When I think about it- most all things that I am surrounded by are ordinary but so very extroidinary. My home, my animals, the trees that surround our farm, the creek that runs through our property…all so ordinary…but they take my breath away…My husband and the love we share…very ordinary…but my where would I be without that love. What a beautiful question.
I had the opportunity to visit this amazing place in Ireland. It is an amazing extraordinary place:
Newgrange Monument (built 5000 yrs ago) is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the rising sun at the Winter Solstice. Above the entrance to the passage of the mound there is a opening called a roof-box. On mornings around the winter solstice a beam of light penetrates the roof-box and travels up the 19m (62ft) passage and into the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens so that the whole chamber is dramatically illuminated.
How wonderful! I just read about Newgrange recently in doing a bit of research on labyrinths and Celtic traditions at the Winter Solstice. (Much of my heritage is Celtic.)
In the world of things made by humans, I marvel at the millions of steps and all the labor it requires for me to benefit from so many things. Coffee! Light bulbs! Hot water! Indoor plumbing! Lately my husband and I have been watching the British show “Inside the Factory,” which take sus through big manufacturing processes for various food items, and it’s fascinating (and at the same time hard to watch for the impact on the planet of some of the things we take for granted–mature trees in Brazil being cut down so we can have toilet paper when it could be made of much faster growing plants like bamboo).
In the natural world, so much beauty, such intricacy, so many structures working perfectly from the nano scale to the ginormous. The cedars and other evergreens outside my window are tossing in the wind right now, their limbs flexible rather than breakable at this relatively gentle wind speed. The tide is going out because the moon is exerting a gravitational pull on the earth. Light is growing on the water because a star 93 million miles away has a fusion heart and we’re in the “Goldilocks zone”, the perfect distance from that star for our form of life and all these others to emerge and survive. Two days ago I walked in the park, looking in particular at the mosses. I’m reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. So many shapes, colors, textures of all that green clinging to trees, logs, bushes, rocks, the ground.
It’s all amazing.
Describing her kindergarten teacher showing her class snowflakes under a magnifying glass, Kimmerer wrote: “The lens and the snowflake were an awakening, the beginning of seeing. It’s the time when I first had an inkling that the already gorgeous world becomes even more beautiful the closer you look.”
It’s easy to shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary when things are going well but very challenging when they are not. War is raging in so many locations on our planet bullets are flying and bombs are falling. In are own country there is a war of words that has led to an immense amount of violence with everything from threats to mass shootings and what many of us consider insurrection. This has become so ordinary and it is heartbreaking. For me, seeing the extraordinary nature of the ordinary is a matter of perspective. Doubt I’ve answered today’ s question but I do have a Christmas Wish that I wrote down in 2001 after the darkness of 9/11.
A Wish for Our Species
Be you Allah, or Yahweh
Or Jesus, the Christ
Give us grace for the journey
That leads to insight
To a world that will treat
Everyone just the same
So that no one kills others
while invoking your name
A wish for a peace
Where all have a voice
Where each soul can worship
And all can rejoice
For peace is a seed
That fear tries to kill
A seed all must plant
Down deep in their will
It says I’ll choose love
Each step of the way—
Every moment, every minute
Then becomes Christmas Day
Thank you Carol. This brought tears to my eyes. Can’t we just stop killing each other and live in peace. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
Ah, the details.
The fine lines.
The juxtaposition of light and dark.
The architecture of nature.
The improvisation of the dawn.
The small kindness.
The gentle acknowledgment.
All of these things, and so much more,
help me feel more content and settled.
Also, this change of focus, takes me out
of my head and puts me in the world.
And then comes the gratitude for this
place and this life. The fact that my needs
are met and I have the luxury of observing,
not only the world around me, but the
world within me.
I feel deeply loved. Just this morning pausing and telling my husband thank you for all of the hard work he does for our family. And after finishing work coming home to do some renovations. Then leaving work early to scramble and get away this weekend with the family. I’m in awe of all of the things that he does for this family. He is extraordinary.
