Monday, January 13 — Ordinary Time
At Lansing Reilly we took down 3 Christmas trees and two creches yesterday. The house looks leaner after two-plus weeks of the Christmas season. The Christian calendar calls today the first day of the first week of “Ordinary Time.” I like that expression, “Ordinary.” In the liturgical calendar this begins 34 weeks of time not made special by the music and bright colors of Christmas, nor by the somber gravity of Lent and the springtime relief of Easter. Just ordinary, like most of the human condition, like people’s cars driving through the pre-dawn dark to park and head in for work, maybe relieved that it is not – 11º (- 33º wind chill like last week). When I took a minute to watch from Lansing-Reilly, campus security took a shift change at the McNichols gate, Ordinary.
Yesterday in the McNichols Library was more than ordinary; UDM joined Broadside Press to remember the 100th birthday of one of the university’s most compelling citizens, the poet Dudley Randall (founder of Broadside Press one of the great poetry publishing houses in the US). In 2001 our library was designated a National Literary Landmark because of the years Mr. Randall worked there as a librarian, and helped uncounted numbers of students to find a voice, and to write and perform poetry. Our library was the 48th site so designated. Dudley Randall took his place with Faulkner, Robert Frost, and a host of other icons of the U.S. landscape of literature. We continue to hold the Dudley Randall poetry prize competition long after Dudley no longer lives to judge each year’s poems. Three former UD/UDM students read their poetry and Dr Gloria House read five of Dudley’s poems. I was not the only one in the crowded Bargman Room moved to stillness by the flint-hard immediacy of the poetry we heard there. Perhaps we can arrange to post those poems in this list during February’s Black History Month.
Ordinary time begins with the Gospel of Mark’s 1st chapter, Jesus appearing in Galilee “proclaiming good news.” Like a Zen master, Jesus says the gate into good news is repenting. What might that mean? Here’s a poem that takes a crack at answering.
“Repent and believe the good news.”
Is our main repenting, perhaps, made of believing good news,
that there is news,
something new,
and it is good?
That what we already know is not all there is,
that we must approach the presence of God knowing we will be surprised,
committed to being surprised
and so to living in a surprise-able way?
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An ordinary work day. Blessings.
john st sj