- Photo by jameschew, via Flickr
Anne Rice once wrote that Christians are either Christmas Christians or Easter Christians. In other words, they find their faith centered around Incarnation and gift, or around suffering and redemption.
But I realized something on Christmas Eve, in between the annual welling of tears during Adeste Fidelis and nursing a baby in the sacristy throughout the Liturgy of the Word. She’s not entirely right; she missed a category. I am an ordinary time Christian.
I love both Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. These central events of Christianity are packed with profound beauty and insight. I know the themes and connection points backward and forward. I tear up whenever I write about them, awestruck by the beauty of what I’m putting into words. But the reality is that on the days themselves, I hardly ever feel the profundity and the awe.
The high feast days can’t hold the weight of the expectations placed upon them. They’re supposed to be idyllic family times, lots of anticipation and the thrill of gifts (at Christmas) and egg hunts and candy (at Easter). On top of that, they’re supposed to move us to renewal of spiritual commitment.
But no one day can do all that–at least, not for me. Maybe occasionally, maybe by chance, maybe for a moment. Perhaps this is because I’m a choir director, and my job on those occasions is to be on top of the minutiae: making sure everyone starts and stays together, making sure the sound is properly balanced and adjusting microphone placement and levels if it isn’t, communicating corrections to members, making sure we lengthen or curtail the music to fit the ritual at hand. If I was sitting in a pew, or even following someone else’s lead, I wouldn’t have so much of my mind occupied by busy work, and perhaps I’d be a bit more present to the moment.
For me, faith and renewal belong to prosaic times. Faith ignites and inspires when glimpses of the divine pop up within the boring routine of daily life–sometimes in a church building, but more often outside it, when what I hear on Sundays and high feasts illuminates my humdrum everyday. My “yay God” moments come on ordinary days, during ordinary tasks involving ordinary externals. Spiritual insight flames most clearly when the profound truths we celebrate on Christmas and Easter come together to show me something about an unremarkable Tuesday morning, something I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
And it occurs to me that this is “right and just,” to quote the new translation. Because we don’t live in the high seasons–we live in an ordinary world, and if faith is to have any chance of changing us, and through us, the world, it has to live there too. It has to surround our ordinary moments, whisper holiness into them, fill them up with purpose and meaning. More importantly, it has to direct our actions and thoughts–not just on Sunday, but every day. It has to become who we are, inseparable from what we think and do.
I am an Ordinary Time Christian. No longer will I feel inadequate or deprived when the high feasts don’t live up to the spiritual expectations placed upon them. Because God is everywhere at all times, and I will seek him where he is to be found.
Shared with Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday at Michellederusha.com
Kathleen M. Basi 
Every word of this is so true! I love your insight and the way you write it. To “whisper holiness into” the ordinary moments … is really lovely. Thanks, Kathleen! Hope you’re enjoying some holiday rest and cuddles with baby Michael. 🙂
hmm, I thought I commented, but don’t see it here! I guess my phone was going off-line or something. 🙂 But I am so with you here! I mean, sure, I love Christmas and Easter and all those times. But much like God is found in the quiet whisper of the wind…spiritual growth is often accomplished in the ordinary. Thanks for this post!
This is so true, and mirrors a general life truth as well: that we live in the spaces between the big events, not in the highly anticipated events themselves. As for the church connotation, ours calls those who only live for the high seasons CEOs (Christmas and Easter Onlys). It’s a snotty term, but applies. 😉 The major holidays (religious or otherwise) can rarely live up! (Says the woman who’s battled flu for two weeks…)
I agree – I like ordinary. If the holy days live up to expectations, I’ll take it but if they don’t, I can always look forward to the everyday.
What a superb post. Thanks for eloquently describing what is true for so many.
I have posted it in full on my blog with links to you,; hope this is OK.
Blessings
I’m glad it spoke to you!
Me, too, Kathleen, me, too. I don’t do well with the expectations and anticipation associated with the High Feasts. I love how you focus in on the sacred in the mundane here. He is definitely there, too.