God shows up in an ordinary chore...

I don't know whether green is my favorite color because it is the color of Ordinary Time or Ordinary Time is my favorite season because its color is green.  In fact, I'm not even sure when green became my favorite color.  I feel like it was before I came to William & Mary, but I can't be sure exactly when.  Regardless, since we're in Ordinary Time now and my years as a W&M student and a Wesley House resident have come to a close, it seems especially appropriate to reflect on a few things.

I will continue to serve on the Wesley Board of Directors, and I look forward to that continued relationship with the organization.  But I moved out of the Wesley House for the last time on June 30, 2011.  I lived there for four school years: sophomore, junior, senior, and my M.A. year.  I had a single room for the first three years and a double for the fourth.  Living there was one of the most special experiences of my life.  Residents met as a group with the campus minister for theological discussion once a week, acted as a welcome party to Wesleyites and anyone else who came in the door, and did weekly chores.  The chores, particularly my last chore before moving out, led me to write this reflection.

Every resident has his favorite (or most tolerable) chore.  Lock-up is probably the universal first choice.  This chore entails locking the doors every night, putting the recycling out on Tuesday night, and putting the trash out on Thursday night.  On Monday night, when everyone else is scrambling and scrubbing, the lock-up person just locks the doors and has the rest of the night free to do work (or not, as the case may be).  The living room chore involves vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the stairs, and the campus minister's office.  You also have to dust some furniture and give the fireplace floor a light scrubbing.  The kitchen chore is just that: cleaning the kitchen (floor, counters, sinks, etc.) and also sweeping the back deck.  The basement chore was just as straightforward: vacuum and dust in the basement.  The bathroom chore only involved the public bathrooms (in the Fellowship Hall and in the hallway by the campus minister's office), cleaning the floors, sinks, and toilets.  Finally there was the fellowship hall chore.  This involved vacuuming or sweeping the floor, mopping the floor with a bit of water, and wiping the tables down.

I saved the fellowship hall for last on my list because it was my least favorite.  The basement was as big an area as the fellowship hall, but at least you were done after you vacuumed.  With the fellowship hall, finishing vacuuming meant you weren't even half-done!  Bathrooms and kitchen involved a lot of individual tasks, but at least they were compressed spatially.  The fellowship hall chore was a lot of tasks spread over a lot of space.

Now, Wesley House residents recognize that these chores are a small bother compared to what many people go through.  There are plenty of people in this world who wish water were such a mediocre commodity that they could slosh some all over their floor with a mop, and that such work was the most difficult of their week. At our best, this thought makes us a little sheepish at the griping we share about our chores or the little effort we sometimes put into them.  But still, in my microcosmic universe as a Wesley House resident, I dreaded cleaning the fellowship hall.  I would actually trade chores to avoid it.

When I prepared to do my last-ever chore before moving out of Wesley for the last time, I wondered what it would be.  Murphy's Law, I thought, would surely have me mopping that fellowship hall.  It wouldn't have been unbearable.  Finishing my resident years with the fellowship hall chore actually would have had some symmetry to it.  That was the room in which I had experienced so many amazing worship services, programs, meals, and of course the Holy Eucharist celebrated every week.  My most poignant "God moments" had happened in that room (sometimes even when a mop was involved).  Spending my last moments as a Wesley House resident cleaning this space would have seemed an appropriate conclusion.  But God had other plans.  I had to clean the living room, office, hallways, and stairs.  Not my favorite chore, but far from my least favorite.  How anti-climactic, I thought.

My chief memories of these spaces were not memories of spiritual ecstasy, nor were they memories of humbling defeats.  They were general, everyday moments, like resting on a couch, poking my head into the office to say "Hey!" to David or Max, or walking up the stairs every day for four years just to go to my room.  Rather mundane memories came to me.  I wanted something a little more momentous to mark my exit from the Wesley House.  I almost wanted to clean the fellowship hall.  But our God is bigger than my conception of "momentous."

As memories of the mundane flooded my soul, I realized how precious these memories were.  The living room was where we played Wii Golf, ate Domino's pizza, watched Real Genius, and even studied on occasion.  It was where we met in the mornings before going to the Rec to play basketball, in the evenings before going to the Sunken Garden to play frisbee, and on Sundays before going to church.  In short, it was a gateway to most of the amazing experiences which made up my years at Wesley.

The office was a warm place to study in the cold months (we never knew why that room got so much warmer than the rest of the house).  In that room, surrounded by theological and pastoral classics, I passed several evenings with my laptop, paper notes, and a diet coke (and, sometimes, a box of wheat thins).  On days when David was there or Max was there, I could never "just poke my head in," a conversation would ensue without fail, sometimes without end :).  But I always left that office blessed by my time in it.

