And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering
power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.
It is now. It is not.
~Osip Mandelstam “And I Was Alive” (translated by Christian Wiman) from Stolen Air 

Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me. 
One Calvinist notion deeply implanted in me is that
there are two sides to your encounter with the world.
You don’t simply perceive something that is statically present,
but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience.
It means something because it is addressed to YOU. 
~Marilynne Robinson from The Paris Review 2008

We mostly live through routine and ordinary days, unconscious of many treasures and abundance laid before us.

In fact, these are addressed to us as pure gift –
postmarked to our address, fully paid, no postage due.

Daily I search the soil of my life, this farm, this faith
to find what in me still yearns to grow, to blossom, to fruit,
in order to be harvested to share with others.

Such sweetness undoes our inevitable decay.

I am so grateful for the tie that binds me to those who visit this page, hoping what I share makes a difference in your ordinary,
but still so precious, day. 

The gift of ordinary time is now.
Its numinosity is aimed at each one of us.

Poem by Dana Gioia

Echo of the clocktower, footstep
in the alleyway, sweep
of the wind sifting the leaves.
Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur
of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning
harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer
of entrances and exits, midnight
whisper traveling the wires.
Seducer, healer, deity or thief,
I will see you soon enough—
in the shadow of the rainfall,
in the brief violet darkening a sunset—

but until then I pray watch over him
as a mountain guards its covert ore
and the harsh falcon its flightless young.