Next to Godliness: Finding the Sacred in Housekeeping

At some point in everyone's life comes the time to clean up. It might be your kitchen after dinner; it might be your community after a crisis. One way or another, it must be done, and a considerable amount of time is spent doing it. This spiritual anthology gives the process of cleaning house depth and resonance while exploring the point where a multitude of belief systems intersect?that place where clean and holy meet. Drawing from religious texts, personal narratives, fiction, and verse, this inspiring collection finds a common thread: cleaning as a spiritual path. In writings as diverse as those of Rumi, Allen Ginsberg, Gandhi, Tillie Olsen, Zen Master Dogen, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Starhawk, James Baldwin, Kathleen Norris, the Dalai Lama, and the Bible, dozens of the world's best writers and thinkers illuminate what is holy about cleaning house.