Time is Ordinary?

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that peace.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

The struggles continue.
They sharpen our emotions, heighten our sensitivity, challenge our minds.
Thank you for the spirit’s guidance to deal with the struggles.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Give me a home where the buffalo roam…”

[No, I imagine not.]

D. Blog: Ordinary Time

In the church year, we are in a period called “ordinary time.” I object to that nomenclature. Every moment of time is filled with the extraordinary. I understand that the folks who came up with that term had in mind the sense of “ordinal time,” meaning the numbering of weeks of the period between Pentecost and Advent.

However, I believe the name now confuses most people. My own pastor, a learned and thoughtful and insightful person, spoke about honoring the ordinary moments of life during this Christian season of the year. This is fine. I agree with the importance of doing this as we go through the years of our lives. It gets us away from thinking this period is a common and insignificant part of the church year. But according to those who established the terminology, that is not what was meant.

I propose that if we want the season to represent ordinal time, we should call it that. Or, since many people will still have difficulty understanding why we use that term and simply number the weeks between the major church festivals, my real preference would be to add “extraordinary” to the name of the church season. Thus, we live in “ordinary-extraordinary time.” It’s true. Life in ordinary time has honor, but when we have eyes to see, all life is extraordinary.