The Gift of the Ordinary

The Gift of the Ordinary

From time to time, my soul is afflicted with a deep and annoying restlessness. I could describe it as a famine of soul– like standing alone in a banquet hall, glasses and plates strewn about hinting at that which had gone before but now lacking the music and the guests. Might it even be a spiritual acedia, that laissez faire the monastics called the “noon-day demon” finally having its way with me after being held at bay for so long? Is it biological? Chemical? Indigestion?

Whatever it is, when it shows up, I wish it would make a speedy exit from my interior life. It seems to me that happiness (however we define the term) and comfort, the very things I am so often grasping after are actually enemies to the spiritual fervor I crave. Apparently, I do best under adverse circumstances. Crap.

It is an interesting coincidence that the liturgical calendar places us in ‘ordinary time.’ What I both love and hate about that is the external imposition of a chronos in which to learn kairos. It is an outward reality giving me the framework in which to sow the seeds of grace toward my growth in salvation. To add further complexity, this has converged with my unnecessarily long summer schedule when routines are challenged and stretched beyond recognition. I tend to fall apart in those times. Faithfulness is sometimes most difficult when all is well and such faithfulness goes unnoticed one way or the other. When we have nothing to gain from faithfulness is the precise moment when it is most crucial. For me, that was the time.

There is mystery in the idea of ordinary time. While everything around us may show little or no daily change there emerges within us the slow, almost imperceptible greenery of spiritual life. There is nothing ordinary in the growth of living things. It is as miraculous as it is beautiful. It is also slow enough to render moment-by-moment changes impossible yet mysterious enough that to look away for a single day is to miss the biological sweatshop that has invisibly produced a most magnificent result.

Something comes to mind as I reflect upon this. Most of us gain little by staring at ourselves, craning our necks and squinting our eyes to see our own growth. Such endeavors inevitably result in discouragement or even cynicism. Keeping our eyes fixed on the long-term process of growth and marveling at it is that which yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness and with it, our most abiding joy. Someone once said that we’re always frustrated by how little we accomplish in a day and how much we accomplish in ten years. That is the gift of ordinary time. It forces my eyes up to the sky instead of buried in the soil. Sun in the eyes is always a better option than dirt up the nose.

The following two tabs change content below.

Robert Alan Rife

Robert Rife, M.A., minister of worship and music for Yakima Covenant Church (formerly Westminster Presbyterian) in Yakima, Washington, is a self-proclaimed book-nerd-word-herder, multi-instrumentalist (including Highland Bagpipes!), singer-songwriter, studio musician, choral director, poet, and liturgist. He maintains two personal blogs: Innerwoven and Robslitbits. He also blogs at Conversations Journal. Robert describes his vocation as exploring those places where life, liturgy, theology, and the arts intersect with and promote spiritual formation.

Latest posts by Robert Alan Rife (see all)

4 thoughts on “The Gift of the Ordinary”

  1. Rob, thanks for your candid ruminations! They’re such a gift to me today even as I ponder on a lot of what you’re saying that are deeply resonating with my own soul! Thanks for putting words to stuff going through my mind! All the best!

  2. Hey Rob,
    I want to thank you for bringing my head out of the clouds, which is all too easy a place for me to go. I find it interesting that ordinary time as you pointed to, may even be our best time of growth. No gift-wrapping hoopla after the long awaiting of Advent….. or the images of hope unseen (as in Easter resurrection). Ordinary is ordinary and being that there are more of those days on the liturgical calendar, doesn’t that mean growth needs long periods of steeping in nothing real spectacular? I don’t find it coincidental that the color associated with Ordinary time is…….green.

  3. Robert Alan Rife

    Val…yes! I believe God is especially fond of our ordinariness. It comes closest to the ground of our being, the humus/humility out of which is birthed our truest selves. Those little things along the way that, to notice and rejoice in them, is to be always found in awe, in gratitude and in transformation. A lot of deep ordinary becomes, almost subversively, extraordinary. But, because we don’t see it as such, we don’t claim it as our own. It’s been God’s secret, deep work all along.

Comments are closed.