These past months have me longing for the ordinary, with nothing special, nothing "out of the ordinary" to steal my attention. I'm sure with too much ordinary I will be looking for the spice again to give life flavor. But just for now ordinary seems a pleasant prospect.
It happens (if you follow the Christian calendar) that today is the first Sunday of "ordinary time." The year is punctuated with two special seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany taking in the dark and cold months from December to February, and Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity that sees in the spring and takes us from the darkness to the light. Between Epiphany and Lent lies a brief period of ordinary time followed by a longer period beginning early June. It then stretches for six months. Longing for nothing special, today I am enjoying the symbolism of ordinary time.
Ordinary sounds dull. It need not be. Ordinary time can be a period of preparation, of nourishment, of taking care and growing. Ordinary is the time to develop good habits of physical well-being, of spiritual practice, of taking pleasure in the little, simple things of life. Ordinary can be waiting with quiet confidence that no matter what comes later all will be well. Ordinary time, used wisely, prepares you for the coming ups and downs, for come they surely will.
Ordinary, too, is not a fixed or absolute state. Tomorrow's ordinary will not be the same as today's. Some "ordinaries" would be better changed—the ordinaries of patriarchy and racism, and the ordinary of spanking children, to name a few.
The trouble is, we don't know what tomorrow's ordinary will look like. My work as a university teacher currently has no ordinary. The pandemic jolted us out of a more or less comfortable ordinary into a state of mild chaos and confusion. It might be too much to say everything changed, but it's not too far from the truth. For three months the university has been a ghost town: splendid buildings empty, classrooms and lecture halls unused, state of the art fitness centers silent, offices lined with books uninhabited. When we re-open, likely at the end of August, no-one knows what a new ordinary will look like. Socially distant, mask-wearing, telecommuting, hybrid, awkward—who can see a smile of greeting in a mask?
Still, I will be glad when we return to the ordinary, even the new ordinary. In the meantime, in this strange transitional ordinary (is that even a thing?) I will do my best to wait patiently, to enjoy the present, to prepare for the future, to stay in shape mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Be present to the universe and to yourself today,
+Ab. Andy