Prayer and Deepest Sympathy

Prayer 

What is Ordinary??

As the Church’s Liturgical calendar returns to Ordinary Time, it is a time to consider what is in fact “ordinary”. Through the “ordinary” people can experience quite literally the extraordinary. This may often be through the sacred, or moving beauty, wonder, pain and the whole myriad of what it is to be human. In the “ordinary” everyday, Christians experience the great creator spirit, the presence of God being revealed through all creation. Today is World Environment Day, on this day we remember the glory of all living and nonliving things which also may be envisaged as ‘the ordinary” which as we know the environment is far from “ordinary!!”

Each day, there is an opportunity to stop and become truly aware. A time to be conscious of what might be experienced in the “ordinariness” of the coming day. The following poem “A Morning Offering” by John O’Donohue, speaks of the “ordinary” in each morn and what the approaching day might offer. 

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Waves of desire I am shore to

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

 O’Donohue, J (2007) Benedictus: A Book of Blessings Bantam Press: London