Ordinary

When I think of ordinary, I think dishes in the sink and laundry piled in the floor. I think of the daily routine with children—up at 7, chores after breakfast, naps at 1 o’clock, teeth brushed before bed, lights out at 8. Ordinary means Tuesdays at 10:30 and the month of March. Ordinary to me speaks in the dull words of repetitive activity and television in the evenings. It slowly ushers in numbness as it quietly beats the drum of the status quo.

And so I rebel. I set my sights and my longings on the extraordinary—a lush vacation, a mission trip to a foreign land, the experience of a spiritual high, a move of some sort, anything new and seemingly more thrilling or more "important" than this very ordinary in which I find myself.

And yet, and yet, Thomas Merton, a classic Christian writer, says that “the highest form of spiritual development is to be ‘ordinary,’ " and Brennan Manning writes that we experience God best in the ordinariness of life, not in the search for the spiritual high or the extraordinary. And even the apostle Paul says in Romans, “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your eating, sleeping, and walking around life—and lay it before God as an offering. This is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1-2, The Message, NLT).

And, so, I am left challenged on this ordinary Saturday in August, heading back to the average evening responsibilities of fixing dinner and picking up toys. Can I be a Christ-follower in transformational ways even if I only ever experience the ordinary? Can the ordinary become an adventure I am passionate to live out--an adventure wrought with the Presence of the Holy and drenched in the wild love of the Divine? I have to believe that it can. I have to believe that my daily, ordinary moments are opportunities to live Love and experience Love in radical ways—with the pudgy arm of my two-year-old wrapped around my neck, in a romance with my husband that continues to be made new, with whispers in my heart while mopping the very dirty floor. I have to believe that when Jesus called me to follow Him, he didn't mean then, he meant right now.

Socrates said, “The unaware life is not worth living.” In the midst of the ordinary, the battle remains for me to wake up daily-- to engage my soul rather than just follow through with the motions before me. Maybe that's why Merton says that it's hardest to experience great spirituality in the ordinary, because the ordinary does have a subtle way of lulling us to sleep.


Here's to hoping that we're all a little more awake to the realities of God this week--amid the dishes and the squabbles and the routine, and not just outside of them.


Thanks for reading. Really.