Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, is a simple and profound book. I first stumbled upon this volume when I was surfing around Amazon using the key search words, ordinary life. I love her short foreword to her book:
I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nore were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If I indeed had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.
I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary.
This is my story.
Her book, arranged in alphabetic, topical form, like an encyclopedia, covers such mundane commonplace American experiences such as bowling, cream rinse, and sandwiches. The book is really a memoir, the personal narrative artistically written to engage the reader into the world of the writer's memory. She has done a superb job of making the dull details of an ordinary life lived fascinating. It is a writing that resonates with most of us. And in the telling, she allows us to be spectators of her exhibitionist documenting of her life.
Rosenthal's book captures my imagination because the takeaway of her story is about finding meaning in the normal, everydayness of an unextraordinary life lived. It's the, "I've done nothing speical, but my life has value anyway," message. And this, I believe, has become an important truth that is lacking in the soul of many people of faith.
In recent years I have abandoned the introspective prayer of, "God, what is my purpose?" Instead, and perhaps this is because I am now in my forties, I find tremendous contentment in the unfolding of each day, the hours a gift of just being here. Maybe that sacred truth locked and loaded into my spirit from all the loss of last summer - I went to four funerals in July 2007.
What I'm interested in these days is spiritual encounter in the course of ho-humness. I understand the value of those among us who's extraordinary faith has them in a faith vocation, like the missioanaries, preachers, and monastics who lead lives that are immersed in prayer, study, gatherings, and spirituality in all the normal details of life that, for most of us, is a life disconnected from work, home and rest.
I appreciate the full-time Christian who has spectacular encounters with God in the privacy of their prayer closet, where they spend hours a day, or in the throes of ministry, where they spend many waking moments. In charismatic circles, there is a legion of prophets and itinerant ministers who write books and speak at conferences telling the faithful that they can be world changers for Jesus, yet in all of their story telling it invariably involves full-time Christian workers who spend a great deal of their energy in spiritual practices. Ok, fine. But what about the working class hero who works 50+ hours a week at the factory to provide for his family of six. Where is the "Be a world changer for Jesus" manifesto in his life?
Or the cleaning lady who opens her heart and home to neighborhood kids who's single parent families need a helping hand? She doesn't see spectacular answers to prayer or visions of angels or demons. She's happy if dinner is on the table at a reasonable hour and that there's enough to feed the extra child or two who are unexpectedly at the house.
Where is God in the wilderness of the mundane?
Do full-time Christians get the best parts of God while the rest of us "normals" get the crumbs?
I've been reading a book about a great missionary woman who lives in Mozambique. Her name is Heidi Baker and the book is called, Compelled to Love. I knew Heidi a little bit years ago when I lived in Hong Kong. She is an on-fire devoted follower of Jesus and lover of the most broken and poorest people she can find. She and her husband have been full-time Christian workers for decades. They are very good at what they do. They preach and teach and serve the poor and needy. They seek to inspire rich Westerners, like me, to pay attention to the least known and forgotten. They live out, truly live out, what they believe.
As I have been reading her book I've had to wrestle cynicism to the ground so I can hear her heart. But as I turn the pages, reading about incredible miracles and supernatural manifestations where entire villages turn to faith in Christ, I can't help but wonder, Does God reserve the most fascinating attributes of himself for the superstars of the kingdom? Where is the supernatural presence of God for factory workers and bus drivers? For students and single moms struggling with poverty? Where is the God of Heidi Baker for people like me?
It is an extraordinary thing to see miracleous physical healings as Heidi and her ministry have witnessed in Mozambique. I remember that she was an honest woman of integrity when we lived in Hong Kong. I do not think she is fabricating or exaggerating her stories about the supernatural at all. If she says a blind person's eyes turned from white to brown seeing eyes in front of her, I believe it. This sort of Divine Phenemena would surely pump my faith to new heights, too, if I ever witnessed a bona fide physical healing in the moment of asking.
Here is what I wonder: does believing in the mercy and kindness of God require more faith when we don't feel him, hear him, or see extraordinary acts of supernatural power? Is it a different kind of faith to pursue a faith in a God who seems disengaged from the mundane?
Or does it take a measure of faith, similar to Heidi in Mozambique, to discover the presence of the Lord in the right here and right now of life being lived today? Even in the life of factory workers, bus drivers, cleaning ladies, and bloggers.
Is my life any less meaningful than Heidi Baker?
At one time I would have said yes, the life I live is mediocre and purposeless. But that is a lie, a fruit of the Americanization of my faith into thinking that bigger is better and More is always the hapless pursuit of chasing vapors in the wind.
Spiritual contentment, I now believe, is found in faith that knows that God is Love. I mean, really knows. Really. On our worst days. Our lowest moments. When I yell at my husband or ignore my kids, or feel immense lonliness that all human beings experience in the journey of life. Knowing God loves me in those moments. That, to me, is the most profound truth of all.
The pursuit of an invisible God in the everydayness of an ordinary life lived has become to me just as extraordinary, and in some ways even more so, than the aggressively lived lives of faith in the monastics and preachers around us. Swirling in the dust of the heavily walked paths of ordinary living, is the stuff of life, love and faith.
If I was to write my memoir, a narrative encyclopedia about my own faith, it would be truly unremarkable. My foreword could read something like this:
I have not been to seminary. I am not a nun, nor a prophet. Jesus has not appeared to me in a vision, nor spoken to me in a dream. There is nothing heroic about my faith, nor the life that I live. God does not heal the sick when I pray nor rain money in my account when I give. I've not slain any giants or survived a lions den. This is my story, a life of ordinary faith.
I am continueing to discover and cling to the truth that any lived, no matter how simple or uneventful, is profoundly meaningful. My friend Ken Loyd says, "You deserve to be loved simply because you exist." I agree and would add to that, "Your life is purposeful because you were created in love."
May the takeaway message of life for myself, my kids and my friends, be this: There is significance in the daily grind of life, for it is, after all, Life.
