I wrote this for the July newsletter. The photo above isn't mine, but it had the "right feel."
Each year, two Sundays after the Festival of Pentecost, the church begins a new liturgical time of the year – we count these days, these Sundays, as “the Sundays after Pentecost”and call the entire period of time that encompasses the Sundays after Pentecost ORDINARY TIME.
But certainly, there is nothing ordinary about Ordinary Time.
It’s like this:
When I was a little girl my grandparents lived on Collingham Drive on a corner lot in a neighborhood in Detroit. Their house was a post war bungalow that looked just like every other house on the block, and on the surrounding blocks, except that they had an oversized covered front porch made of cement. After he retired, my grandpa used to sit on the porch in the afternoon on a wide decorative metal chair smoking his cigar. In the evening my grandma would join them and they both sat on that porch reading the newspaper & waving to neighbors.
Monday afternoon though, which was washing day and as my grandfather sat on the porch my grandmother was in the back yard hanging the bed sheets on the clothes line to dry.
She began by taking down whatever laundry was already hanging on the line – towels, my grandpa’s shirts, a pair of navy blue shorts, or a few “unmentionables,” as she called them, that she discretely hung closer to the garage and out of sight from the side street.
As the laundry came down, one article at a time, she unfastened the wooden clothes pins with her right hand and dropped them into a fabric bag that hung down from the line, and at the same time with her left hand began to gather the article of clothing. Then she would shake that piece of laundry in such a way that made it lay wrinkle-free in the wooden laundry basket with handsewn fabric inserts.
Once the clothes lines were empty, she set the basket of shirts and ‘unmentionables’ to the side and brought forward the basket filled with wet sheets.
Now in reverse, she pulled the corner of the damp sheet up and out of the second laundry basket and at the same time pulled a wooden clothes pin from the fabric bag. The pin went to the corner of the sheet to fasten it to the thin rope clothesline and then sliding the sheet along the line with her hand she prepared the next place to be pinned and so on until the entire sheet was firmly affixed to the line and it did not touch the ground. My grandmother did not like laundry to touch the ground. I don’t know that I ever saw her re-wash laundry that touched the ground, that would have been a waste of water, but my guess is that the impulse was there. My grandpa had gone so far as to make a long metal pole with a hook on the top that went under the line in order to raise the heavy, wet sheets and towels several inches higher so that there was little chance that they would skim the grass.
Once all of the sheets were firmly in place and already flapping in the afternoon breeze she’d pick up the basket of dry clothes and begin to walk to the house. However, rarely did she retraced the direct-course pattern that she had traveled to get out to the clothesline, but instead stepped onto an invisible pathway that began back at the last section of clothes line which was anchored to the detached garage.
Behind the garage, the invisible path traveled back to where several mature raspberry bushes grew. She would stand and inspect the light weight bird-netting that lay over the still ripening fruit and adjust the corners. She tugged at each end of the netting, pulling them down in the same way she pulled the corners of the bed sheets, securing them so that no movement would loosen them.
Sometimes, when the berries were in full fruit she’d slide her hand under the net and pluck one or two pieces of fruit. She’d drop one in my now outstretched hand and the other she’d pop in her mouth like a sweet gumdrop. There was little more delicious than those berries.
Netting tucked under, laundry basket in hand she continued along the invisible path toward the flower garden. As she walked she named each flower. It sounded like she was greeting each plant, but it also became an opportunity to say the names aloud to me so I’d remember them. Zinnia’s first, marigolds second, and then snapdragons. Without fail she’d lean over and pinch the back of the neck of one of the snapdragon blooms until it opened and closed like a little mouth, and then in a false voice she made the snapdragon greet me, “Hello, Denise.” Finally, the path wound to the roses that my grandfather painstakingly cared for, trimming them in the early spring preparing them for new growth and covering them in the late autumn to tuck them in before winter’s bluster. At this point along the invisible path, it wasn’t uncommon for her to slide a pair of silver scissors out of the pocket of her apron and snip one of the roses. She’d hand it to me to carry in to the house where later we would put it in a bud vase. Her last steps in the garden took her toward the side door’s 2 step porch and into the house with me close at her heels. We’d go back to repeat the ritual later when the sheets were dry.
This was a perfectly ordinary Monday on the corner lot on Collingham Drive. Yet, there was nothing ordinary about an ordinary day except perhaps for the basic routine. For in those moments under the tall clothes line, sheets swaying in the breeze, I learned my family history, lessons about manners and gracious hospitality. I learned the words to Sunday School songs that we sang together as she worked. I learned that a single rose can be a centerpiece for the dinner table, that raspberries were juiciest right from the cane, and that being discreet meant that the unmentionables should be hung on the line farthest from the street.
I learned about life, love, trust, faith, respect, and family. And there is certainly nothing ordinary about those truths.
Which brings me back to the beginning of this season we call Ordinary. Yes, there are other names for this time of year — some call it Vacation from Church (I guess because the kids are on vacation from school). Others call it the Sleeping In Days or Yard Work Morning. Some use the term mundane to name this season, while others say Boring, especially since these Sabbath worship times are quiet and reserve compared to Christmas and Easter.
Yet, without this time of year when do we walk slowly enough to absorb the lessons that scripture and tradition teach us that inform our theology and shape our liturgies?
Ordinary Time is an extended season within the church year within which we are reminded of the nature and the attributes of God – where we linger over the essence of what we celebrate on the Solemn Festival Days.
Ordinary Time is an extended season within the church year when we take a look at our own lives in light of who God calls us to be – modern day disciples; and we ask ‘How do I live in light of all that Christ has done for me?’
Ordinary Time is a part of the cycle that reveals who and whose we are, that prepares us for vocation, that draws us into the mysteries of God and that teach us about life, love, trust, faith, respect, and Christian family.
It’s in ordinary time that we learn the foundational pieces, the building blocks, the threads that sew together the blocks of the quilt of life. Ordinary time is for learning multiplication before Algebra, and the alphabet before reading.
Ordinary time is for practicing the steps of making Black Forest Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling. You can’t make your very first Black Forest Cake late in the day on Christmas Eve having never spent time watching and helping the other family cooks during slower times of the year. It takes time, patience, reflection and practice to learn to sift flour, measure sugar, and melt chocolate to make a cake fit for a celebration. Ordinary time provides the leisure within which to practice these skills.
It’s in the Ordinary days that we hear the lessons, see the examples, touch the ingredients, smell the aromas, and taste the morsels... of faith.
It’s in the Ordinary days that we hear the parables that Jesus taught that we see the world around us and act on the lessons Jesus put forth, that we worship with the basics of the liturgy in order to refresh their words and hear their melodies anew. Ordinary time is for lingering over Biblical narratives, for unpacking rich, multi-layered symbols and images, for thoughtfully gazing at bread and wine set on the table and water brimming in the font. Ordinary time is the sacred space within time where we come to understand that within the ordinary is the EXTRAORDINARY presence of an amazing Lord.
We live in a world that some call ordinary, but it is truly nothing less than extraordinary, because all of life and creation is steeped in the divine mystery of God. It surrounds us and flows through our veins. The divine presence and mystery of God is in every breath that we take, in every face that we see, in every fire that burns or refines. It is mystery and presence that gives yeast the strength to make bread rise and grapes the power to hold the juice that becomes a rich and intoxicating drink.
We live in a world that is steeped in the divine mystery of God, all we need do is slow down, to look around, to drink it in, to be intentional about our Sabbath, worship, receiving the sacraments. To do so is to be fed, nourished, strengthen and enlivened in faith. and to be reminded that even in the Ordinary days ... we have an extraordinary God.
Recent Comments