The Extraordinary Ordinary

“Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace”

 – Elbert Hubbard

Keys and clocks, flowers and lockets, these are but simple, ordinary, commonplace items. Yet why the fascination with them? Why do we pick the most ordinary things to imbue with the most fascinating traits? When J.R.R Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, he centered his story around a ring, a simple gold ring. And yet, around that one ring blossomed a story so intriguing it will remain a classic for ages to come. Or perhaps consider the story of Aladdin? There we find two special objects: a lamp and a carpet. Both in themselves can be seen as mere dust collectors, but add a drop of magic and they suddenly become wonders of our imagination.

  Now as I stepped back and pondered these objects, I first considered the possibility that perhaps we only pick them because they provide us with a place to fill our intrigue and creativity; that in the pouring out of our ideas, we give shape to our passions and fancies.

Of course, one must not forget that the objects we pick do in fact possess roles in the commonplace which in turn play a part in our choosing of them. For instance, a key is meant to unlock something, and a mirror finds its importance in providing a reflection. Staircases lead to doors and doors open up to rooms. Now in and of themselves, these items do not mean much. However, the moment you add a pinch of the unbelievable into the picture, these things come alive with excitement. The mirror now reflects envied beauty; the stairs go on forever, and the glass slippers hold onto a frail promise of marriage and happiness.

It does not take much to think of such objects. In fact, come up with one and more will follow close behind. The reason for this I believe stems from nature's natural puzzle piece. These objects of interest, representing an ordinary task, quickly assemble themselves to their second mysterious half which is found in our hearts desires. We want to be told we are beautiful, so what better to tell us than a talking mirror. These fancies of ours are the key ingredients in history’s legends and stories.  Look back into folk-lore and fairy tales and glimpse into their tragedies and happy endings. You’ll almost always find something special in the story: perhaps magical hair or a poisoned apple.

The more I consider it, the less I think these story’s objects only exist to provide a container for our mysteries. I think there is something more to it then that.

The answer I believe lies not in man’s need to find a fill-able hollow, but rather in his desire to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Within each of us lies a strand of something greater than the commonplace. That strand is intertwined around man’s very DNA. In fact one might even say it has been there from the beginning. This desire to be extraordinary extends out from our selves into the very stories we read to our children.

Most people read fiction and go to movies not only to have an enjoyable time; but also, on a deeper level, to pretend that they are part of the story; that they are the valiant hero or lucky maiden. Even villains are admired, hated of course, but admired nonetheless for their speciality. People want to be unique. It would not be too far of a stretch to say that they perhaps even want to be better.

Personally, I believe this need, this strand in us for the bigger and better, was woven into us from the very being. It was placed there by the greatest bigger and better there is: God. God is perfect; he is all that is good. But look around, look at the world; it is a mess and its contained creation has been contaminated. Why then should we be any more special than a key or a mirror? Why should our stained black features inspire any degree of admiration or respect? The answer is found in God. By ourselves, we are nothing more than ordinary. It is in Him in which we become loved by grace, and desired through mercy. It is in Him in which our common place beings become that of extraordinary. We are beings made in the image of a wonderful God. Now while much of our true selves has been lost to corruption and sin, we have retained the memory of something more; something bigger and better.

Now as we continue to read our stories of magical rings of power, or of a flowers juice that inspires love, may we remember but one thing: that the desire to make the common place something special comes from a desire not of our own. That as we look down on things below, may we take a glimpse upwards to the above, to God, who desires the same thing of ourselves: to make the imperfect, perfect; and the ordinary, extraordinary.

Derek Scott

On an Ordinary Carpet in Richmond, B.C

January 6, 2011

Milton

  Some years back I considered writing a book entitled "Disbelieving in the wrong god." It would have been based on the premise that people disbelieve without the knowledge of what they are truly disbelieving in. It seems the objections brought up against the belief in a certain god in people's minds do not take into account the reality of the true God as revealed in the Bible. The concept of god that they hold in their minds may be one of their stumbling blocks in admitting that there is a god at all. That is definitely the first step. "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him" (Hebrews 11:6). Even as a believer, I need to be vigilant with the help of the Holy Spirit not to construct an image of God in my mind that simply fits my mental parameters and is not in line with Scripture.

    

Anyway, this was the premise, but this last year I stumbled across a passage in George Macdonald's The Seaboard Parish in which he summarized the whole concept in a short exchange. Now there is no reason to write a book on something that can be given in a paragraph. There are a few too many books in many categories already, and I certainly don't need to add to the girth. Below are his words as he spoke them to his daughter, referring to Milton:

"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven't said what I wanted to say yet."

The Pig-Sheep

My school year in England has its many treasured stories, but one holds a unique and special place in my heart: the story of the pig-sheep, Damien. He lived on the farm connected to the Capernwray manor house and estate. His story is outlined in two letters I sent home during my days at Capernwray, Lancashire, England. I must warn you before you begin to read; this story is a tragedy; it is not for the feint-hearted or weak-minded. You may want to prepare your mind with a reading of Othello or King Lear. My first letter home came in the fall of 2009 . . .

