Peter, my thoughts anticipated your conclusion a bit, as I read your response to the poem. I am of ordinary clevernous, and I neither mean to nor wish to lay low a sensible and truthful heart response, which you have eloquently laid out and supported. That being said, I was raised the son of a Friend (Quaker) with a note from his meeting supporting his gift of ministry, and great grandson of a Friend with similar gift, as well as grandson of a Nazarene pastor, nephew of Methodist, Nazarene, and Church of Christ pastors, and with all that I really learned very little: much less than I should have, about words. But as an engineer, I learned about statistics, and being blessed with a brother having an advanced degree in statistical medicene from Harvard, I've been forced somewhat to look closely at words that speak to ideas like "ordinary" and "extraordinary". For example, I think "ordinary" is a word that might also be described as usual or frequently occurring. Extraordinary, in similar fashion is simply "out of the ordinary, or "not ordinary", or rarely occurring. This lends itself then (if one might stretch one's perspective a bit) to the language of statistics: mean, standard deviation, median, and so forth. Without going into a more precise definition of each term, I suspect for many I've shriven the words ordinary and extraordinary of their emotional context, at least as much as a brief soliliquey might attain to. In this setting, there is no negative connotation to ordinary, and no positive connotation to extraordinary. There is only a word or two that speaks to the repetitive and mundane events (i.e. - usual or mean, median typs events) and the abberant events (i.e. - statistical fliers).
For an engineer, the fliers are "bad", and the ordinary are "good".
So coming back to the poem, I might simply suggest to change an intermediate conclusion a little.
From your note I might suggest also, "Find contentment in life and you've lived a good life". Fail to find contentment, and you probably have not." But since the Scriptures proscribe who is good, I might further ammend this to: you've lived a useful life. So maybe I use semantics to look at this with an engineering twist.
But in the end, we agree and you argue (I think correctly, but I elevate myself too much to imply I have any business thinking myself equal to you) that there is no reason to believe anything about life is less than miraculous. I worship a God of miracles... steve shields
Well said. It’s the “little things” that make life extraordinary. And being content and in the moment with those things. And the older I get the more I try to be in the moment and soak them all up.
Peter, your summary sentence says it all!! "So maybe rather than teaching our kids not to strive for the extraordinary, it would be better if we all began realizing there’s nothing ordinary – in fact, there’s something divinely miraculous – about life itself." We simply cannot be "ordinary" because our miraculous Creator made us in His image. Great thoughts Pete!
Peter, my thoughts anticipated your conclusion a bit, as I read your response to the poem. I am of ordinary clevernous, and I neither mean to nor wish to lay low a sensible and truthful heart response, which you have eloquently laid out and supported. That being said, I was raised the son of a Friend (Quaker) with a note from his meeting supporting his gift of ministry, and great grandson of a Friend with similar gift, as well as grandson of a Nazarene pastor, nephew of Methodist, Nazarene, and Church of Christ pastors, and with all that I really learned very little: much less than I should have, about words. But as an engineer, I learned about statistics, and being blessed with a brother having an advanced degree in statistical medicene from Harvard, I've been forced somewhat to look closely at words that speak to ideas like "ordinary" and "extraordinary". For example, I think "ordinary" is a word that might also be described as usual or frequently occurring. Extraordinary, in similar fashion is simply "out of the ordinary, or "not ordinary", or rarely occurring. This lends itself then (if one might stretch one's perspective a bit) to the language of statistics: mean, standard deviation, median, and so forth. Without going into a more precise definition of each term, I suspect for many I've shriven the words ordinary and extraordinary of their emotional context, at least as much as a brief soliliquey might attain to. In this setting, there is no negative connotation to ordinary, and no positive connotation to extraordinary. There is only a word or two that speaks to the repetitive and mundane events (i.e. - usual or mean, median typs events) and the abberant events (i.e. - statistical fliers).
For an engineer, the fliers are "bad", and the ordinary are "good".
So coming back to the poem, I might simply suggest to change an intermediate conclusion a little.
From your note I might suggest also, "Find contentment in life and you've lived a good life". Fail to find contentment, and you probably have not." But since the Scriptures proscribe who is good, I might further ammend this to: you've lived a useful life. So maybe I use semantics to look at this with an engineering twist.
But in the end, we agree and you argue (I think correctly, but I elevate myself too much to imply I have any business thinking myself equal to you) that there is no reason to believe anything about life is less than miraculous. I worship a God of miracles... steve shields
Well said. It’s the “little things” that make life extraordinary. And being content and in the moment with those things. And the older I get the more I try to be in the moment and soak them all up.
Peter, your summary sentence says it all!! "So maybe rather than teaching our kids not to strive for the extraordinary, it would be better if we all began realizing there’s nothing ordinary – in fact, there’s something divinely miraculous – about life itself." We simply cannot be "ordinary" because our miraculous Creator made us in His image. Great thoughts Pete!