Ordinary

Yesterday was Pentecost. Pentecost is a day of flame and wind. Pentecost is not a day for doubt.

Pentecost is red: the paraments hang, bold and sure. The rush of the Spirit has chapped our cheeks, and we, drunk off fifty days of resurrection, have developed a bit of a swagger.

Spiritually speaking.

Today is the first day of Ordinary Time. Ordinary time follows the high holy times. It is the first of a string of days, weeks, and months of the mundane tasks that build a life. I love Ordinary Time. It is love, walking. It is hope, planted and growing.

Ordinary Time is green: it is time to see what the harvest brings. There is a small heirloom seed company in the town where I live. It is populated by uproarious and activist planters. I read their seed catalog like a magazine. Last weekend I went in to buy sweet potato slips and bush bean seeds. As I was leaving, the wire-haired man who had been chatting about live-catching groundhogs for his neighbor to eat, paused to tell me about how he starts every single plant in flats and transplants them. It saves seed because you never have to thin out your seedlings.

I thanked him and asked him a few questions to be polite. I direct seed everything. I have human seedlings to care for.

I admit it, I got caught up in the camaraderie of the moment. I grinned and said:

"I think planting seeds is the most recklessly hopeful thing a person can do."

They cheered.

There was a planter who threw his seeds everywhere. Recklessly. Joyfully. Abundantly. The Pentecost Planter!

And now comes the mulching and the watering and the weeding. The Ordinary mundane tasks stringing together into an abundant, profusion of growth. Pentecost sprouts and fruits during the long, slow, hot days of Ordinary Time. Nothing sexy here. Just daily living: toward hope.

Ordinary Time. Ordinary Life. Tendrils of love and dirty knees. 

And broccoli growing under the rogue pumpkin that self-seeded from the compost.