Table Scraps: Everyday Mystery

This morning it was a few degrees below zero in Indianapolis. We are supposed to hit fifty on Saturday.

Freeze. Thaw. Snow. Rain. Winter. Spring. Lent. Easter. Death. Resurrection.

We find ourselves caught up in and moving toward interesting rhythms this time of year, don’t we? Of course, most of our focus tends to be on the daily stuff, the little things that dominate our days. It can be challenging to lift or deepen our focus a bit and see the bigger, even cosmic, rhythms that throb like imperceptible bass lines beneath the quotidian.

Oops. How did that archaic word slip in? Quotidian? Dictionaries say that the word means “occurring every day” or “commonplace” or “ordinary.” Author and poet Kathleen Norris connects this word with another old one, “mystic,” behind which is another word that’s often absent from contemporary vocabulary, “mystery.”

Perhaps our most valuable mystics are those of the quotidian....They search for God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people, and duties that can submerge the self.
Norris enlists Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that feisty founder of an illegal seminary in Nazi Germany, to draw our attention to the profound reality lurking in, with and under the everyday stuff of our lives.

We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for the daily gifts….How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?
The ancient voice of the prophet Isaiah also echoes through the centuries to chime in on God’s behalf: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Sometimes the details of the day are just that, details of the day. But most often, just beneath their surface a deeper reality moves, waiting to spring forth and use drudgery, demands and details to connect us to each other and to the cosmic rhythms of sustaining, life-giving grace.

Let those who have eyes to see, see!