Praise the Ordinary

Banner: Knickerbocker 

Banners across the street from our apartment and leading to Lake Wingra celebrate winter. The Lake is  now frozen over but ice is not thick enough for walking. A few more cold days the ice will be thick enough for walking and one or two ice fishing shanties will return. 

A few days of bright sunshine has somewhat reduced the nearly ten inches of snow received the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Yet plenty covers my neighborhood reminding me of the long winters of my childhood when we hurdled in the farm house warmed by wood stoves in the kitchen and dining rooms. My mother fed wood into the stoves and just knew how to keep the embers alive during the night. On nights when temperatures dropped below zero, she got up and replenished the wood in each stove. My sibs and I slept upstairs. Every morning the downstairs kitchen was toasty warm as we pulled on hats, coats and boots, before leaving to do the farm chores. We then cleaned up and left for school.  

My older sisters and brothers recall trudging across the snow covered fields to Polandi, the one room school house, about two miles from our home. My sister Theresa, when in first grade, told me that she was  often carried back home by her older brother Joe because of the deep snow. I have no memories of such walks but do recall taking the car to Polandi when my older brother Tom learned how to drive when he was 14. This was before mandatory drivers licenses. He parked the car next to the building. A new teacher on her first day asked: "Who's car is parked outside?" and Tom proudly acknowledged that it was ours. 

        

Rev. Kelly AJ 

My family and I did not consider those winter days as being extraordinary, instead they were the ordinary experienced by us and our neighbors. The Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson's  November 30th pulpit message at our church (First Unitarian Society, FUS) entitled, `Every Common Bush Afire with God', reminds me to be grateful for the ordinariness of our daily lives and to be in "... awe of the small and common-place: a blade of grass, a honey bee, a single stone from the lakeshore."

Six years ago we called Rev. Kelly AJ (as he is referred to) as one of our senior ministers, forming a team with Rev. Kelly Crocker. She was already our minister. Among Rev. Kelly AJ 's   many skills is being an exceptional story teller, drawing from many sources and spiritual traditions. He often steps in front of   the entire congregation to tell a story or tells a story surrounded by children during a segment entitled "Message for All Ages." He always tells a story without notes. When his audience are children, he warmly relates with them and often invites and incorporates their questions which many are very eager to ask.

Brow of FUS
Frank Lloyd Wright Design 

I am grateful that he is one of our ministers with so many skills to lead, along with Rev. Kelly Crocker, a large congregation like FUS. They make a good team.

Olivia Montgomery and Linda Warren played piano and organ duets during the November 30th FUS service. Olivia is a member of FUS. Linda is our Assistant Music Director and gifted playing the harp, piano and organ. They played a rendition of the Quaker hymn, "Simple Gifts."  Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848 wrote the hymn that begins with the line, "Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free". The melody was popularized by composer Aaron Copland in his 1944 ballad Appalachian Spring and is now a well-known American folk song 

This poem by Richard Gilbert is another reminder to praise the ordinary. The ordinary can inspire awe and gratitude just like sunsets, views of the ocean, or mountains. 

In Praise of the Ordinary 

I lift my voice this day in praise of the ordinary:
The endless routines of living:
Life's everyday rituals;
The boring things we do to exist;
The monotonous getting up in the morning;
Eating, working, going to bed at night;
Moving to and fro to make a living;
Enjoying a life.

I celebrate the simple things,
The things to which we give not a second thought:
The miracle of breathing;
The act of eating;
The cadences of daily speech;
The sounds of nature as a simple backdrop
To our complicated lives.

I celebrate leaves falling from the trees
And snow falling from the skies;
The brave persistence of the grass,
And the sleeping flowers of the fields.

Enough, I say, of big things and great things,
And extraordinary things, and ultimate things.
I celebrate the ordinary.
I lift my voice in praise.

As I write, the warm air from the overhead furnace vent gently flows over me while causing the nearby prayer flags to flutter. Above the flags are four framed needle point pictures depicting the four seasons, crafted by my dear Mother-in-law, Ethel. I especially think of her now as Christmas approaches. She often spent Christmas Day until January 1st with us. She always brought a canister full of  Christmas cookies (she made 15 different kinds) and a loaf of fruit cake made by the Mount Mary Sisters of Milwaukee.  When the cookies and fruit cake were gone, she would laugh and say "now it's time to go home."  I lift up my voice in praise of Ethel's beautiful needle point pictures, the prayer flags, the warm furnace air, and this lovely apartment with its spacious windows which allows sun to stream into our apartment. 

Here's another item worthy of praise. The tag is from a 43" X 53" inch red, white, and blue knitted wool afghan handmade by the  "Telephone Pioneers."  It is at least 50 years old. My wife's great Aunt Gertie owned the afghan. She was a Bell telephone operator for many years. I suspect the "Telephone Pioneers" was a group and Gertie was a member.

As winter sets in, and before using our heavy store bought quilt, I spread the afghan over my side of the bed; covering myself with just the right weight with the result being warmth and coziness. Before falling asleep, I often offer gratitude for having the afghan and to its maker.    

Ann and I acquired the afghan as we helped my Mother-in-law, Ethel clean out Gertie and Uncle Johnnie's Milwaukee flat, after both died. We also have two of their lamps, a library table, and an ornate 6 leg table which now holds our TV.

Worthy of praise is this simple tea pot. Many mornings for at least 25 years tea brewed in this pot has nourished my body and soul. We bought it from Orange Tree Imports, now celebrating 50 years in business on Monroe Street. I enjoy herbal teas: chamomile, decaf sencha, and papaya peach.

Prospect Gardens is once again covered with a blanket of snow protecting the plants' roots and revealing the simplicity of the Gardens. Here's three pictures as a testimony to the Gardens' praise worthiness even in the dead of  winter. Each is accompanied with a comment about the value of the ordinary. 

"I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle." - Georgia O'Keeffe.

"Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value."-  Desmond Tutu 

"And then there’s — he reminded me of ordinary time, or pastoral time. Anyone who’s a farmer knows there’s sowing and reaping time. And I was always, the more I was into tragic time, the more I was a little judgmental about that. I was like: It sounds very boring; it sounds very commonplace. But that’s the — who’s picking up your mom on Tuesday? Did you send that email? Have you made that phone call? It’s all the wonderful, stupid, ordinary stuff of day-to-day life. And like, that is also necessary and good." - Kate Bowler

As I embrace and celebrate ordinary time, the large inflatable Santas are again appearing along Monroe Street and several side streets. One on our apartment's deck has again joined the display. My fellow Madisonians, but not all, consider the Santa collection as the ordinary being the extraordinary. A neighbor considered the collection as another example of the over commercialization of Christmas. 

Here's a Rev. Max Coots' poem in praise of friendship which to me goes beyond the ordinary. Until the November 30th church service, my copy lacked the first stanza. The service began with a reading of the poem by Rev. Kelly AJ and Worship Associate Bryan Rainey.  Rev. Coots is Minister Emeritus at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York.

A HARVEST OF PEOPLE

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they
grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may
they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where
their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright
as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and
as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as
potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and
as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle
as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as
dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be
counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time,
and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold
us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past
that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that
we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

May you enjoy both the grandeur and the ordinary during this Holiday Season. I'm looking forward to a visit from my brother Lou and his wife Corine. We exchange gifts, go out for lunch, and visit the Capitol Holiday Tree. This year's theme is "The Learning Tree" and as usual the elementary students from throughout Wisconsin made the ornaments..