Ordinariness

Be careful what you ask for you just might get it.  For many years this has functioned as a warning against frivolous prayer, against treating God as a butler.  Persistence in such requests may invite, rather, a painful object lesson.  But none of these calculations interfered with my decision, soon followed by the action, to ask God regularly to help me be an ordinary person. 

My life has had many voices saying that “ordinary” is the way to go.  The message did not connect.  It’s not that I am extraordinary, but that “ordinary” has operated as a term of disdain.  A litany of enticements beckon:  Success, meaning, impact, “make a difference,” “fulfill your potential,” on and on and on.  Naturally this meant that I needed to make everything around me better, and be better than others.  The results?  Failure by an impossible standard.  Bitterness.  Frustration.  A scary enticement to disengage, to cease caring about The Good, to resign into that very image of ordinariness I had disdained.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Thank God for God.  Somehow I did NOT so resign myself, knowing that to do so would be a repudiation of the Holy Lord Jesus’ example and teaching.  It’s not any specific teaching, per se, but the whole character of what He did, who He is, and what the Holy Trinity is about.  One clear voice began to stand out, that of the late Fr. Thomas Hopko.  At the request of others he created a list of maxims that briefly encapsulate the Christian life.  On his list of 55 maxims are these:

18.   Be an ordinary person.

31.   Be simple, hidden, quiet and small.

32.   Never bring attention to yourself.

33.   Listen when people talk to you.

36.   When we speak, speak simply, clearly, firmly and directly.

37.   Flee imagination, analysis, figuring things out.

Taken together, these six maxims cut off the extremes of ideas around “doing good.”  On the one hand they disallow the exaggerated extrovert who would put himself at the center of attention in order to make things happen.  And on the other hand they omit the quiet schemer who outsmarts the system in order to make things happen while avoiding the lime light.  Instead, the image of the ordinary person that emerges from these maxims is something like those people you learn about after they've died, all the many ways they touched the lives of others, accomplished significant good, and yet, while they lived, their accomplishments went largely unnoticed.  This kind of ordinary person is fully a person, and ordinary in the sense that they do not stand out among others.  Apparently the simple understanding of “ordinary” has nothing to do with achievement, excellence, and accolades.  The lie has been that these things are necessary for accomplishing good.

And so one day when my reflexes snookered me into the old patterns, I met with a measure of embarrassment in such a way that I recognized the source: my own efforts to be more than myself, to be extraordinary.  That day made it clear that I had to ask God to help me become ordinary.  And ask regularly.

I was not careful about what I asked, and soon I met with other situations that cater to my reflexes, stirring them up to the old patterns.  It’s very stressful, and when the reflex wins, I’m ashamed.  This process is under way at the time I write this.  What will the result be?  God only knows.  My image of “ordinary” dissembles and then reconstitutes, and this implies that I’m on the right track.  My false image is being smashed, even as it fights back.  And it’s rather an uncomfortable process, by which the enticement to disengage again beckons.  This time, however, it feels more like being pruned than being dismembered.  God is faithful.