I have lived my out of doors. From picking fruit and flowers to herding sheep in the mountains and valleys of Colorado and northern New Mexico. From tilling the ground, planting crops and irrigating to calving beef cows and gathering them in the fall from mountain pastures along with all the other cowboy chores in between. From the cutting of hay and putting it up to driving truck and tractor for potato harvest. All of this entails living with weather which many people seem to only endure or do battle with. Weather is ordinary, but to me it is the extraordinary. I embrace it. Without weather, our home this planet would be without all of its beauty and bounty. Destructive but oh so necessary to all life. Namaste.
Thank you for highlighting the weather, Joseph. I grew up in the country surrounded by wheat fields in rotation with other crops and I’m sure our neighbors felt like you about the weather, hoping for what they needed to have a good crop. I was attuned to the weather then not because we farmed (we didn’t) but because it guided whether I would go outside and play or stay inside and read. Then in school I hoped for the gleefully welcomed snow days. As an adult I’ve become so much more aware of weather since I began to bike for transportation in all kinds of weather. The number of people who are absolutely amazed that I’ll put on some rain gear and ride away…. Good grief, friends, I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West and I’m not going to melt if I get a little water on me. Some of these same people would think nothing of strapping on hip waders and standing in a cold mountain stream for hours casting a fly rod, or sticking their feet to boards and sliding down snowy mountains well protected by their insulated clothing, but to be outside for a utilitarian purpose? Extraordinary.
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When I think about it- most all things that I am surrounded by are ordinary but so very extroidinary. My home, my animals, the trees that surround our farm, the creek that runs through our property…all so ordinary…but they take my breath away…My husband and the love we share…very ordinary…but my where would I be without that love. What a beautiful question.
I had the opportunity to visit this amazing place in Ireland. It is an amazing extraordinary place:
Newgrange Monument (built 5000 yrs ago) is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the rising sun at the Winter Solstice. Above the entrance to the passage of the mound there is a opening called a roof-box. On mornings around the winter solstice a beam of light penetrates the roof-box and travels up the 19m (62ft) passage and into the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens so that the whole chamber is dramatically illuminated.
How wonderful! I just read about Newgrange recently in doing a bit of research on labyrinths and Celtic traditions at the Winter Solstice. (Much of my heritage is Celtic.)
Yes, mine is also : )
Only beauty 🙏✨🙏
That is the shift from the outer to the inner. From limited to limitless.
In the world of things made by humans, I marvel at the millions of steps and all the labor it requires for me to benefit from so many things. Coffee! Light bulbs! Hot water! Indoor plumbing! Lately my husband and I have been watching the British show “Inside the Factory,” which take sus through big manufacturing processes for various food items, and it’s fascinating (and at the same time hard to watch for the impact on the planet of some of the things we take for granted–mature trees in Brazil being cut down so we can have toilet paper when it could be made of much faster growing plants like bamboo).
In the natural world, so much beauty, such intricacy, so many structures working perfectly from the nano scale to the ginormous. The cedars and other evergreens outside my window are tossing in the wind right now, their limbs flexible rather than breakable at this relatively gentle wind speed. The tide is going out because the moon is exerting a gravitational pull on the earth. Light is growing on the water because a star 93 million miles away has a fusion heart and we’re in the “Goldilocks zone”, the perfect distance from that star for our form of life and all these others to emerge and survive. Two days ago I walked in the park, looking in particular at the mosses. I’m reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. So many shapes, colors, textures of all that green clinging to trees, logs, bushes, rocks, the ground.
It’s all amazing.
Describing her kindergarten teacher showing her class snowflakes under a magnifying glass, Kimmerer wrote: “The lens and the snowflake were an awakening, the beginning of seeing. It’s the time when I first had an inkling that the already gorgeous world becomes even more beautiful the closer you look.”
This is great. I am reading BRAIDING SWEETGRASS. It also brings out the fact to look closer and more beauty will emerge.
