As summer fades into fall, we move into the second half of the liturgical season that is usually called “ordinary time.” That phrase is a bit of a misnomer, because it should properly be called “ordinal time.”  The Sunday celebrations are distinguished by the use of “ordinal numbers” (22^nd Sunday, 23^rd Sunday, etc). But calling it ordinary time is also appropriate. The slow, steady growth of our faith life, our community building, our social action programs take place during ordinary moments and not just at big events. A family that only gathers for Thanksgiving and Christmas is likely to be a bit stiff, formal, and slightly uncomfortable when they sit down at table. Families that eat together all the time know one another’s moods, behaviors, and personalities. They are comfortable with being themselves at table, even if the self they bring to the table is not always their best self.

This raises a larger question:  Is it OK to be ordinary? Is what is considered an ordinary life enough for us? I graduated from a liberal arts college in Memphis in 1975. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation, some classmates sent in material to our alumni magazine about what they had been doing for the last fifty years. One classmate, who was from a small town in West Tennessee, wrote: “When I finished medical school, I had all kinds of plans for what I was going to do. But I have spent my life as a country doctor among the people where I grew up. It has been a good life.”

Thomas Merton, the spiritual writer and Trappist monk, once wrote: “It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed; putting on blankets and taking them off; making coffee and then drinking it; defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially so about it as mine, though doubtless it is not somebody else’s.”

The problem is we all live with a kind of restlessness. That is partly because we really are meant to experience something beyond what we experience now. God planted that desire for immortality within us. That truth is captured in Augustine’s famous phrase, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”  God also has a habit of reaching down into people’s ordinary lives and calling them to a life that is hardly ordinary. There are Abraham and Sarah, an elderly couple who thought they had lived their lives, called to be parents of a great nation. There is David, the youngest of  brothers and the one voted “least likely to be king” who was anointed king. There is Mary, a teenager in a town notable only for its mediocrity, called to be the Mother of God. There is Martin Luther King, drinking a pot of coffee late at night and struggling with the call to be something more than a church pastor. All that comes from God. But there is also a kind of restlessness instilled in us by our culture: the expectations that we have for our career, our marriage, our children. It is the drive to accomplish more and more and to experience more and more; and if this not happening, if our life seems too ordinary, then we may feel that we have failed.

During the 1950’s and 1960’s the keywords in furniture and design were “modern” and “streamlined.”  This led in the 1970’s to a renewed appreciation for the solid and ornate furniture of the previous century. When River North first came to life in the 1980’s, the area was full of art galleries and antique shops. These businesses have almost all disappeared because the present generation does not want to be burdened by heavy furniture from the past. They are more into experiences than into possessions. This is the word I get all the time from engaged couples: They like to try new restaurants and travel to new places. That is great (as long as we have the funds to do so), but it can also become a compulsion—a constant need for novelty or for a new experience to top the last experience. That becomes a form of greed. We can forget what Ron Rolheiser once wrote, “In this life all symphonies remain unfinished.”

So, “ordinary time” is good for us. It reminds us to love one another as we are, to love ourselves as we are, to accept ourselves and one another as we are. It teaches us to be grateful for the experiences and people that have come into our life. It reminds us that the next big thing, and the next big experience is not going to compete us. We can only appreciate one another if we live in the present moment, and we can only encounter God in the present moment.

                            Fr Joe