In the movie Jingle All the Way, there is a scene in which workaholic businessman Howard, played by Arnold Schwarzeneggar, laments with divorced father Myron, played by Sinbad, that the big gestures, like building his son a treehouse, or taking the family on exotic vacations, are not enough to maintain love and intimacy during the periods when they feel overwhelmed with the demands of everyday life. The two men are recognizing that as important as moments of significant affection are, they are not enough to sustain most relationships.
One thing we pick up on quickly with Myron's failed and Howard's failing marriage is that while they each want to make a big loving gesture at Christmas, they both treat ordinary time as time away from the vocation.
Most of us face the same problem as Howard and Myron: What do we do in between the times of intense engagement? How can we learn to love in ordinary time?
Last week, we wrote about kairos moments, the moments of quality time in which love and connection are manifest in action, and which form the basis of lasting intimate connection. Kairos is contrasted with kronos, or "ordinary time," the sequential time of clocks and calendars that moves inexorably out of the past into the future.
We emphasized the need to find, or create, kairos moments to punctuate the ordinary time of work, household chores, children's activities and the many other projects and activities that fill our calendars.
The church organizes its annual calendar in ways that draw attention to its commitment to rhythm and balance between kairos and kronos in spiritual life. For example, the Baptism of the Lord marks a passage from Advent and the Christmas season to Ordinary time. Ordinary time continues until Lent and Easter, then resumes until Advent comes around again. The Church calendar is thus a cycle, a process in which we move from fasting and meditation, to feasts and celebration, to ordinary time and work. Out of 52 weeks, 33 weeks are spent in ordinary time.
Ordinary time is not ordinary in the common modern English sense of something that's not special or distinctive. It derives from the Latin ordinalis meaning ordered, numbered and organized. Where fasts are times of contemplation and strong measures to transform ourselves, and feasts are times of celebration and thanksgiving, ordinary time is the time of work, of engaging in the regular order of everyday life.
But that work includes not just the mundane labor that earns our pay, but also the work of prayer, of doing good in the world, and of engaging in our vocations.
Our vocational life also has, or should have, these liturgical dimensions. There should be times of celebration--birthdays, anniversaries, Easter and Christmas--and times of meditation, penance and transformation.
And there should be ordinary time. Ordinary time is the time to work on our vocation on a regular basis. We have our work, our leisure time, our children’s activities and, within this, we need to find opportunities to work on our marriage in a regular way.
The answer is to understand ordinary time is not a time for couples to live parallel lives, each focused on their separate work and obligations. Rather, kronos is a time for building your partnership by strengthening all the ordinary work that is necessary in a family.
Ordinary time is a time to focus on routine. Routine sounds like the death knell of romance, but it's actually the opposite: routine is the foundation from which romance can blossom. Done properly, routines can provide consistency, stability, and structure in your marriage.
The secret is to build clear communication and connection into your daily activities. This includes sharing your plans with one another in the morning, checking in with one another once or twice during the day, and sharing the high and low points of your day with each other in the evening.
Ordinary time is also a time to work on justice and equity in the marriage. When one member of a couple feels they are carrying more of the burden than is fair, marriages founder. One way around this is to establish clear and consistent rules about who does which jobs, when the jobs need to be done, and what parameters define "well done." For a model of how to do this, we strongly recommend the book and card set Fair Play by Eve Rodsky.
Equity also requires spouses to be sensitive to one another's levels of energy and empathy. Brene Brown says that in her own marriage, she and her husband speak about bandwidth, the energy and empathy needed to get through the day. Instead of asking "how are you?" they will ask "what's your bandwidth?" The answer is a percentage, a number on a scale from 1-100. If one has much more bandwidth than the other, the more energetic of the two may take up the slack. If they are both low in bandwidth, maybe they need to rethink their evening plans (If one is always lower bandwidth than the other, maybe it's time to discuss work/life balance...)
Ordinary time is also a time to build trust. It is through the everyday meeting of your commitments and obligations that you convince your spouse that you have their back. When Jesus tells us in Matthew's Gospel to let our yes mean yes and our no mean no, he is teaching us how to build trust in one another
Ordinary time lacks the romance and thoughtfulness of our times of feasting and fasting, but when it comes to building the foundations of a successful relationship. it is anything but ordinary.
Created by Mark Allen Peterson using the Wix Generative AI tool
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