Our life is ordinary,
I read in a crumpled paper
abandoned on a bench.
Our life is ordinary,
the philosophers told me.
Ordinary life, ordinary days and cares,
a concert, a conversation,
strolls on the town’s outskirts,
good news, bad—
but objects and thoughts
were unfinished somehow,
rough drafts.
~Zagajewski
Interesting … our lives are rough drafts. In school we are always asking students to polish their work … necessarily so … and yet in life, we don’t get that opportunity very often. Instead … we live in the ordinary, the typical daily events of life … and once done … it’s done without the chance, the opportunity to edit, re-do, or polish … we are rough drafts. With that in mind, we need to recognize God in the ordinariness of life … because otherwise we will miss him … there is little opportunity to edit, re-do, or polish … to add him back in … once done, the moment is gone.
We can bring religion more closely in tune with ordinary life by immersing ourselves in formal rituals and traditional teachings; but we can also serve religion’s soul by discovering the “natural religion” in all things. The route to this discovery is art, both the fine arts and those of everyday life. If we could loosen our grip on the functionality of life and let ourselves be arrested by the imaginal richness that surrounds all objects, natural and human-made, we might ground our secular attitudes in a religious sensibility and give ordinary life soul. ~Thomas Moore
Lord! Give me courage and love to open the door and constrain You to enter, whatever the disguise You come in, even before I fully recognize my guest. Come in! Enter my small life! Lay Your sacred hands on all the common things and small interests of that life and bless and change them. Transfigure my small resources, make them sacred. And in them give me your very self. Amen ~Evelyn Underhill
