Tag: ordinary time

Something Aimed At You

barnstormingblog1 Comment

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.

Leaving Ordinary Behind

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Days come and go:
this bird by minute, hour by leaf,
a calendar of loss.

I shift through woods, sifting
the air for August cadences
and walk beyond the boundaries I’ve kept

for months, past loose stone walls,
the fences breaking into sticks,
the poems always spilling into prose.

A low sweet meadow full of stars
beyond the margin
fills with big-boned, steaming mares.

The skies above are bruised like fruit,
their juices running,
black-veined marble of regret.

The road gusts sideways:
sassafras and rue.
A warbler warbles.

Did I wake the night through?
Walk through sleeping?
Shuffle for another way to mourn?

Dawn pinks up.
In sparking grass I find beginnings.
I was cradled here.
I gabbled and I spun.

As the faithful seasons fell away,
I followed till my thoughts
inhabited a tree of thorns

that grew in muck of my own making.
Yet I was lifted and laid bare.
I hung there weakly: crossed, crossed-out.

At first I didn’t know
a voice inside me speaking low.
I stumbled in my way.

But now these hours that can’t be counted
find me fresh, this ordinary time
like kingdom come.

In clarity of dawn,
I fill my lungs, a summer-full of breaths.
The great field holds the wind, and sways.
~Jay Parini from “Ordinary Time”

It can happen like that:
meeting at the market,
buying tires amid the smell
of rubber, the grating sound
of jack hammers and drills,
anywhere we share stories,
and grace flows between us.
  
The tire center waiting room
becomes a healing place
as one speaks of her husband’s
heart valve replacement, bedsores
from complications. A man
speaks of multiple surgeries,
notes his false appearance
as strong and healthy.
 
I share my sister’s death
from breast cancer, her
youngest only seven.
A woman rises, gives
her name, Mrs. Henry,
then takes my hand.
Suddenly an ordinary day
becomes holy ground.
~ Stella Nesanovich, “Everyday Grace,” from Third Wednesday

photo by Emily Gibson

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
~Alfred North Whitehead

This is the last day of “ordinary time” in the church calendar.
Yet nothing in this moment is ordinary.

What matters, happens right at this very moment –
standing in the grocery store check out line,
changing a smelly diaper,
sitting in the exam room of the doctor’s office,
mucking stalls in an old barn.
Am I living fully in the present now?
Am I paying attention?

We are sentient creatures with a proclivity to bypass the here and now to dwell on the past or fret about the future. This has been true of humans since our creation. 

Those observing Buddhist tradition and New Age believers of the “Eternal Now” call our attention to the present moment through the teaching of “mindfulness” to dwell fully in a sense of peacefulness and fulfillment.

Mindfulness is all well and good but I don’t believe the present is about our minds. 

It is not about us at all.

The present is an ordinary day transformed by God to holy ground where we have been allowed to tread with Him who comes to walk alongside us in our travails:

We remove our shoes in an attitude of respect to a living God.
We approach each other and each sacred moment with humility. 
We see His quotidian holiness in all our ordinary activities.
We are connected to one another through His Word and promises.

There will be no other moment just like this one,
so there is no time to waste. 

Barefoot and calloused, sore and stumbling at times, together we step onto the holy and healing ground of Advent.

AI image created for this post — I burst out laughing when I saw what AI came up with for “walking on holy ground”!! Maybe it really isn’t too far off, as much of the time, I’m not sure if I’m coming or going and this illustrates that dilemma pretty well!

Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Osana in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domina. Benedictus qui venit. Osana in excelsis. Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi. Dona nobis pacem.

Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes. Hosanna in the highest. Lamb of God, Who take away the sins of the world. Grant us peace.

An Ordinary Sunday

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday.
It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.
You can feel the silent and invisible life.
~Marilynne Robinson from Gilead

It is ordinary time,
in the church calendar and in my life…

As I am covered with Sabbath rest
quiet and deep
as if planted in soil finally
warming from a too long winter~

I realize there is nothing ordinary
about what is happening
in the church, in the world,
or in me.

We are called by the Light
to push away from darkness,
to reach to the sky,
to grasp and bloom and fruit.

We begin as mere and ordinary seed.

Therefore, nothing is more extraordinary
than an ordinary Sunday.

A new book available from Barnstorming can be ordered here: