The Summer is squarely upon us. Even as the City welcomes throngs of tourists, there is a noticeable exhale in the air as the collective pressure of deadlines and urgency seems to ease, if only a little. This time in the Church’s life is called Ordinary Time, not because it is unimportant, but rather comes from the Latin ordinalis, meaning ordered.
Our lives are structured by the everyday, the ordinary. For many the ordinary time of Summer can feel like a welcome break from the speed of life to slow down and just be. For others, life is already slower than we wish and the rush of excitement from Easter and Pentecost are dearly missed.
But Ordinary Time is not a lull from meaning or purpose. Rather we spend the time from Pentecost to Advent focusing on living out the mysteries we have just celebrated in the church calendar. At Saint Thomas we mark Ordinary Time as the number of weeks from Pentecost to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit now animates even the most mundane parts of our lives.
In her book An Altar in the World, Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor describes our world as “so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”
I must admit this seems hardly believable. Our everyday lives–emails, trains, tv, books, conversations, news–do not always seem to be brimming with divine reality. And yet, the claim of Pentecost is that the Spirit of God is among us and in us, whether we feel it or not.
Ordinary Time gives us permission to be, well, ordinary. To rest and reflect on how our lives with God are going now that they are not buoyed by the steady stream of Feast Days, new liturgical seasons, and Holy Week. We are also invited to look around and see where God’s Spirit is enlivening the world around us.
Perhaps you travel to the same places every Summer. You read the same book, visit the same pool, drink the same seasonal drink, or visit the same vacation spot. Let these familiar rituals become markers in time to help you trace how much God has been working in your own life.
What has changed? Where have you encountered grace or growth? Where do you still long for God to act?
The American poet Tim Dlugos once asked, Which are the magicmoments in ordinary time? All of them, for those who can see.
Even if we cannot yet see, God is present. But when we do see, we find ourselves able to receive and rejoice in what has been there all along. Blessed Ordinary Time to you.