It’s easy to shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary when things are going well but very challenging when they are not. War is raging in so many locations on our planet bullets are flying and bombs are falling. In are own country there is a war of words that has led to an immense amount of violence with everything from threats to mass shootings and what many of us consider insurrection. This has become so ordinary and it is heartbreaking. For me, seeing the extraordinary nature of the ordinary is a matter of perspective. Doubt I’ve answered today’ s question but I do have a Christmas Wish that I wrote down in 2001 after the darkness of 9/11.
A Wish for Our Species
Be you Allah, or Yahweh
Or Jesus, the Christ
Give us grace for the journey
That leads to insight
To a world that will treat
Everyone just the same
So that no one kills others
while invoking your name
A wish for a peace
Where all have a voice
Where each soul can worship
And all can rejoice
For peace is a seed
That fear tries to kill
A seed all must plant
Down deep in their will
It says I’ll choose love
Each step of the way—
Every moment, every minute
Then becomes Christmas Day
Beautiful!
Yes Carol, give peace a chance.
Thank you, Carol for sharing these beautiful words…a prayer really…something we all need to say. Blessings to you.
Thank you Carol. This brought tears to my eyes. Can’t we just stop killing each other and live in peace. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
So profound, Carol. Your poem reminds me of “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman. Another moving message.
The white snowflakes falling down right now ! So lovely!
Ah, the details.
The fine lines.
The juxtaposition of light and dark.
The architecture of nature.
The improvisation of the dawn.
The small kindness.
The gentle acknowledgment.
All of these things, and so much more,
help me feel more content and settled.
Also, this change of focus, takes me out
of my head and puts me in the world.
And then comes the gratitude for this
place and this life. The fact that my needs
are met and I have the luxury of observing,
not only the world around me, but the
world within me.
Very beautiful, Charlie. Thank you!
Beautifully said, Charlie. You are a poet!
Simply beautiful, Charlie. “The improvisation of the dawn”–love that!
It brings me to the present and gives me awe!
The maturing beauty of my siblings as we age & evolve, with God’s grace enabling us to tackle & grow as a result of life’s challenges & joys.
I believe these are the words of Lynn Twist; “What you appreciate, appreciates.” That is what happens when I focus on the extraordinary ordinary.
Beautiful way of describing it.
I feel deeply loved. Just this morning pausing and telling my husband thank you for all of the hard work he does for our family. And after finishing work coming home to do some renovations. Then leaving work early to scramble and get away this weekend with the family. I’m in awe of all of the things that he does for this family. He is extraordinary.
I have lived my out of doors. From picking fruit and flowers to herding sheep in the mountains and valleys of Colorado and northern New Mexico. From tilling the ground, planting crops and irrigating to calving beef cows and gathering them in the fall from mountain pastures along with all the other cowboy chores in between. From the cutting of hay and putting it up to driving truck and tractor for potato harvest. All of this entails living with weather which many people seem to only endure or do battle with. Weather is ordinary, but to me it is the extraordinary. I embrace it. Without weather, our home this planet would be without all of its beauty and bounty. Destructive but oh so necessary to all life. Namaste.
So very true!
Thank you for highlighting the weather, Joseph. I grew up in the country surrounded by wheat fields in rotation with other crops and I’m sure our neighbors felt like you about the weather, hoping for what they needed to have a good crop. I was attuned to the weather then not because we farmed (we didn’t) but because it guided whether I would go outside and play or stay inside and read. Then in school I hoped for the gleefully welcomed snow days. As an adult I’ve become so much more aware of weather since I began to bike for transportation in all kinds of weather. The number of people who are absolutely amazed that I’ll put on some rain gear and ride away…. Good grief, friends, I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West and I’m not going to melt if I get a little water on me. Some of these same people would think nothing of strapping on hip waders and standing in a cold mountain stream for hours casting a fly rod, or sticking their feet to boards and sliding down snowy mountains well protected by their insulated clothing, but to be outside for a utilitarian purpose? Extraordinary.
I feel for those whose English is a 2nd language -> ‘extraordinary nature of the ordinary’ ugh, no thank you.
Awe…..with a mixture of true gratitude.