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Ordinary Time

With the passing of the Sunday after Epiphany we lurch into what is referred to liturgically as "Ordinary Time". Those who have been in full on Christmas mode since before Advent began are probably looking forward to the ordinary. For me I would happily defer "Christmas" until the 24th/25th of December after a genuine time of preparation and anticipation in Advent, following the medieval pattern of seasonal celebrations to continue brightening the dark days of January until Candlemas at the beginning of February. But there are things to do and I like everyone else need to get back to the everyday sometime... My reference to a "faint star" owes more than a little to Denise Levertov's reference to a "dim star" in her poem "Agnus Dei", one of the poems in Janet Morley's anthology "Haphazard by Moonlight" and was largely the seed from which this grew. But perhaps in this "ordinary time" I need to take a leaf out of Gerald Manley Hopkin's book in Morley's concluding poem "God's Grandeur" in seeing it all around us at all times, even though it may be "seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil..."


The days of luminous angels
Heralding ordinary workers
Is long gone,

Packed away with all the
Gold, frankincense, myrrh
And tinsel,

Leaving the everyday strawyness 
And in the light-scarred night sky,
A faint star.

Selah

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