Welcome to Today’s Heart Matters. It’s Wednesday, July 23, 4 pm, the first full month of summer in the U.S. It’s the middle of the week, that Little Saturday when we’re ready for the weekend. Of course, you may work on the weekends, and this is not the middle of your work week. Welcome. I’m Angela Hooks, the conductor of Today’s Heart Matters, bringing to you matters of the heart by way of myths, fables, and poetry. If this is your first time listening, usually I live stream. Since I’ve taken a break, I’ve been recording and posting until July 30, 2025. Of course, these recordings may be the new Today’s Heart Matters podcast, rather than a live stream. I’ll have to iron out the wrinkles and see what flows best.
Ironing is Today’s Heart Matters—the use of heat and pressure to get rid of wrinkles, unwanted creases, and crinkles. I will read Pablo Neruda’s “In Praise of Ironing.”
I’ve never been a fan of ironing. I remember in high school, my mother insisted I iron my white blouse for school. I set the ironing board up, plugged in the iron, and looked at it. My mom said, “Don’t forget to put water in the iron.” I didn’t see any water. I refused to go to the kitchen or the bathroom to get water. Instead, I poured 7-Up into the iron. Yes, soda. I remember unplugging the iron and wearing a wrinkled white blouse to school. I remember my mother punishing me for destroying her iron and using my allowance to buy a new one.
About a decade later, my former mother-in-law, God rest her soul, she’s in heaven, bossing God around. She noticed my blouse was wrinkled. She asked if I’d gone on a job interview wearing a wrinkled blouse. I put on my suit jacket and proudly said, “Yes. I ironed the front, you can’t see the wrinkles in the back.”
I’m not a fan of ironing. Now I have an allowance for the cleaners. Behold, my surprise when I discovered Pablo Neruda’s “Oda para plancar,” “In Praise of Ironing” in Intimacies, Poems of Love. This gift book, poems in Spanish and English, decorates the table in the guest bedroom. I’m not a guest in my own house, so this book is not in plain sight. But on this particular day, thinking about a reading for Today’s Heart Matter, Intimacies caught my attention. The cover itself is beautiful.
I read “In Praise of Ironing” a few times. Several images stopped me like “holy surfaces,” “out of light a dove is born,” and “innocence recovered.” Words resonated with today’s political and spiritual climate that has emerged from the wrinkles of “whiteness” and “The skin of this planet / has to be ironed out.” I couldn’t help but ruminate on how this poem resides in a collection of love poems, intimacies, and closeness. Yet, the “skin of this planet” is a hot mess full of wrinkles that even an industrial steam iron cannot press out. And then my heart, the heart God turned from stone to flesh, feels the mercy and compassion, desires to be one of those hands “creating the world” where from the Light of Christ love is born. “Above all, maintain constant love for one another” (1 Peter 4:8), ironing out differences and missteps, and fighting for justice, the right way of living, and goodness for all—that does not cause us to think twice about “love ironing out a multitude of sins.”
In Praise of Ironing
Poetry is pure white.
It emerges from water covered with drops,
is wrinkled, all in a heap.
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed out, the whiteness from the sea;
and the hands keep moving, moving,
the holy surfaces are smoothed out,
and that is how things get done.
Every day, hands are creating the world,
]fire marries steel,
and canvas, linen, and cotton come back
from the skirmishings of the laundries,
and out of light a dove is born—
innocence recovered from the foam.
What shimmers for you? What images arise?
Thanks for listening,
Your heart matters,
Angela
Share this post