Chris Hurtubise: Fashion Icon -- Or, Some Thoughts on Ordinary Time
Last Wednesday I wore a green bow tie with white polka dots to work.
In a moment of objectivity, as I was tying my favorite new tie that morning, I realized that it was perhaps a strange fashion statement for a northwoodsman to make, but we Hurtubises have always done our best to cut a fine figure and one must bear the old ancestral mantle as best one can.
My late grandfather Jim, after whom our second son James is proudly named, was always a very snappy dresser -- nothing too fancy, just nicely put together and dapper. As I picked out a shirt and tie that morning I thought of him. When the green bowtie caught my eye I thought of an iconic picture of him as a young man -- maybe at his wedding -- looking like a Golden Age of Hollywood movie star in a white tuxedo jacket with a bowtie.
In the end, as I weighed the green and white polka dots against my other bowtie options, it was a theological reason that swayed me.
Last week was the first week of 'Ordinary Time', which is a liturgical season in the Catholic Church that comprises the stretches between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and Pentecost and Advent. Like the other seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, Ordinary time has its own color, with its own significance. Thus, to my co-workers at the diocese, I dubbed my green bow tie my 'Ordinary Tie' -- an egregious pun off of the green color of the season and off the fact that (at least for these parts) there was very little ordinary about such an article of finely crafted neck-ware.
Ordinary time is often overlooked as a less important season of the Church. There tends to be an unnamed sense that nothing exciting happens in this 'in between' time and that we are just biding our time until Ash Wednesday when we crank the religiosity factor back up again and dive into Lent. But for my money, there isn't a more important time of the year than those many un-noted, un-fantastic days in which the real life of discipleship takes place.
One of my favorite lines from C.S. Lewis comes from his glorious ode to the dignity of the human person, The Weight of Glory. A long-ish sermon delivered at Oxford, Lewis turns to end his remarks by saying, "The cross comes before the crown, and tomorrow is Monday morning." I often think of that as I come down from the mountain top experience of a rejuvenating spiritual retreat, or a powerful youth ministry event. It also comes to mind at the close of a beautiful liturgical season like Christmas -- so lofty and rich with the significance of the Incarnation of Christ, not to mention the other feasts of the Holy Innocents, Mary, Mother of God, the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.
I also think of the experience of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took Peter, James and John and revealed his glory to them, prior to his final fateful trip to Jerusalem. I think of the the three of them coming down from that mountain with Christ, having wanted to stay there forever. That desire tells me that the disciples had a lot of ordinary days with Jesus; at least ordinary by comparison. There must have been days in which they had settled into a bit of routine -- a routine with certain obligations, expectations and rhythm.
There is something richly human about the ebb and flow of feast and fast, of festivity and routine. And in his model of discipleship Our Lord made it clear that the full life of discipleship calls for both.
Lord, following you in the day-to-day existence is so much more challenging than those extraordinary days on the mountain top. These ordinary days fraught with the thousand pulls of work and family and social life and community life and the weights of finances and relationship tensions and everything else. Where do I fit you in? It was easy to feel your presence in the festivity and nostalgia and piety of Advent and Christmas, but what about on the second Friday of Ordinary time?
It would seem to me that the key is to allow the extraordinariness of such heights to penetrate the ordinariness of the normal and the routine. After all, what is really ordinary or routine, is just something extraordinary that we've gotten used to. I've been reading a lot of the great 20th century, English Catholic G.K. Chesterton over the past few weeks and just came across this incredible little quote:
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but He has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
When we allow Christ to transform our hearts and our minds and see everything as gift the ennui of routine fades. Our compulsive need for consumptive variety fades when we receive everything with the wonderment of a child. I get to drive to work (in my rusty truck with all these issues)! I get to eat spinach with my eggs (instead of toast since I'm dieting)! I get to serve my family by doing the dishes after everyone else goes to bed (even though I'd rather be working on a project)!
The more I grow in my faith the more I see that everything is about perspective. "I must decrease that he might increase," said St. John the Baptist. We must become "very small", like little children, said St. Therese, echoing our Lord's own words. These great saints didn't advocate this as some sort of self-loathing pessimism, but as a realization that everything we have and are and dream is a gift form our benevolent, loving Father and the more that we can grow in deeply implanting that perspective and that reality in our hearts and minds the happier, healthier and holier we will become.
In the end that is what Ordinary Time is all about: the steady grind of opportunity. Day after day after day God fills our lives with opportunities to choose to fall more and more in love with him, to choose love in the small things of our daily routine.
St. Josemaria Escriva sums this idea up well:
Your life cannot be the repetition of actions which are monotonously all the same, because the next one should be more full of love than the last. Each day should mean new light, new enthusiasm -- for him!
