality of human existance:  the clean and the dirty, the pretty and the ugly, the shiny and the seedy.  for a while, you can erase the dirt and the ugliness and the pawprints from the floor, but they will always re-manifest themselves.  still, it's worth the feeling of cleanliness to repeatedly perform the task, to feel...if only for a lil while...that you're winning the war against the dirt.

our lives are like that too...we struggle to maintain clean floors, only to find them tracked with outside dirt and dust bunnies in short order.  as much as we'd like to lock the doors against the outside world in an attempt to keep the dirt and dust at bay, we can't.  we must step foot outside, wear our clothes and live our lives, even if it means acquiring spots and smudges and the occasional cobweb.

and that, the Lord informs me, is why he invented soap, bleach and prayer...so that there is always a way to come clean.