Something opens our wings. 
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. 
Someone fills the cup in front of us: 
We taste only sacredness.
 - Rumi

NOTE: These notes contain edited excerpts from Edward Espe Brown article in Lion's Roar online.

See cooking as a chore or a waste of time, and you will find the task tedious—so tiresome that you will probably not even get into the kitchen!*

What are you seeing as tedious? Why exactly is it tedious?

See cooking as an opportunity to develop new skills, to learn as you go, to nourish and feed yourself, family, and friends, and your activity in the kitchen will likely flourish.

Can you imagine taking this approach to your tedious activity?

Shift from your head to your heart and hands, your body and being, and you will tend to discover connection, a home ground for purifying your love, moments of meeting the Beloved, and opportunities for further renewal.

Close your eyes and bring this to your tedious activity. What was that like?

...when we think our happiness depends on manipulating our activities to maximize the pleasurable ones and minimize those we find unpleasant, we will suffer. Because it’s an inherently flawed strategy—it cannot be accomplished. ...As you attempt to increase the positive moments and decrease the negative ones, you put yourself in the passive position of being powerless as experiences inflict themselves upon you. How then will you stand your ground with some strength and equanimity, digesting the various moments of your life?

Why is trying to manipulate the the world passive?

Why does Brown connect this to strength and equanimity?

Sometimes we are responsible for something not because we're to blame but because we're the only ones who can change it.

• Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of "How Emotions Are Made", TED Talk

If meditation is “boring,” who said that? Who must be busy looking elsewhere for more energizing experiences rather than entering more deeply into the moment as it is? Who is not finding the way to connect what is inside with what is outside and instead is wishing for salvation or escape

What does "connect what is inside with what is outside" mean to you?

While you are busy being bored—that is, not finding the excitement and stimulation you are looking for—often you will not be noticing how much you are abandoning yourself in the process. While you are busy looking elsewhere, what is apparent is not yet realized.

What do you think it means to abandon yourself?

What is apparent is not yet realized - what does that suggest to you?

Naturally we find some activities uplifting and others troublesome, but we will discover more freedom for ourselves when we do not make universal statements that leave us out of the equation.

How do you leave yourself out of the equation of the tedious task?

In outer reality, where images loudly shout their self-importance and claim undue amounts of attention, where will you choose to put your attention? On crafting your image? Or working with the ingredients you’re given, doing what you came here to do? Suzuki Roshi would ask us to discover, “What is your inmost request?”

Can you locate an innermost request?

Still I continue to study how to awaken ears to hear what is most intimate, to listen to the oceanic silence within. That I may follow that innermost unspoken resolve. That I may give it voice. Giving voice to our inmost request is pivotal for giving it life. Then we can make it real for all the world to see. Then the world comes forward to meet your inner vow.

How might you give it voice and connect it to the world?

Spiritual work in this context means giving voice to what is innermost and connecting that to the outer world. We are called to be even larger-hearted than we could possibly imagine. Loving what is less than perfect.