Most days of the week I walk by this ordinary bush tucked in among other ordinary bushes along the roadside. So why on that particular day did this one particular ordinary bush attract my eye? The dog must have yanked her leash and stopped to sniff at its roots, allowing my eye to rest a beat longer than usual.
But this bush…! Once I noticed it, I couldn’t not notice it. Now I see it, and admire it, every time I stroll that stretch of the neighborhood. I don’t know what it’s called, or whether it might look different in a different season, but it fascinates me in this early fall. I’m no mathematician but I’m certain its intricacies are mathematical in their precision.
Do you see those teensy pink flowers tickling their way out of the pods extending on stems from the central ball, like the tiny tickling feet of a sea star, or the antennae of some other spectacular underwater creature?
This glorious ordinary bush, tucked in among other ordinary bushes which might be equally glorious if I stopped to notice them. Like one glorious ordinary day in a week, or a month, or a year of ordinary days…and in this year filled with never-ending weeks and months of Blursdays, blurry in their sameness, it’s too easy to lose track. Some days when I open my gratitude journal in the morning to record a few sprinkles of gratitude from the previous day, I can’t remember a single stand out; some days I forget to even pick up the gratitude journal.
This striking regular bush, like a magnificent typical day, like a fantastic common individual human person. All ordinary, among ordinary others, and all miraculous… What will it take for us to stop, see, notice, admire, appreciate, marvel in the extraordinary ordinary all around us? Including our very own lives.
