The time probably seems anything but ordinary. Summer—not that we would know it by the weather—is coming to an end and with that is the beginning of what is often the busiest season of the year. School is back in session, vacations are over, and even for those of us who haven’t set foot in a classroom in years, something feels different.

The church calendar is something of a holy relic, a gift handed down to us. Rooted in the Jewish worship tradition, the calendar tells the story of God’s redemptive acts throughout history. The historical Jewish way of remembering God’s redemptive work revolved around a series of yearly pilgrimages and festivals prescribed by Torah, along with a weekly practice of the Sabbath--an observation so important that God included it in the ten commandments. Recognizing that this pattern of remembrance is actually God’s idea for us, we in turn learn to live in such a way that the calendar continues to order our lives now.

It’s this ancient way of ordering our world that has us, in part, writing this newsletter now. We want a place where we can explore the church calendar together, where we can read and pray and listen to God to learn what we might derive from changing the way we understand time. There will be more information in these quarterly newsletters—upcoming events, new staff, ways to get involved, prayer services that mark the change of each season —but our focus will be on how we might live into the season we find ourselves in.

At the moment, we are in the longest season of the church calendar--Ordinary Time. “Ordinary” comes from the Old French and the Latin, and it shares a root—ord—with “order.” It describes what is usual or a matter of course, what in life feels the same, day in and day out. Ordinary time, then, is often defined by what it is not. It isn’t the cozy excitement of Advent, isn’t the verdant growth of Easter, isn’t even the strange waiting of Pentecost. It’s just...ordinary, regular, common. But that’s also why it is so important - it focuses our attention on how we live as a church in the day to day.  It causes us to look deeply into our real, ordinary lives.

“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of time, because the days are evil.” This is how Paul says it to the Ephesians. Even during Ordinary Time, there is much for us to see and learn. There is a purpose for it, a motivation to it, a reason for it. It is easier to use our time unwisely precisely because our days are so ordinary—and therein lies the evil. We aren’t fighting primarily against some kind of external force. We are fighting ourselves, our own inertia. The admonition to “Be careful then how you live” has to do both with what we do and what we do not do; how we live in what French priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade called “The sacrament of the present moment.” One of the ways that we do this is in managing our Ordinary Time within our communities, and building a regular weekly rhythm in which we make time for God, worship, and daily prayer. In looking at our time, too, we live in a presence that notices the ways we move away from God and the ways we make room for God. We notice without rushing, pay attention without being busy. We give up our need to rush from moment to moment in this long season.

This isn’t necessarily a call to a sort of carpe diem, every-moment-is-precious kind of life. There is room for that, but there is also room for a Tuesday night at home watching House Hunters or a Saturday afternoon at the ballpark or “bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, irregular verbs to learn,” as W.H. Auden would remind us. What we remember in Ordinary Time is that our attention belongs here, and now. We aren’t called to live in the past in regret, nor do we need to dwell in the future in anxiety. Soon enough, Advent will be here, with its attendant busy-ness and chaos. We will get there. In the meantime, enjoy what is here. Be careful how you live. Pray for wisdom. Think about adopting an Ordinary Time practice—perhaps reading a Proverb a day, or spending ten minutes each morning in prayer (or silence), or asking a question around the dinner table about where your family saw God in their day. It’s a season to consider the importance of the ordinary.