This Week on the Celtic Calendar: Ordinary Time

Ordinary time. It's that season on the church calendar between Pentecost and Advent when nothing much is going on. No feasting or fasting. No preparation or celebration. Liturgical life is just . . . ordinary.  

Daily life, however, is another story. Rarely are our lives just ordinary. The human condition seems to swing back and forth between activity and rest, strife and peace, sorrow and joy. It's a rhythm we see mirrored in the landscape around us, in the turning of the seasons, in the turning of the tide.

Perhaps that's why the concept of ebb and flow features so strongly in Celtic spirituality. Nature, that first book of revelation, reminds us that what is ordinary is change, movement.  

The tide comes in, the tide goes out. The lesson for us in ordinary time is to learn to live in the moment and go with the flow.