Attending to the Ordinary

We find ourselves in the part of the church calendar called “Ordinary time,” that long stretch between Pentecost and Advent. It is fitting that this season takes up more than half of the year, because “the ordinary” is where most of us spend most of our lives, rather than on the heights of Christmas or Easter or in the concentrated spiritual practices of Advent and Lent.

“Ordinary” can mean just “the usual,” those parts of life that don’t appear to have a plot; but it can also carry negative vibes of “inferior” or “boring.” However, it would be a mistake to let those pejorative connotations prevent us from embracing the opportunity for training in faithfulness that the ordinary provides.

If I get disenchanted with the ordinary, if I wonder how I can maintain faithfulness amidst the humdrum, it is heartening to remind myself that God is faithful to us in the ordinary. In the monochromatic spells where we receive no grand revelations and experience no spiritual ecstasies, Scripture assures us that God is always following us with his goodness and mercy, fulfilling his covenant promises. One of the beautiful pictures Scripture uses to express this truth is the language of attention: over and over we are told that God turns his face towards us. What a marvelous image: it is a picture of God giving attention to us!

Simone Weil wrote that “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”* Generosity is about giving. God’s unspeakably generous act of freely giving of himself in giving us his attention is one way that he shows his faithfulness to us. Since our faithfulness is a response to his faithfulness, how and to what I give my attention is an exercise in faithfulness.

This of course applies to giving my attention “directly” to God in the exercises of prayer, engagement with Scripture, and listening. God is always giving us his attention: we respond by giving him our attention, and find that we come face to face with him. But it also applies to giving my attention in other modes in which God reveals himself: for instance, through Creation, and through other people. Think of the “ordinary” beauties of Creation: from the flicker of July fireflies to the heartbreaking beauty of Venus in the evening sky; from the gratuitous adornment of wildflowers along a roadside to the song of a bird; from the rich feel of garden dirt between my fingers to the smell of fresh sawdust. God speaks to me, he gives me his attention, through these blessings; and when instead of ignoring them or taking them for granted I give my attention to them, and through them to my Creator, I find that I come face to face with him.

 One of the most extravagant, and sometimes costly, gifts we can give to another person is our attention. God comes to us through other people, especially people in need, as in Matthew 25; when in the midst of incessant distractions and screens we give them our full attention, this act of generous giving is a deep expression of faithfulness to their Creator. God is giving me his attention in the face of another person; when I respond by giving them my attention, I come face to face with him.

Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body, and that if the eye is healthy, the whole body will be full of light. He seems to be saying that how I see, how I look at the world — in short, how I give my attention — has powerful implications for the kind of person I am. I am tempted to run around distracted by my phone or by the multitude of different projects and ideas ricocheting around in my head. The practice of  getting out of my own head, ignoring the screen, and giving freely of my attention to God in his Creation, in his Word, and in the faces of those around me is for me a vital way of staying faithful in the ordinary — 

  — and in the process discovering that the ordinary is not so ordinary after all.