Saturday October 24, 2009

“ . . . We are located in the English countryside, surrounded by green, rolling hills and a boatload of sheep—though that would be one large boat. One sheep in particular has captured my attention; we call him the pig-sheep. He was in a fight when he was a young, spry sheepling, which involved a lot of nose-smashing. I’m not sure how the other sheep fared, but the pig-sheep now looks—truly—like a pig with white, wooly skin. He also has pneumonia, and wheezes quite pathetically all day long. The farmer tells me he was expected to kick the sheep-bucket a year ago, but he’s clearly still a fighter—just not with his nose anymore. England obviously offers lots of inspirational stories, even if they do only involve sheep.”

Time passed, and one of the coldest winters in recent history struck the North of England. Brilliant white camouflaged the numerous sheep of the estate from being seen on the snowy hillsides. The Damien’s pneumonia worsened and the farmer worried. His pig-like face showed a longing to throw off the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and the mortal imperfection of this earth (Shakespeare, Hamlet). Months passed and finally, news of Damien reached Kansas in the form of my second letter . . .

Monday February 1, 2010

“I have some terribly sad news . . . The world-famous pig-sheep has passed. His battle with pneumonia ended on a snowy evening of the Christmas break. The students of Capernwray put on a memorial service for Damien, as we called him. It was very respectful and, most likely, unprecedented in the history of the world, to date. There was an original song, a speech by the sheep farmer, and a slide show. He may be gone, but he is remembered in daily conversations and maybe even a few lonely tears."

Thus ends the story of Damien, the Pig-Sheep. These events have been recorded faithfully.

-Eric Tippin

At Home in Elbing, KS

January 4, 2010

Delft

This is a brilliant essay by a friend of G.K. Chesterton about the town in Holland, Delft. Eric Tippin (another contributor to this site) visited Delft on his recent European tour. The picture above was taken in that very town by Eric.

Delft is the most charming town in the world. It is one of the neat cities: trim, small, packed, self-contained. A good woman in early middle age, careful of her dress, combined, orderly, not without a sober beauty—such a woman on her way to church of a Sunday morning is not more pleasing than Delft. It is on the verge of monotony, yet still individual; in one style, yet suggesting many centuries of activity. There is a full harmony of many colours, yet the memory the place leaves is of a united, warm, and generous tone. Were you suddenly put down in Delft you would know very well that the vast and luxuriant meadows of Holland surrounded it, so much are its air, houses, and habits those of men inspired by the fields.

Delft is very quiet, as befits a town so many of whose streets are ordered lanes of water, yet one is inspired all the while by the voices of children, and the place is strongly alive. Over its sky there follow in stately order the great white clouds of summer, and at evening the haze is lit just barely from below with that transforming level light which is the joy and inspiration of the Netherlands. Against such an expanse stands up for ever one of the gigantic but delicate belfries, round which these towns are gathered. For Holland, it seems, is not a country of villages, but of compact, clean towns, standing scattered over a great waste of grass like the sea.

This belfrey of Delft is a thing by itself in Europe, and all these truths can be said of it by a man who sees it for the first time: first, that its enormous height is drawn up, as it were, and enhanced by every chance stroke that the instinct of its slow builders lit upon; for these men of the infinite flats love the contrast of such pinnacles, and they have made in the labour of about a thousand years a landscape of their own by building, just as they have made by ceaseless labour a rich pasture and home out of those solitary marshes of the delta.

Secondly, that height is inhanced by something which you will not see, save in the low countries between the hills of Ardennes and the yellow seas—I mean brick Gothic; for the Gothic which you and I know is built up of stone, and, even so, produces every effect of depth and distance; but the Gothic of the Netherlands is often built curiously of bricks, and the bricks are so thin that it needs a whole host of them in an infinity of fine lines to cover a hundred feet of wall. They fill the blank spaces with their repeated detail; they make the style (which even in stone is full of chances and particular corners) most intricate, and—if one may use so exaggerated a metaphor—"populous." Above all, they lead the eye up and up, making a comparison and measure of their tiny bands until the domination of a buttress or a tower is exaggerated to the enormous. Now the belfry of Delft, though all the upper part is of stone, yet it stands on a great pedestal (as it were) of brick—a pedestal higher than the houses, and in this base are pierced two towering, broad, and single ogives, empty and wonderful and full of that untragic sadness which you may find also in the drooping and wide eyes of extreme old age.

Thirdly, the very structure of the thing is bells. Here the bells are more than the soul of a Christian spire; they are its body too, its whole self. An army of them fills up all the space between the delicate supports and framework of the upper parts; for I know not how many feet, in order, diminishing in actual size and in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation, stand ranks on ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild, from the large to the small; a hundred or two hundred or a thousand. There is here the prodigality of Brabant and Hainaut and the Batavian blood, a generosity and a productivity in bells without stint, the man who designed it saying: "Since we are to have bells, let us have bells: not measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells, but careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells; bells without fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable; bells worthy of the ecstasies that are best thrown out and published in the clashing of bells. For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we will combine such a great number that they shall be like the happy and complex life of a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells and reap a harvest till our town is famous for its bells." So now all the spire is more than clothed with them; they are more than stuff or ornament; they are an outer and yet sensitive armour, all of bells.

Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, but also in their use; for they are not reserved in any way, but ring tunes and add harmonies at every half and quarter and at all the hours both by night and by day. Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise through this; they are far too high and melodious, and, what is more, too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten impression of continual music; they render its air sacred and fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to leave one—when one has passed from their influence—asking what balm that was which soothed all the harshness of sound about one.

Round that tower and that voice the town hangs industrious and subdued—a family. Its waters, its intimate canals, its boats for travel, and its slight plashing of bows in the place of wheels, entered the spirit of the traveller and gave him for one long day the Right of Burgess. In autumn, in the early afternoon—the very season for those walls—it was easy for him to be filled with a restrained but united chorus, the under-voices of the city, droning and murmuring perpetually of Peace and of Labour and of the wild rose—Content....

Peace, labour, and content—three very good words, and summing up, perhaps, the goal of all mankind. Of course, there is a problem everywhere, and it would be heresy to say that the people of Delft have solved it. It is Matter of Breviary that the progress of our lives is but asymptotic to true joy; we can approach it nearer and nearer, but we can never reach it.

Nevertheless, I say that in this excellent city, though it is outside Eden, you may, when the wind is in the right quarter, receive in distant and rare appeals the scent and air of Paradise; the soul is filled.

To this emotion there corresponds and shall here be quoted a very noble verse, which runs—or rather glides—as follows:—

Satiety, that momentary flower

Stretched to an hour—

These are her gifts which all mankind may use,

And all refuse.

Or words to that effect. And to think that you can get to a place like that for less than a pound!

by Hilaire Belloc from Hills and the Sea

Eric Tippin wrote his own essay about delft; read it here

The Seasonal Gospel

I love how the gospel is reflected in God's creation.  I think the seasons are typical of that.  In the fall, things start to decay, showing their age and representing the effects that sin and decay take on all of us over time.  Even believers are not instantaneously delivered from the effects of the Fall at the moment of saving faith.  We still age.  We still suffer.  We still die.  We are still under the curse, waiting for the fullness of salvation to come.

In the winter, everything is dead.  It represents where humanity, and the creation humans were created to rule, end up as a result of rebelling and losing our relationship with God.  It is the time of death; and apart from the gracious act of an outside force, everything would stay dead.   Like Lewis's Narnia, it would be a place where it is "always winter and never Christmas."  In other words, it would be a place where hope does not exist--which will be the truly agonizing and torturous part of hell, I think.  Whatever the physical pain and loneliness will be, above all other forms of suffering it will be the Eternal Winter--the place where "January" is the name of every month in the calendar, not just of this year, but of all the years to come.  No hope.  Never Christmas.

But then, the seasons of the year scream out to us that there is hope.

(Don't worry.  I don't think that the seasons themselves are a part of special revelation.  No one can look at the seasons alone and understand Who Christ is, what He did, and what He will do.  But God has so created the world that creation augments His special revelation.  It whispers to us what the written Word, proclaimed and lived out by the Church, screams at us).

Spring comes. January does not last forever.  Death does not ultimately win.  April and May come with new life!!

It is really great, I think, that Good Friday and Easter fall during springtime in this northern hemisphere of ours.  We have the added benefit of celebrating New Life because of our union with Christ and His resurrection at the same time that leaves are returning on the trees, grass is turning greener, and flowers are beginning to come up again.  Hope has found a resting place.  It is rekindled.  But harvest has yet to come.  It is still a time of planting, not reaping.  It is still a time when unexpected freezes can come and ruin crops.  It is a time when severe wind, hail, floods, and tornadoes can destroy.

This is where we live now.  We live in an age of "already, but not yet."  As Martin Luther said, "Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time" (taken from Modern Reformation magazine, March/April 2008, vol. 17, no. 2, page 9).  We live in an age where our hope has been proclaimed and we have been given the Spirit as a promise of the coming harvest.

But we are still not living in that harvest yet.  We are to be obedient planters and gardeners, under the guidance and empowerment of the Chief Vine-dresser through His Son.  But we will taste those freezes and those floods.  We will know what it is to sow the same patch of barren ground for long years, hoping for a bountiful crop, when only a few shoots seem to come up from our labors.  But you never know what the harvest will bring.  You never know how much fruit will come until summer arrives.

I'm still waiting for summer.  So are you.  Don't believe those who want to say that it is here.  Don't listen to those who say that it is time to come in from the fields and enjoy hot-dogs, watermelon and swimming pools.  It's not that time, yet.  Trust me.  When it is, you will know.

Everyone will know.

John Buerger, Christmas 2010 in Elbing, KS