When I cook for the monks, can I do it without a desire for a reward, such as a thank you, compliment, or even the meal being tasty? I think that the contemplative life, if it is sync with the rest of me, tells me to act without a desire for a reward. Just do it. Cook because we eat, we get hungry, no one else made available to cook. Why do I meditate? For a reward, a good feeling, sense of being special? No. I meditate, at least I hope, simply because that is what I do. My soul/heart hungers for more or less than words and feelings. God is often absent as “reward” but is still present and feeding me with this unbeknownst presence. So I pray to pray and cook to cook. No expectations, except to have responded to the needs of the day.
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I enjoy saying thank you, for whatever it may be...help with the dishes, if someone else cooked, or for God joining me in another day I was graced with to be alive and the opportunity to meditate and pray. It's an opening to express gratitude, at least to me.
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