We enter into a season that the Church has sometimes called ordinary. Do we think that this is bad? The messages we have most often heard are that of upward mobility; a rising out of the ordinary. Somehow we have come to believe that the ordinary does not matter; that it does not change the world. We have believed that only Washington D.C. or Hollywood or Harvard can and will influence, change or create our reality.
The Christian story has identified saints in the midst of ordinary people. Jesus used the ordinary food of bread and wine in a holy supper. Take a moment and think of all the extraordinarily ordinary people who have called out the goodness in you. Some have called these paradoxical people ordinary radicals. God has not called us to be the most extraordinary person in the world; not even in your circle of friends and family. He has called you to honor the image of himself that is already inside, to celebrate the color green, to experience the happy exchange of friendship and to see the face of Christ in the lonely, forgotten corners of this world. To see Christ in the ordinary. You cannot create, fashion or imagine a more extraordinary reality than the one God has already given you.
As the Church calendar creates the space for us to move into and recognize the sacredness of the ordinary, I am temporarily ceasing this space of daily prayer while I read to my boys, play baseball, and have the biggest pillow fights this side of the Mississippi. To learn the art of cooking and the steady persistence of laundry. To take my wife out on dates and to learn to give and receive love again. This will be my movement of ordinariness.
If you have created space for the rhythm of daily prayer, there are some links below that you might consider using to remain in your rhythm.
There is an old Buddhist story that tells of a monk who was being pursued by a tiger when he came to a cliff that had a rope in which he could shimmy down. But at the bottom of the cliff were jagged rocks. If he were to fall, he would surely die. With the tiger above and the jagged rocks below, two mice began chewing on the rope. Just then, the monk noticed right in front of him on the side of the cliff were growing some strawberries. He ate one and said, “This is the best strawberry I have ever tasted.”
Peace to you. May you take notice of the strawberries right in front of you.
Northumbria Community: Daily Office
Mission St. Clare: Daily Office
