Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites.”
What comes to your mind, heart, and senses when you read the word “extraordinary?” It is likely the big things, the events so unusual or dramatic that they are hard to believe. We tend to think of these extraordinary moments as the ones that are most transformative or valuable in our lives. Yet in actuality, it is usually the small, habitual enactment of ordinary actions that forms and transforms us the most.
For example, choosing a few key values to live by, and then consistently making decisions that fall in line with those values over time, has formed some of the most steady and grounded people that I know. Similarly, setting aside time for consistent periods of prayer, in which I pause, get out of myself and recognize the “more” of life has shaped me just as much as, if not more than, the big “ah-ha” moments.
Over time, more of the ordinary is just as powerful as the extraordinary. In this sense, we might view more of the ordinary as “extra-ordinary.” This was certainly part of the monastic wisdom of Saint Benedict, who instructed his monks to pray for more hours in each day than to work. For him, clearly, the labor of work and the work of prayer were equally essential. Over time, this ordering of time transforms the ordinary into the extra-ordinary.
Might our own lives not feel more often extraordinary, if we were to dedicate more equal time to each of the extra-ordinary activities of work and prayer?
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- Think of one (or more) big, dramatic, a-ha moments in your spiritual life. What happened? How were you transformed?
- Now, think of your daily, “ordinary” spiritual practices. What small, habitual actions do you enact with regularity? How have these actions shaped and transformed you over time?
- How do you fully inhabit both the ordinary and extraordinary moments?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites.”
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Christine Luna Munger
Christine Luna Munger, PhD currently serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP.
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