In a moment of objectivity, as I was tying my favorite new tie that morning, I realized that it was perhaps a strange fashion statement for a northwoodsman to make, but we Hurtubises have always done our best to cut a fine figure and one must bear the old ancestral mantle as best one can.
My late grandfather Jim, after whom our second son James is proudly named, was always a very snappy dresser -- nothing too fancy, just nicely put together and dapper. As I picked out a shirt and tie that morning I thought of him. When the green bowtie caught my eye I thought of an iconic picture of him as a young man -- maybe at his wedding -- looking like a Golden Age of Hollywood movie star in a white tuxedo jacket with a bowtie.
In the end, as I weighed the green and white polka dots against my other bowtie options, it was a theological reason that swayed me.
Last week was the first week of 'Ordinary Time', which is a liturgical season in the Catholic Church that comprises the stretches between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and Pentecost and Advent. Like the other seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, Ordinary time has its own color, with its own significance. Thus, to my co-workers at the diocese, I dubbed my green bow tie my 'Ordinary Tie' -- an egregious pun off of the green color of the season and off the fact that (at least for these parts) there was very little ordinary about such an article of finely crafted neck-ware.
Ordinary time is often overlooked as a less important season of the Church. There tends to be an unnamed sense that nothing exciting happens in this 'in between' time and that we are just biding our time until Ash Wednesday when we crank the religiosity factor back up again and dive into Lent. But for my money, there isn't a more important time of the year than those many un-noted, un-fantastic days in which the real life of discipleship takes place.
One of my favorite lines from C.S. Lewis comes from his glorious ode to the dignity of the human person, The Weight of Glory. A long-ish sermon delivered at Oxford, Lewis turns to end his remarks by saying, "The cross comes before the crown, and tomorrow is Monday morning." I often think of that as I come down from the mountain top experience of a rejuvenating spiritual retreat, or a powerful youth ministry event. It also comes to mind at the close of a beautiful liturgical season like Christmas -- so lofty and rich with the significance of the Incarnation of Christ, not to mention the other feasts of the Holy Innocents, Mary, Mother of God, the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.
I also think of the experience of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took Peter, James and John and revealed his glory to them, prior to his final fateful trip to Jerusalem. I think of the the three of them coming down from that mountain with Christ, having wanted to stay there forever. That desire tells me that the disciples had a lot of ordinary days with Jesus; at least ordinary by comparison. There must have been days in which they had settled into a bit of routine -- a routine with certain obligations, expectations and rhythm.
There is something richly human about the ebb and flow of feast and fast, of festivity and routine. And in his model of discipleship Our Lord made it clear that the full life of discipleship calls for both.
Lord, following you in the day-to-day existence is so much more challenging than those extraordinary days on the mountain top. These ordinary days fraught with the thousand pulls of work and family and social life and community life and the weights of finances and relationship tensions and everything else. Where do I fit you in? It was easy to feel your presence in the festivity and nostalgia and piety of Advent and Christmas, but what about on the second Friday of Ordinary time?
It would seem to me that the key is to allow the extraordinariness of such heights to penetrate the ordinariness of the normal and the routine. After all, what is really ordinary or routine, is just something extraordinary that we've gotten used to. I've been reading a lot of the great 20th century, English Catholic G.K. Chesterton over the past few weeks and just came across this incredible little quote:
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but He has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
When we allow Christ to transform our hearts and our minds and see everything as gift the ennui of routine fades. Our compulsive need for consumptive variety fades when we receive everything with the wonderment of a child. I get to drive to work (in my rusty truck with all these issues)! I get to eat spinach with my eggs (instead of toast since I'm dieting)! I get to serve my family by doing the dishes after everyone else goes to bed (even though I'd rather be working on a project)!
The more I grow in my faith the more I see that everything is about perspective. "I must decrease that he might increase," said St. John the Baptist. We must become "very small", like little children, said St. Therese, echoing our Lord's own words. These great saints didn't advocate this as some sort of self-loathing pessimism, but as a realization that everything we have and are and dream is a gift form our benevolent, loving Father and the more that we can grow in deeply implanting that perspective and that reality in our hearts and minds the happier, healthier and holier we will become.
In the end that is what Ordinary Time is all about: the steady grind of opportunity. Day after day after day God fills our lives with opportunities to choose to fall more and more in love with him, to choose love in the small things of our daily routine.
St. Josemaria Escriva sums this idea up well:
Your life cannot be the repetition of actions which are monotonously all the same, because the next one should be more full of love than the last. Each day should mean new light, new enthusiasm -- for him!
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