Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Laundered Rags, Really?

My mom washes rags.

Like “cleaned the whole kitchen and then wiped up a mild mudslide” rags.

We’re not talking expensive or meaningful rags.  These aren’t sham-wow’s or those things that can absorb a whole bucket of water (wait, are those sham-wows??) or the ones that polish the stains off of silver and re-varnish wood tables.

These are old socks...which sprouted holes and were filleted to serve a new purpose.
These are the remnants of t-shirts...the fronts of which were turned into a t-shirt quilt...
These are towels...which covered you – sort of – (if you were open to unfortunate peep shows), that were cut into squares.
These are (unfortunately) underwear from, well, no one wants to know.  Admittedly this is no longer really true but oft was when I was a child.  It doesn’t seem so long ago we retired the “rag” with the Mickey Mouse print...

I should also note that we have no shortage of rags.  We could clean up several mild mudslides. They aren’t a rare commodity...

And my mom, she uses them. She abuses them.  Like when you find one, you don’t question where all it’s been.  It could be an X-file episode with a warning label.

And afterwards? She washes them.

Takes ‘em, tosses ‘em in with a load of whites, bleaches the snot out of that poor rag (which vaguely remembers being a sock in some previous life), and it shows up somewhere else a few days later.  Faithful rags...
  
You wanna know what I do with rags?

I commit them to a task. I take one rag (typically one the 19 formed from some t-shirt) and I give it a mission. Say “the bathroom”.  I grab my cleaner.  And then I wipe down the counter and the sink. Then I wipe out the bathtub. Then, after scrubbing out the inside of the toilet with a brush, I wipe down the rest of it with my rag. 

And after? When this rag has spent its last repurposed moment with a bleach laden toilet bowl?

I throw it away.  I throw it. Away. I throw it. In the garbage. With tissues and hairballs and dental floss. And then I take the trash out of the bathroom.

Call me crazy, (it’s been done before...you wouldn’t be the first nor would you be the last), but no part of me wants to take that rag which has seen the nastiness of potentially all nastiness and just toss it in with some towels and socks and whatever. I can’t do it.
  
Now, I come from a very proud Dutch heritage.  I can claim with some degree of certainty that in this melting pot called America that I am 100% Dutch*.  If you know someone this Dutch you probably know a few things about my kindred.  The Dutch are notoriously stubborn and notoriously proud... “you can always tell a Dutchman but you can’t tell him much!”...and notoriously frugal... “have you ever heard how copper wire was invented? Two Dutchmen fighting over a penny!” (But for real...where did you think the phrase “going Dutch” came from?)

Now, I did use the word “frugal” and not the similar but different word “stingy”.  I suppose I can’t speak for all of us, but I have found most to be extraordinarily generous and giving...but where there is a penny to be saved? There is definitely a penny to be earned!  You use things until they die and then you repurpose them and use it again!  We routinely washed Ziploc bags and left them open to dry overnight when I was young.  When we had to rebuild part of grandpa’s greenhouses after a tornado? We salvaged and drilled back in many old screws.  And cool whip containers? Oh...don’t get me started on cool whip containers! 

Making rags out of old socks is a given. (It is practically genetic!)  And washing them is merely the natural outsourcing of the “use it till it’s dead!” lifestyle.

I am a stubborn, proud, (and pretty frugal!) Dutch woman.  I try to do too much on my own. I do things people tell me I can’t do just to prove to them I can.  I don’t back down from something I believe in.  I am a thrifty shopper and a champion budgeter.  However, I do not and will not wash rags.  It will not happen. Ever.

This long narrative?
First...I love stories.  And story telling. I’ve come to accept this and I find no reason to apologize.
Second...when switching out the laundry I found three of the afore mentioned washed rags (and promptly shook my head with deep sigh)
Third...I was reading the other day in Isaiah.  Specifically Isaiah 64.  Specifically verse 6.  “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags...”

Filthy rags.
Mudslide rags.
Toilet rags.

Actually pretty literally.  Forgive the “oh gross!” factor (if you feel like you need the warning) but most biblical scholars will point to the connection of “ceremonial un-cleanliness”; those who translate out of the original Hebrew (which I can’t do so I take their word for it) assert its literal translation is “menstrual rag”. 

Menstrual being "a woman’s period".  Rag being “thing to sop up said period”.

