The Sacred Ordinary

Each day starts out the same – the sun lifts itself with apparent ease over the eastern horizon. Sometimes the rising is accompanied with a spectacular display of colour and variation, other times it goes unnoticed behind the clouds.

Each year passes through the same cycle of seasons – the cold winds of winter give way to the sweet taste of spring which in turn is the prelude for the lusty growth of summer which then ebbs into the harvest of autumn.

Each life begins at birth and passes through the same phases of childhood and adulthood as every other life.

One would think the sameness of the seasons and cycles would seep into a monotonous monologue that would bore the eye and dull the ear should one pause to take notice. Instead, what we have before us and within us, is an ongoing, same but ever-changing, ordinary but very sacred liturgy. This liturgy is the creative work of an Artist who succumbs to the limitations of seasons and cycles and then displays and invites unlimited interpretations of it over and over again. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear…

Mary Oliver asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”.  Annie Dillard says that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. The writer of Ecclesiastes rather depressingly says, “There’s nothing new under the sun”.  But then that same old sun comes up again garbed in a whole new way, showing the underside of her skirts with nary a second thought.

We are all invited..                                    IMG_0271