This is what I call my early day: the dear ordinary. Nothing is tugging at me in my cabin mornings. I drink of the nectar of the day. Sit still in the awaiting. The awaiting of what comes. The “before,” prior to the naming of things. It’s anterior, brazen . . . this that comes forward and finds me. Yet not presumptuous. This is a response, intimate with longing for what comes before my invitation. The call.
The dear ordinary is polite. And patient.
It is what is there before I welcome anything at all—modest, unassuming, and exceptional—the astonishing made ordinary. It is the atmosphere of my longing, the ether, the timber, the feel of presence.
Being simple. The dear ordinary come out of complexity. The sun’s rise and the light years before the dawn.
I lose my memory, or better said my “tracking” of it. It is not stalking me. There is nothing there, before the day begins. No antecedents, no precedents, no standards, no practice.
And out of the ordinary, the astonishing quietly comes forward. There’s a murmur, a hum, a crooning. And I begin to rock.
Wow, that is so profound and poetic. This of course, encapsulates one of the big (and many) breakthroughs that came to me from ACOL. The patience, release of the striving, fasting from want, and response. It’s not passive at all, not being present and distracting ourselves by indulging in our stressful thinking is actually passive (even if we are physically very active while doing it). “and I begin to rock.” What a cool line….
What a good word . . . serenity. Thank you, Ben.
Contemplating your early morning observations drew me back to memories of a weeklong retreat in a Benedictine Abbey on the Isle of Wight, some 30 years ago…
the serenity of it. Thank you.
Incredibly beautiful, no words to express this beauty !
So true! But we can try anyway . . .
When things are falling apart; dear friends suffering; chaos reigning in new ways but driven by age old appetites, then we all crave the ‘dear ordinary.” And sometimes we despair that anything will ever again be ordinary. But we trust the dear ordinary is out there and today perhaps it will peek through the storm clouds and give us hope.
Bob, So good to hear from you. I hear you. Mornings, for me, are free of what the day brings, and the weeks hold, and the years retain. They are my starting fresh. And then… later, the world catches my attention again, and that feels right too. I offer comfort and friends offer their wise tears, and life moves again between the harsh and the gentle and back again. And yes . . . offer hope.
Thank you!