Lent Day 26… Dirty Laundry

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while eating breakfast, the wife noticed her neighbor hanging out her laundry. She commented:

Those clothes don’t look very clean; maybe she needs better soap.

Her husband looked, but remained silent. For three weeks, every Monday he would hear some version of these same comments. But the following wash day, his wife was surprised to see a nice white wash on the line next door. She commented: “Look, she finally learned how to wash clothes. I wonder who taught her?”

Her husband responded quietly:

I got up early this morning and washed OUR kitchen windows.

This is one of those cases where their dirty laundry was really our dirty windows.

And maybe this happens more often than we’d like to admit.

Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it. —Father Gregory Boyle