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| "This ordinary time is gifted in its quiet, marked passing Christ slips about calling and baptizing, sending and affirming, pouring his Spirit like water into broken cisterns, sealing cracks and filtering our senses, that we may savor the foolish simplicity of his grace." -- Enuma Okoro |
It is official (and has been since Pentecost Sunday), we are in Ordinary Time. The liturgical season of Ordinary Time lasts for about twenty nine weeks -- from Pentecost Sunday to the First Sunday in Advent. It is by far the longest season of the church year and there are very few "special" significant events along the way. It lacks the yearning and holy expectation of Advent and the joy of Easter. There are no costumes, no colors, no pageants...it is simply marked by its ordinary monotony. Day after day of...ordinary....heat (at least if you live in Texas).
I like referring to this time by its secular name "the dog days of summer." Frankly, I loathe it. I think it is because I am jealous. Although it has been a very long time, these long summer days always remind me of the fun I had growing up in summers past...swimming all day, horseback riding into the late evening...riding my bike all over the neighborhood...sleeping in....those were the days. The sun on my back and the world at my doorstep...so much to see, so much to explore.
Mary and I try to have as much fun with the kids during the summer as possible. After work we do what we can...but we both have confessed that we seem to lack the childhood wonder...it just isn't the same. Work (no matter how much you love your job), along with the hot sun and a demanding toddler have a way of draining you. It reminds me of the poem by Luci Shaw, "...always when I get home from work, the house is dark, the dog bored, the children screaming, the plants browning, the sink piled with dishes and the trash overflowing with garbage."
Admittedly, Mary and I have noticed that we fall on the couch "dead tired" after the kids go to bed lacking any energy to clean or work...we manage to watch a "House Hunter" and slip off to sleep.
But I long to "see" again, as I did when I was a child and my summer's were free...I long to walk out the door in the morning in awe of the wonders that the day will bring...just like when I was a kid.
I think one of the reasons Jesus said, "In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven you must become like a little child" is because children have a way of being able to see the divine wonder in everything. They are able to combine the natural and spiritual...they realize that, like Elizabeth Browning said, "..there is nothing great or small...no lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee, But that finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere; No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim...Earth is crammed with heaven."
For instance...A few days ago, during a rainstorm, Grant (our son) noticed the wind swirling about the trees and the water rushing down the gutters. Apparently, he decided he wasn't going to miss the show...so he put on his black cowboy hat and rushed outside before we could stop him. He disappeared into the storm...Mary saw him through our kitchen window...he was having a blast with his friends -- the wind and rain. He threw branches over the fence and carried a wooden board that he was interested in from the back of the church to our backdoor. One of our deacons uses it for target practice and he marveled at the bullet holes.
As I was watching Grant having fun in the rain, I thought to myself that somehow or someway during the busyness of the year I lost that divine wonder, but Grant didn't.
Perhaps, in its wisdom, the church universal knew that we would inevitably get lost in the noise of the year...hence, Ordinary Time -- A time at the end of the Christian year to relax and be renewed by the quiet presence of Christ...to contemplate the mysteries of Christ and to reconnect with his quiet grace..to regain that childlike divine wonder. BUT the responsibility of the disciple during this special time is to see the world with what Paul called, "The eyes of the heart" and to listen with our spiritual ears -- Similar to what Elijah had to do on Mt. Horeb in I Kings 19 when the Spirit passed quietly by speaking only in a low whisper.
The Scottish author Kenneth Grahame has a beautiful description of an encounter with the Spirit and a creatures response to the call of a holy "Other" in his childrens book The Wind in the Willows. In this scene, Rat and Mole are patrolling the river in search of a baby otter that has gone missing, when a divine mysterious music wafts across the water:
"Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, sat up...but Mole kept rowing and heard nothing. 'Its gone!' sighed Rat, sinking back in his seat again. 'So beautiful and strange and new. It has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. There is is again! Now it passes. O, Mole! The beauty of it. The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear happy call in it is stronger ever than the music is sweet. Row on Mole, for the call must be for us.'
Mole quickly stops the boat, 'O, your hear it now Mole,' Rat says. Mole was now possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp....Mole felt a great awe come upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror -- indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy -- but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that the Divine was very very near.
'Rat!' Mole whispered shaking, 'Are you afraid?' 'Afraid! O never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid.' And then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship."
I wonder if that was what Grant was doing the other day in the rain...worshiping? I wonder if he saw...if he heard what Mary and I couldn't or wouldn't?
Well, that is it! I have decided to practice Ordinary Time...I want to see "Earth crammed with Heaven." I am going to try to obey Christ's command, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear."
Our family is going out to the ranch this evening. We are going to ride the four-wheeler down to the banks of the Brazos river, have a picnic and watch the sun set. Perhaps we will even stomp around in the creek -- Grant and Lucy love to do that. If Mary and I look/listen really hard, I am sure that Christ will slip in and all around us...I bet he will pour his Spirit into our cracking cisterns and we will laugh and our all of us will "do worship" ...I will let you know how it turns out.
