Do you always get caught up in “the next big thing”? I know I do. The danger for me is that while I am always on the lookout for whatever that “next big thing” might be, I often overlook the wonders I have before me every day in the here and now. In fact, when I pause to think deeply about the life I have been given, waves of guilt wash over me in the face of the suffering of so many others all over the world. Although even she suffered from debilitating depression before her untimely death at 47 in 1995, the New Hampshire poet Jane Kenyon recognized the gifts of the ordinary in her poem “Otherwise”:
“I got out of bedon two strong legs.It might have beenotherwise. I atecereal, sweetmilk, ripe, flawlesspeach. It mighthave been otherwise.I took the dog uphillto the birch wood.All morning I didthe work I love. At noon I lay downwith my mate. It mighthave been otherwise.We ate dinner togetherat a table with silvercandlesticks. It mighthave been otherwise.I slept in a bedin a room with paintingson the walls, andplanned another dayjust like this day.But one day, I know,it will be otherwise.”
Yep, it might have been otherwise for each of us had we been born in Mogadishu or Khartoum or Basra. Carrie Newcomer, Quaker singer and songwriter, believes that the everydayness of our lives, times that we could take for boredom, yet what might be yearned for by someone on the other side of the globe, should be considered as holy experiences. In “Holy As a Day Is Spent,” she wrote:
“Holy is the dish and drainThe soap and sink, the cup and plateAnd the warm wool socks, and the cold white tileShowerheads and good dry towelsAnd frying eggs sound like psalmsWith a bit of salt measured in my palmIt’s all a part of a sacramentAs holy as a day is spent Holy is a familiar room and the quiet moments in the afternoonAnd folding sheets like folding handsTo pray as only laundry canI’m letting go of all I fearLike autumn leaves of earth and airFor summer came and summer wentAs holy as a day is spent Holy is the place I standTo give whatever small good I canThe empty page, the open bookRedemption everywhere I lookUnknowingly we slow our paceIn the shade of unexpected graceWith grateful smiles and sad lamentAs holy as a day is spent”
And so, I live out my days, in the classroom teaching students, in my University office, chatting amiably with students and my colleagues, and in my home with my family, each moment of quiet and calm elevated to a holy experience, the everydayness of my life, not taken for granted, but cherished and even sacred.
Column by Duane Bolin, professor of history