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Team Rector Writes for Junr

“Heaven in Ordinary”

Dear Friends,

The month of June sees the Church emerging from the long seasons of Lent and Easter into the even longer Trinity season, which stretches through the summer into the autumn. Some churches call this ‘Ordinary Time’, and indeed, that’s the heading on the green covered booklets that we use for Common Worship Holy Communion Services during this period.

In our anxious and uncertain war-torn world, most of us are probably yearning for a touch of the ordinary right now. After all, ordinary is the norm for much of our everyday lives, isn’t it?  Life is not one endless festival, but rather a rhythm of ordinary daily routines which are punctuated by special times – celebrations which mark a significant moment, or maybe the experience of a special holiday. And without ordinary, we would not really appreciate the special and the extraordinary. The Church’s year reflects this, as Ordinary is normal for much of the time.

George Herbert, the seventeenth-century priest-poet, wrote a poem called Prayer, in which he used the delightful phrase ‘heaven in ordinary’. As we enter these weeks of Ordinary Time, may we encounter God’s presence in the ordinary, or as Herbert puts it in his poem ‘Heaven in ordinary .. something understood.’

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

George Herbert (1593-1633)

Every Blessing,