Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung September 6, 2024
In my habit of journaling each morning, I used to recall the day before and the Big Events that shaped it. Over time, however, I found more intriguing musing with my pen about the ordinary events that infiltrated yesterday’s unfolding: the smile from a stranger in passing; the moment a driver gave me a break in heavy traffic; the kindness of a person who saw I dropped something and retrieved it for me; the smiling sliver of a bright moon against a dark, starry sky; the way our cat Ginger climbs up on our bed and cuddles with my wife and me.
What is most glorious about shifting our imaginations from the big, the one time only event, to the small that may repeat itself often—is that there is so much more of the ordinary than anything else. But often we don’t pause long enough to notice, much less appreciate, these incidentals.
Certainly, a different program of perception structures our noticing the ordinary. It does not need us for it to happen; every day the ordinary, the mundane goes on without us. Sure, some of this new interest may increase as we age. Perhaps it is in slowing down; yet it is available to anyone curious about the way things are, how they unfold, and what may make ordinary events even sacred as divine gifts.
My curiosity was piqued recently when I found two books on my shelf I had read parts of years ago. The first one is The Sacrament of the Present Moment by a Catholic priest, Jean-Pierre De Caussade (1675-1751) who lived in southern France. For many it became a classic of Christian devotion, but it exists for anyone who senses mystery in the ordinary.
He wrote: “the only condition necessary for this state of self-surrender is the present moment in which the soul, light as a feather, fluid as water, innocent as a child, responds to every moment of grace like a floating balloon.” He believed that when we pay attention to these ordinary occurrences of life, that who we truly are can surface.
The second book by a much more contemporary author and teacher Lynda Sexson is Ordinarily Sacred. There she offers that “intrusions of the mundane become agents of the sublime,” a word we don’t hear very often in our consumer-oriented culture.
Fond of using metaphors to reveal a truth that rational or literal language cannot express as well, she crafted this rich image: “The sacred is the leopard lying in wait--the shock of its sudden appearance. Perhaps one of the most startling places the leopard can appear is among the ephemeral nonsense that distracts us into metaphor.”
Using metaphorical language is commonplace in all of our communications. If we listen to individuals telling one another their stories, often about ordinary commonplace occurrences, we hear their expressions abundant with metaphors. Without metaphors, we don’t have an interesting story. Metaphors can transform the ordinary into a compelling incident.
Ordinary moments can provide the context we need, even desire, to “discover or rediscover, one’s world view, one’s depth” writes Sexson, but it can be buried under life’s busyness. However, for both writers, paying attention to what usually goes unnoticed, we can discover where the subline resides--in the ordinary.
I end with a question for you: what did you notice yesterday as you carried out your obligations, meetings, and tasks that claimed you? What rises to your mind as you remember? Think small here, ordinary, what largely remains unnoticed. The sacred ordinary may surprise you.