Ordinary Time Quotes

“We must practice the presence of God. He said that when two or three are gathered together, there he is in the midst of them. He is with us in our kitchens, at our tables, on our breadlines, with our visitors, on our farms. When we pray for our material needs, it brings us close to his humanity. He, too, needed food and shelter; he, too, warmed his hands at a fire and lay down in a boat to sleep.”
― Dorothy Day, The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus

“Nocturne"

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:
The house at night. Everyone asleep.
The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone.
A tray waits to be taken down.
The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,
a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back
chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,
the saucer with the thick spill of tea
which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room -- a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.”
― Eavan Boland, An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967­-1987

“One of the ways to identify a “high control” group (one that wants to control all aspects of your life) is to look at whether it distinguishes between “sacred time” and “ordinary time.” Unethical religions never let you leave “sacred time”: You always have to be thinking the way they think, dressing the way they dress, using their language, focusing on their goals. Ethical religions have a clear boundary marking the end of a service or ritual, and a process to help you transition back into a normal mode of consciousness. The more intense the religious experience, the more important this transition is.”
― Yvonne Aburrow, Changing Paths