The Other Draining Board: Aspirational kitchen geography, and why it seems theological.
It may not surprise you to know that I have a separate draining board for aspirational crockery.
(Yes, I know you don't know me. But the kind of person who starts a post like that probably secretly does. That's obvious enough.)
I'm not sure why, but it helps. Something about the locations in the kitchen, and how they provide bearings. You know where you are when those locations are providing a North, South, East and West. Where the sun rises (how things arise and need meeting and living through). Where it sets (how things find their settling place and arrive well).
Let me explain.
If everything that needs cleaning and draining is counted as functional and mundane then the whole sink area has a heavy emotional load. All stacked and rammed-in together.
On the other hand, having space around those routine — plates, and spoons, and saucepan lids, and empty containers… That space leaves you feeling —
minimalist, I suppose.
Manageable. Clear and organised. Unrushed.
I like that.
And meanwhile, that little wire crate on its own draining board —
(Crate? Yes, it has wire sides too. Safely containing the carafe, the espresso cups, the wine glasses, and miniature plates for morning coffee…)
That freshly draining crate gets to make its own separate statement about 'why we're all doing all this.'
Life, that is.
ha.
Psychological. I know, I know.
But, that's only one frame.
Categories and classifications seem to to put everything on the normal draining board, in the end. Treating all that's observable and extractable and measurable as if that's all there is to see. All that counts.
All there is. Full stop.
Categories and classifications look for is data. Contain. Simplify. Spot patterns. Make things manageable.
I know you're wondering — my classification system for the aspirational items deserving of that 'other' draining board? That's that's rigorously — flexible…
Take the handmade Polish teacup.
That cup has followed me around for nearly fifteen years.
I've dropped it several times. It does not break! Incredible.
Not unique, though. I chose if from a shelf of a few of them, in Brixham one year. And a couple of times since I've found a shop that stocks them. Identical in size, and shape, and colour, and patter. Perhaps worth buying a spare, I've wondered to myself. But no.
Turning the shop ones over and giving them a good look, each one ends up not quite… well, — nah. It's just different. Completely different.
If mine wasn't available in that shop in Brixham in the first place, I wouldn't have bought any of them. Even if you can't tell them apart. I can.
If I'd bought a spare like that, and if I'd used it, it would ONLY be allowed on the usual draining board. Not the other one. Not the aspirational one. In fact I'd probably put it away, and eventually land it in a charity shop. I'm that particular.
However.
I notice that this seemingly unbreakable handmade polish cup is not on the aspirational 'other' draining board, as we speak. It's on the normal one. That's interesting. But I can explain.
It all depends. Morning tea is medicinal.
Afternoon tea, if chosen, needs that cup drawn from the aspirational cupboard.
(Not in an emergency, of course. But ideally.)
Do you see?
(You don't do you. That's okay.)
All this to say — for what ever reason, I feel very sensitive to where things are placed in my kitchen. And in the very same way I feel very sensitive to space and places and dynamics of all kinds.
I've spent years actively noticing this. Facing it head on and treasuring the thought changed me from harbouring it as depression and fatigue, to wondering more broadly about, well, all the things contemporary life is expecting us to put up with and not notice that we're human.
Associations.
Memories.
Tiny factors that aren't all that important on the big scale, and unknown to everyone else. They make a huge difference. To me. Perhaps to others.
My hunch is that this instinct generally gets drowned out. Suffocated. Dismissed as symptomatic. Pathologised.
Or laughed off — ahh. Laughter. Ask Peter Kay or Jon Stewart or David Mitchell and the rest.
You laughed because it was NOT nothing after all.
Was it!
Hmm.
Half time summary.
Putting things back in the usual cupboard from the draining board is a chore. Duty. Routine.
Putting things back in the other cupboard from the other draining board is a privilege. Enhancing. Special.
Restocking the tools for uplift and peace. Not just medicinal.
People can shout WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE, YOU MORON all they like.
But what I'm really talking about is not draining boards at all.
Now I want to apply all this to Chapter Seventeen.
I bet I can! (lol)
One word should do it.
Also the note I heard recently that contemporary systems based on humanist governance tend to classify faith-based writing as either a) derivative, or b) poetic.
In other words, I suppose,
a) oh, they're just trying to sound like… (Helen Steiner Rice, Rob Bell, Joyce Meyer, CS Lewis…)
b) oh, very decorative. Nice. "Nice"
I've even heard theopoetics described in terms of actively trying to come up with something that will help bring light and shade to a sermon, or provide another way to explain something… which is not what I'm trying to do.
It's not.
Scaffolding. Grammar. Paradigm.
I'm building while imagining. While worshipping. While feeling around in the dark.
Not like learning grammar. More like noticing grammar.
I know, I've lost you, probably.
But I'm going to keep doing what I do and hope the whole experience starts to show something emerging that doesn't fit into classifiable or categorisable territory.
Because, honestly, life doesn't.
Does it.
(I know the second half was shorter. Read it again more slowly. Maybe.)