The hallways and stairways were everyday passages to my room.  My mom always called the stairs "Methodist stairs" because they were really small and really steep like the ones you find in old churches.  But after a few years, I could run up and down them with a full laundry basket on my hands and my eyes closed.  The back stairway, leading up to the double I shared with Ben this past year, was a little safer, but still had its quirks.  While the other stairs were carpeted, the back stairs were finished wood, so they had mats bolted to them to make them less slippery.  The fourth stair had a terrible creak and the second-to-last one's mat was loose and, if you weren't careful, you might pull it up and trip as you ran up the steps.  I couldn't tell you how many times I ran up and down each of those staircases, but it was at least hundreds.  Hardly memorable stuff-- in fact, I walked those hallways and stairs on autopilot so many times, it's hard to call up an actual memory of walking up the stairs or through the hallways.  These spaces of everyday blessing were where I spent my final moments as a Wesley House resident.

It didn't take too long for the significance to hit this calendar-conscious Christian, but I insisted on waiting until my thesis was finished to write this reflection.  It's Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Church calendar.  The term "Ordinary" in "Ordinary Time" refers not to the fact that it's an unexciting time, but to the fact that the weeks are "ordered" or numbered (think "ordinal numbers").  But our usual association of the word with the everyday or the mundane has a truth about it as well.  It's not a time of deep reflection or fasting like Advent or Lent.  It's not a season of unbridled joy like Christmas or Easter.  The paraments in our churches aren't black or deep purple, but they're not bright white and gold either.  They're green.  This is a picture of our lives.  The majority of our times are not mournful, not joyful, but ordinary.

Ordinary Time falls in two chunks.  The shorter chunk falls between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent.  This shows us that, even within the bounds of Christ's earthly life, there was a significant chunk of Ordinary Time.  From the time of his revelation to the Magi to the 40-day fast and his journey to the Cross, the in-between years were not exclusively ones of joy or sorrow, though they certainly included some of both.  They were, by and large, ordinary times.  Times of growth and learning, times of work, times of the everyday.

The larger chunk falls between Pentecost and Christ the King, the day we celebrate our anticipation of the Second Coming.  This shows us that our entire lives (so far) are encompassed in this season.  The Holy Spirit has come, and we have work to do, but we also wait anxiously for Christ to come again.  We commemorate Christ's suffering and his Resurrection every week, but the majority of our days are ordinary days.  The majority of our times are ordinary times.

An ordinary living room, an ordinary office, ordinary stairs and hallways, ordinary chores reminded me that we live in a cosmic Ordinary Time.  But if it's one thing the Church teaches, it is that there is a holiness in the ordinary.  Ordinary bread and ordinary wine become the very presence and body and blood of Christ.  Ordinary water, composed partially of hydrogen, the commonest and most ordinary element in the universe, becomes a vehicle of saving grace in Baptism.  We have moments of inexpressible ecstasy.  We have times of unspeakable sorrow.  But together these form a small portion of our time here.  The better part of our time here (both in quantity and, I would argue, in quality) is Ordinary Time, the seasons when God shows us what he can do with people, spaces, things, and actions we have written off as "ordinary."  That is the message of the season of Ordinary Time.

As I took my leave of Wesley, I didn't have the coveted lock-up chore, which would have been a source of some joy.  I didn't have my least favorite chore, the fellowship hall, which would have been less than enjoyable.  At least in the fellowship hall, God had been so easy to find.  But I spent my last hour as a house resident cleaning the living room, office, hallways, and stairs: ordinary spaces where I spent ordinary times.  And as I vacuumed, I saw how present God had been even in those times and spaces.

If you're looking for a constant stream of limitless joy, Ordinary Time is not the time nor Earth the place to find it.  If you're a sadist and are looking for endless sorrow and suffering, the same holds true.  Most of our lives are spent in ordinary places and ordinary times, somewhere between the two extremes.  And in those seasons, perhaps especially in those seasons, God is with us.  I tend to think of God most in times of joy or sorrow, more often the latter, you know, when I actually feel like I need him.  But cleaning such ordinary spaces in my last moments as a resident at this extraordinary place reminded me how extraordinary the ordinary can be.  We need only to stop and recognize that God himself lived through years and years of ordinary time.  He knows that the mundane and the commonplace dominate our lives.  He knows that those are the times when we will be least inclined to think of him.  He knows that those are the times in which he must reach deep to remind us of his loving presence.  And he does just that.  He had me clean a living room and reminded me of the fellowship, the laughter, the holy conferencing that happened on those couches.  And I knew without a doubt that he was always there, even in the times when I was hardly thinking of him at all.  Thanks be to God!

Thank you, Father, for the years you allowed me to spend in this incredible place.  Thank you for the blessing of your presence and your smile, in times of joy, times of sorrow, and in the vast Ordinary Time.  Thank you for the blessing of years with housemates who love to laugh, watch movies, eat pizza, and more importantly, love each other.  Bless all those who call this wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary place "home."  Let them see you in their seasons of joy (when they have lock-up), in their seasons of sorrow (when they have the fellowship hall chore), and in the ordinary times (when they have the living room chore).  Let them know that you are with them always, and that a great cloud of saints, witnesses, and past house residents is surrounding them with love and prayer.


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.