Ordinary and extraordinary...

One of my favorite writers, Joan Chittister, regularly remarks that the way of God is the embrace of what seems paradoxical: sin AND grace, fear AND trust, the holy AND the human. I have been moved by her emphasis on the connections between the extraordinary within the events of our ordinary human lives. So, today was a VERY ordinary day - spring cleaning in all its gritty reality - and also a day of extraordinary beauty.

After cooking my dear heart breakfast - and doing some errands to gather cleaning supplies - we decided to first tackle our bedroom. When I looked at my part of the room... OMG what a wreck! Books scattered everywhere, unpacked suitcases from a host of trips and piles and piles of magazines. It made me want to hide but after two hours of careful attention, six months of neglect was sorted out into order, cleanliness and modest beauty. The same drill applied to the bathrooms, my study and the kitchen so that by the end of the day the simple beauty of our home was obvious once again.

Too often I can get caught up in the so-called GREATER demands of the day - my work at church, my writing, pastoral calls - until I come to resent the ordinary needs of cleaning and cooking and clearing away the clutter. Now, I don't have any illusion that this imbalance is going to change dramatically because I have a high tolerance for clutter when I'm in a groove. But today was yet another gentle reminder that by regularly attending to the ordinary tasks of the day, beauty and order can be restored. At least in a small measure...

And in a season when the full catastrophe of the Gulf Coast oil spill is only partially understood and my nation is waging two wars in the Middle East while trying to figure out a way through a complicated economic collapse... maybe it is time for me to truly pay attention to more of the ordinary things. I don't want to be an ostrich - and Bonhoeffer's spirituality of calling out the forces of evil and the demonic is growing in my heart. At the same time, I need to nourish a way to stay grounded to the ordinary beauty and grace that God offers every day.

Brennan Manning, in his reflections on what he calls the Ragamuffin Gospel, writes: Not far away from us, there is someone who is afraid and needs our courage; someone who is lonely and needs our presence. There is someone hurt needing our healing; unloved, needing our touching; old, needing to feel that we care; weak, needing the support of our shared weakness. One of the most healing words I ever spoke as a confessor was to an old priest with a drinking problem. "Just a few years ago," I said, "I was a hopeless alcoholic in the gutter in Fort. Lauderdale." "You?" he cried. "O thank God!" When we bring an ordinary smile to the face of someone in paid, we have brought Christ to him (or her.)

So here's the challenge - personally and professionally - in each regular day, what helps you stay grounded in the ordinary? One of my favorite Psalms puts it like this:

O LORD, I am not proud;
I have no haughty looks.
I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet,
like a child upon its mother's breast;
my soul is quieted within me.
O Israel, wait upon the LORD,
from this time forth for evermore.

I am curious what you do to help you stay grounded to the extraordinary in the ordinary? Any ideas you are willing to share?

credits:
1) weburbanist http://weburbanist.com/2008/04/06/3-more-kinds-of-unusual-art-from-ordinary-objects-toothpick-sculptures-to-hammer-and-nail-portraits/

2) andy warhol http://www.artificialgallery.co.uk/andy-warhol/brillo-soap-pads/

3) my children in nyc in the 80s...