Prayer freshener.

When those lofty spiritual thoughts run up against the smells and stains of the real world, what's a Christian to do? As Kathy Coffey goes looking for tie answer, she finds her faith between a hyacinth and a laundry pile.

ON A DAY IN LATE FEBRUARY, the clutter of my room takes on symbolic resonance. At this time of year, I usually long for the beauty of flowers, so I plant hyacinth bulbs in the fall, force them, and enjoy their flowering indoors before any signs of spring surface in the outdoor garden. When one purple cone is at its peak, individual bells peal open, and the room fills with fragrance. It sings of spring, resurrection, new life. Its perfume lightly reminds me of the importance of soul nurture. If you don't feed your soul everything you possibly can, how will you ever have any peace to give others? In similar words, Robert Wicks says, "If you don't feed your soul, you'll let your critics destroy you." The hyacinth is feast for the senses--and soul.

Directly opposite the flowering hyacinth is the laundry pile. Due to recent travel, lack of time for domestic duties, and other flimsy excuses, the pile is growing high and sending forth its own unmistakable fragrance. Sweat and underwear smells blend in an aroma that the hyacinth can barely offset. It's a powerful olfactory reminder of last week's minor disasters: getting stuck in the mud, spilling coffee on a shirt, streaking the slacks with motor oil, staining the lapel with gravy.

How like human life, this little domestic contrast. We aspire so high; we sink so low. We are filled with great expectations and long to dance to the music of our high calling, but we fail, repeatedly and miserably, to achieve even the smallest and simplest steps. We who would be great of heart get dragged down by details; we who would soar can barely crawl; we who would sing arias can hardly croak on key.

Poised between the hyacinth and the laundry pile may be prayer. It is at once the cry of our longing to be better and the sad admission of where we really live. Prayer itself is a bold act, teetering precariously between a culture that denies its importance and a vast mystery that seems to dwarf its puny voice. Our 20th-century, hell-bent-on-success work ethic guffaws, "What do you mean, you're wasting the first hour of the day on such useless activity? When you could be most productive, you're sitting in silence? It's un-American!"

On the other hand, we imagine the great force that whipped the Rocky Mountains into frothy peaks, that stirred the waters and filled the oceans with teeming life, that creates ongoing miracles to which we are blind. We picture a person who is the source of all compassion, whose deep peace eludes our understanding, who epitomizes all we mean by love, who gives us what we hold most precious and highly esteemed. How could we babble an incoherent word to such a being?

The fact that we even try must be termed, in the phrase of Toni Cade Bambara, an act of "sheer holy boldness." In prayer we learn both how wondrous we are and how desperately we need God. We aspire toward heaven, then watch the enthusiasm wane, the ideals dim, the human foibles slip in, the beautiful words and golden images fade. Were it not for the divine response, we might get discouraged. But what we hear in prayer from God is: Keep trying.

After prayer, we may not "feel" any better. We may not have rosier cheeks or a holier glow. Our unresolved problems will still loom like ugly monsters; our annoying colleague will still snort with laughter at her own limp jokes. But something inside us is different. We have a sense of being accompanied.

The loudest--indeed the deafening--assurance of God's companioning comes through the Incarnation of Jesus. God who took on human skin, human limitations, and human odors understands our flaws.

Jesus probably created a laundry pile himself, engaged in the arduous process of getting clothes clean in the days before Maytag. He hung around with fisher folk who were pretty whiffy in a high wind. He who loved the lilies of the field probably would have breathed a deep, appreciative lungful of hyacinth, too.

"Not even Solomon was arrayed like one of these," he said in admiration of field flowers. lie is an authentic model for living in the spaces between--the lilies on one hand, the rancid fish on the other.

He doesn't qualify his invitation "Come follow me" with an "as soon as you're perfect." Instead he lives in the thick of the messiness, not waiting till the act is cleaned up to thank God for the whole crazy, mismatched pile.

One of the most telling stories about Jesus comes early in his public life--and in some traditions is proclaimed on the first Sunday of Lent. After 40 days of fasting in the desert, he hungers. The most natural, human condition affects him. Jesus is not above a stomach growl. When the devil tempts him to turn stone to bread, he can imagine a fragrant loaf in exquisite detail; he must have longed to tear into it, chewing right down the soft middle.

He resisted that seemingly innocuous temptation as he did all that followed. He refused the power and glory of the world's kingdoms, as he did the ploy to bring out God's angelic rescue squad if he threw himself from a high pinnacle. "No," he said. "No dazzling effects. No pyrotechnics. Being human is enough."

His humility speaks volumes to those of us who would have quickly grabbed any or all of those chances. "He was so embarrassingly common and little," writes Father John Kavanaugh. This Jesuit commentator goes on to explain that Jesus resisted the superman techniques because they would have commandeered our loyalty, lie avoided rigid control because what he wanted instead was "the free gift of a human heart."

In Jesus' broad acceptance of human limits, he models prayer for us. He stands with us in the place where we say, "This is the life I have: how can I live it most fully?" He doesn't necessarily lead us to ask how to change this life, but how to reverence it, enter it most deeply.

Indeed, genuine sanctity doesn't fly off into the ether but blesses the here and now, whatever it may be. Prayer that is rooted in real life helps us keep our balance between the hyacinth and the laundry pile.

By KATHY COFFEY. Excerpted with permission from God in the Moment: Making Every Day a Prayer (Loyola Press, 1999; 1-800-621-1008).