Stanley Hauerwas, the American theologian, said that God “takes time for the trivial.” And yet most of the messages we receive today suggest that ordinary life, with its predictable routines, and not-so-dramatic activities, demonstrate that our life has lost its direction. Exciting comparisons are held up in advertising, film and the media, which the mind likes to use to convince us that there is something lacking in our life, that we are somehow not doing “well enough”. This can give rise to a feeling within us that without some diversion and drama the ordinary can weigh us down, and we need to continually be on the look out – normally somewhere else – for a life with more passion, greater creativity, and celebration. The trivial is not where we expect to find God or anything miraculous. So we have a tendency to get it out-of-the-way as quickly as we can in order to make time for our “real” life. However, we often hear from people who have had an enforced period away from their normal life – for example, hostages who have come back home from their ordeal, or a prisoner released from prison after a wrongful conviction, or someone recovering from an illness – that they look forward to simply sitting in their garden, or walking the dog, or having a cup of tea or coffee in the kitchen. For them, because it was taken away from them, the possibility to do simple daily things is the ultimate treasure. It shows us that the attitude we take, and the story we tell ourselves about, say, peeling the vegetables or doing grocery shopping, is the key towards finding a happiness hidden not only in special moments.
Category: Be fully present
Walking by
I think it pisses God off
if you walk by the color purple in a field
and don’t notice it.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Sometimes we can get caught up in the rush of every day or the familiarity of our routines. We can fail to notice the beauty in ordinary experience. When we travel or are starting something new, we are struck by the experiences, noticing, for example, the energy and the qualities of people or the way they do things differently. Everything registers in a heightened way. In these moments things seems more real, more alive. The brain cannot always function like that, so it creates schemas to allow it quickly locate everyday experiences into familiar categories – cars, buses, flowers, trees and so on. So in order to really see we have to go against an established habit. We have to slow down in order to really notice; focus in order to really attend. Today let us try to look at one or two things we encounter as if for the first time: Open our eyes, pause, wonder, notice the details, celebrate life.
Living your life in tune with all of life
To me this would be the best way to live — to situate yourself within your life in such a way as to feel that your own life was unfolding with the pattern of all of life. I suppose this might seem megalomaniacal, but I see it as quite humble. My life isn’t mine, it is just life living itself through me. I think, if you lived your life like that, then a lot of what bothers you wouldn’t bother you any more, and a lot of things that don’t bother you now would seem very important, very personal.
Norman Fischer
Making every thing new, each day
A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterson
Becoming one who sees
Despite the incredibly warm weather, the berries have appeared on the bushes in the garden. They reminded me of this quote, and its encouragement to see into the heart of things, happening in each moment of the day. Sometimes we are just to preoccupied and hurried to notice. We let life – and heaven – pass by, unnoticed.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
Noticing what we see
Another English writer to help us, maybe not as literary as Wordsworth, but just as insightful.
“Holmes you see everything!” Watson exclaimed.
“I see no more than you,
but I have trained myself to notice what I see“, said Holmes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
