Ordinary is very pervasive, but I like a God who dwells there - a God who inhabits ordinary people, ordinary places and ordinary situations...even boardwalks
'Now there's a loss that can never be replaced,
A destination that can never be reached,
A light you'll never find in another's face,
A sea whose distance cannot be breached
Well Jesus kissed his mother's hands
Whispered, "Mother, still your tears,
For remember the soul of the universe
Willed a world and it appeared.'
(Bruce Springsteen)
17 comments:
and maybe what we believe is ordinary, is not ordinary at all...."for My ways are not your ways, and My thoughts are not your thoughts".
maybe what we believe to be ordinary is something actually extraordinary.....think of a human cell... or a human body for that matter.
exactly....
...and 'special' times wouldn't be so if they happened all too frequently
yes. the thing you said a few posts ago about seeing the 'feeding 5000' miracle in terms of one young boy's imagination and generosity ebing an inspiration to a large crowd. these things ARE miracles, whatever way you look at them. i know people who believe that humanity is, at heart, no good or even 'evil' and yet there are these unexplained miraculous acts of human kindness that seem to point us towards hope.
feeling grateful to have met you paul!
rabbi lionel blue is rightly always banging on about how he thinks the greatest miracle is generosity - kindness even - he says this;
'i have met many 'religious' people in the course of my life. a very few were genuine saints, quite a few were phony, and most, including me, were a mixture of both. how do i distinguish the true from the false? ideology isn't much use for such a basic question. the only testimonial i looked for was generosity'
i guess that is at the heart of those miraculous acts of human kindness you mention
I am so glad that God does indeed dwell in the ordinary...there is hope afterall.
i am thankful for that - even by a boardwalk on the jersey shore....
You walked passed Gauchos??? Do tell.
was in town for a meeting...just happened to walk past - those Argentinean steaks!
So cool.
glad you liked it - it's kind of an institution (some even say the best steaks outside the states...
He is there.....how we live without KNOWING that....
I love Springsteen's words.
Your post automatically lead my thoughts down another lyrical path...
"Ordinary life, be my rock in times of trouble
Get me back on the earth
Put my feet on the ground"
a hymn to the silence.......I like a God who dwells there too, and who allows us moments of appreciation when ordinary finds us.
With apologies for the non-inclusive language, here's a bit from GM Hopkins (d. 1889), apropos I think:
...the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
ChrÃst— for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
We used to live two blocks from where Springsteen hung out as a kid in Asbury Park. I heard he was rehearsing one night from a friend and I said to my husband..."oh let's go, maybe he'll let us hang out and watch" and he was like "nah, they're not gonna let people in." read in the paper the next day that they let in a bunch of people just to hang out with the band and watch...I coulda killed him. I'm a Jersey Girl...Springsteen is just under my skin. You made me miss the boardwalk.
'Ordinary is very pervasive, but I like a God who dwells there - a God who inhabits ordinary people, ordinary places and ordinary situations...'
I love that God doesn;t just love the ordinary but he practically bursts at the seams with love for the less than ordinary, the broken the hopeless, the outcast the mentally ill ect the nobody at all by societies standards.
I love that God loves the least it gives me such a buzz... coz it's the very opposite of the way everyone thinks it should be. The last are first in Gods eyes even if it doesn't work this way in church!
Is there such thing as the ordinary though? Can one sit down and define the ordinary, in all its ordinary glory? If ordinary is interspersed with special then perhaps special is interspersed with ordinary. Why indeed should we have to decide?
Hope you are well there....
:) Just stopping by....
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