This poem given in Isaiah 64 speaking of God’s greatness and humanity’s, (specifically God’s chosen people, Israel – to whom we have been grafted in), depravity creates a staggering contrast. Here is God – before whom the mountains tremble and twigs blaze and water boils and nations quake and then there are His people. His people whose most righteous acts, the best of who we are, are menstrual rags.  Used tampons.  Soiled maxi pad (or “Always with Wings” – take your pick). 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been called some pretty terrible things in my life.  Creative, terrible things even (not all bullies are as stupid as they look!). But I don’t recall ever being called a dirty tampon.  I’m a chick.  I’ve been around this block more than a few times and explained the “magic of womanhood” to more than a few terrified sixth graders. Still, there is something incredibly disgusting about being called a dirty tampon. 

Culture has come a long way in normalizing this very normal occurrence (I used to say things to my campers like “the good news is...only like 40 or 50 more years!”).  And when I say “a long way” I am saying that what I view as both normal and pretty fantastically gross was the height of insult in Isaiah. 

Ya wanna know why? Blood.

Blood was ceremonially unclean.  According the Levitcal law (Check out Leviticus 15), anyone who touched a woman on her period was unclean.  Anything she sat on or touched was unclean.  Anyone who touched something she touched was unclean.  And after the bleeding stopped? Count off seven days...then you can be clean.  Cleanliness was far more than a social issue.  It was a God issue.  Being unclean kept people away from God. Clearly this oversimplifies the bigger picture but it gives an idea of what’s going on in Isaiah. 

Isaiah is literally saying: “what you think is getting you closer to God is doing the exact opposite, it’s revolting.” And, as Isaiah continues, their fate is sealed...shrivel like a leaf, swept away by sin, made to waste away... 

Those toilet rags were as good as mine...trashed!

There was this moment of self-triumph when I thought I had biblical evidence for my rag disposal...
It was short lived.

Short lived because if this is reality, it is also my fate.  Or should be...

Except the book of Isaiah, much like the narrative of scripture as a whole, is about more than Israel’s shortcomings. It’s about God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s grace, God’s faithfulness to an unfaithful people, God’s salvation for an unworthy people. 

Ultimately God does what only my mom has dared to do since – He washes those rags.  1 John promises that God cleanses from the unrighteousness. He makes clean what before was the epitome of unrighteousness.  He takes toilet rags – something no one should go near even if they wanted to, something without Christ He had to be separate from – and washes them. Repurposes again and again and again...Repurposes for His purposes...


Lent is approaching and so this reality brings me ever closer to my knees – and on more than one occasion – to tears.  I can see myself as a dirty rag.  I know the height of my unworthiness...and putting up next to God’s righteousness?  The distance separating is staggering. But so is His love for me.  I have a sense of what God’s redeeming from...

My brain took it a step further though.  It always does. 

See...I realize I am a washed a redeemed dirty rag (I don’t mean to be a heretic, I’m aware Jesus was Jewish, I just think He would make a good Dutch man...just staying).  But I am also the one who all too easily throws away dirty rags.  One mission, remember?  Sometimes I think I do that with people too...

I see where God has washed and redeemed me...but I forget He is always and still in the process of redeeming. 

Not just me but others.  Not just the others I like...but especially the ones I don’t.  Especially the ones who make me angry. Who hurt me.  Who, worse, hurt those who are important to me.  The ones who do stupid things and make bad decisions and I shake my fist at the pictures on the news. The ones who endanger the world, the innocent, the defenseless. The ones that make me growl as I mentally curse the parents of students whom I love but I know aren’t the parents they need to be (as their kids tell me through tears and hugs and nonchalant “yeah the police were at my house again...” comments). 

Jesus and I have been talking a lot about forgiveness in the last year.  I’ve had to come to this point of realization where I know forgiveness is important and necessary for those who have wronged me but I forget that a) I have to forgive those people who haven’t directly wronged me but whom I still hold accountable and that b) forgiveness is oft WAY bigger than me – I have to give it and them to God to forgive and c) God forgives those who acknowledge sin (flashback to 1 John...) AND d) God is in the practice of washing dirty rags.  God is in the practice of redeeming the ones I am ready to throw away... 

The moral of the story? I could take some lessons from my mom.  Maybe wash a dirty rag from time to time...  If for no other reason than maybe it would remind me to be more like Jesus.  To be more dedicated to the process of redemption...






*I’m secretly compelled by and terrified of those Ancestry.com commercials where the one guy finds out he’s not German.  I think it would be fascinating to have my DNA tested but am afraid that it is going to reveal that somewhere way way back there was a single lonely strain of Russian or something and so I’m only 98% Dutch.  I want to know...but I don’t want to know.  I want to live in my pureblood pride as long as I can...

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