Finding Meaning in the Ordinary: A Spiritual Embrace of the Routine

Here are some ordinary tasks of life that you may enjoy, may moderately enjoy, may moderately dislike, or may find much too mundane. 

·         Getting gas for your car

·         Buying groceries

·         Attending church with the same people every week

·         Giving your pet dog a bath

·         Washing your car by hand or going through the drive through

·         Cutting the grass, trimming the hedges

·         Ironing clothes in preparation for work

·         Doing the laundry and washing dishes

·         Checking your email

·         Monitoring your finances online

·         Making a visit to someone who may or may not respect your time

·         Doing homework

·         Going for a six month dental cleaning

·         Moving the clock back one hour or ahead during “time change”

·         Working at the same job with the same people

Life can be so ordinary.  It’s sometimes tempting to look for the more glitzy and exciting parts of life instead of embracing the routine.  What if the State Fair or Coastal Carolina Fair happened every weekend of the year?  It would probably lose its special fanfare with the citizens.   Having the State Fair once a year for two weeks in the fall makes it distinctive.  Sometimes finding meaning in the mundane takes work.  For me it’s part of being human, and so is the work of maintaining my body, my car, my house appliances, and my soul. 

Moving into the ordinary tasks of life can be meaningful even if their completion is not very glamorous.  Tending to one’s soul is connected to the routine parts of life like shaving, bathing, exercising, sleeping, and eating.  In our routines we accept the world as it is and not as we wish it would be.  We embrace the basic, the simple, the routines as God’s world and our work.  We need the ordinary and we need the special.  Embracing both the distinctive and routine will let us fully accept our human condition, its struggle, and its demand to do the sometimes hard tasks of life.  For students that means studying and writing research papers on difficult topics which is never easy.  Yet, in the routine and mundane and daily tasks we accept our true humanity. 

The birds of air teach us so much.  I am amazed at how birds build a nest, one stick and one piece of weed at a time and one step at a time.  It’s the way of the animal world.  It’s our way too.  One task and one step we move closer to knowing ourselves and God our Creator.   Self-awareness and connection to God are both mundane and profound and probably ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.   Let us ponder the routine and ordinary and in them find our life.  Amen.