Ordinary time mercies...

Ordinary time... Life at the farm hangs suspended between winter and spring. The last brutal blast of snow, ice and wind shriveled my soul. Now the warmth has turned the icy soil to quicksand mush and carpenter bees hum around the leaning barn’s door. Next week it will be cold again, perhaps, and the cycle will repeat itself... frozen dirt to mushy dirt, harsh winds to soft breezes, barn cats burrowed in the hay bales to barn cats lazing in the sun on the tin roof... I get lost in the swinging doors of seasonal changes. I cannot find my balance. Ordinary time is anything but ordinary.
Carolyn and I were having a conversation Sunday night as our Homecoming group gathered. We both live with cyclical depression that is triggered by seasonal changes or stress. Over the years, we have learned to mark the changes that begin and end our times of hibernation of the soul. The end of winter is one such time for us both. Carolyn comes home from work, takes her supper, a glass of wine and a book to bed where she eats, drinks, reads and sleeps. In the evenings, I sit in a slight stupor (Michael would say not slight at all), read the paper, watch a little television perhaps, take a long hot bath and stumble off to bed to sleep dreamless until morning. Like Job, we live in a land where light is as darkness.
Ordinary time on the church calendar and ordinary time on our daily calendars... No holidays of note and no time off for good behavior, just getting up in the dark and coming home in the dark with faint glimmers of light around the edges of morning. What has God got to do with it, got to do with it? In this grey in-between time where darkness has not yet lifted and light not yet come, where is God? In this time of frozen cold and sweet thawing warmth, where is a God you can sit and rest awhile in? Lent is coming with all the heavy weight of darkness and death. I need some life and light and laughter.
Yesterday standing in soggy screenings at a horse stable watching a beautiful black Friesian horse, I caught a glimpse of God in that perfect creation. And I have an image now for ordinary time. Our feet are caught in the miry clay while our eyes are fixed on God. We pay bills, run car pools, cook meals, go to work and live with our feet on the ground, mushy or frozen. But, our hearts are yearning for that which lifts us up to higher ground. So God comes to us in the unexpected to interrupt our schedule of sameness... a funny dream, a joke well told, a baby’s smile, a beautiful horse, a breathtaking sunrise, a celebration of a life well lived. And for a moment, ordinary time is transformed into extraordinary time. We catch our breath in awe and adoration and we are transformed into beings of loving praise, once again standing on the solid ground of God's presence in our world and in us.
Our church group is getting ready for a Fat Tuesday party. We will make doughnuts from David’s childhood church recipe book. We will make Polish jelly filled doughnuts just like Sandra used to buy in Detroit. We will laugh and eat and the lights will be bright in the evening before Ash Wednesday. Life will swing once again from one extreme to another but God will be there both in the light and in the darkness. Carolyn and I know that. We rest in the solid assurance of God With Us because we have seen the Light and we remember. “We declare the wonderful deeds of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once we were no people but now we are God’s people; once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy.” The mercies of ordinary time... Thanks be to God.