In the next couple weeks, we’ll be moving out of ordinary time on the liturgical calendar and on into the advent season. I haven’t always kept time with the Christian calendar–not the cheesy Thomas Kinkade ones. But after having lived in Italy for a few years, I’ve noticed that a lot of the social rhythms are set from the Roman Catholic liturgical way of keeping time.

And the period that we are currently wrapping up is called “ordinary time.” It’s between Pentecost and Advent. It’s an “in between time” of waiting before the inbreaking of God into our everydayness. The trouble I’ve found with this season is in how ordinary it actually feels and how it just seems to drag on and on.

Today, I came across a prayer by Walter Brueggemann that really struck a chord within me from a book of his entitled Prayers for a Priviledged People.

Blown by the Spirit… We Know Not Where

We hear the story of the wind at Pentecost,
Holy wind that dismantles what was,
Holy wind that evokes what is to be,
Holy wind that overrides barriers and causes communication,
Holy wind that signals your rule even among us.

We are dazzled, but then – reverting to type –
We wonder how to harness the wind,
how to manage the wind by our technology,
how to turn the wind to our usefulness,
how to make ourselves managers of the wind

Partly we do not believe such an odd tale
because we are not religious freaks;
Partly we resist such a story,
because it surges beyond our categories;
Partly we had imagined you to be more ordered
and reliable than that.

So we listen, depart, and return to our ordered existence:
we depart with only a little curiosity
But not yielding;
we return to how it was before,
unconvinced but wistful, slightly praying for wind,
craving for newness,

wishing to have it all available to us.
We pray toward the wind and wait, unconvinced but wistful.

(Hat Tip: Dream Awakener)