Finding Love in the Ordinary

‘

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Matthew 18:3

What about the children? Jesus would of course keep us focused on the children in this time both for their own right and for what they teach us about what we might have lost as adults. In this time of Covid19 I am concerned for the effect all of this has on their lives and on their trust. I am hearing things like “when the germs are gone will we go on vacation?” or “when the germs are gone can we stay overnight at Grandma and Grandpa’s?”. My first response is to work harder to wipe out the germs; my second response is to look for the new desire, the new dream, the new tradition. And then I am caught up short by stories such as this one from Plough: 

“My son loves being in the dirt. We go to the park and he pours sand into his hair. He finds the bald places around the trees and pulls handfuls of soil into his lap. Children remind us to connect with the dirt from which we were formed. I have to remember there is a holiness in his messy play, as he breathes life into the ground, finding Love in the ordinary things I avoid. “I love this flower,” he says, rubbing the black, prickly center of a dried Black-eyed Susan across his cheek. The next day he says, “I got this flower because of the sickness.” “Why because of the sickness?” “Because we can’t go anywhere. The flower says, ‘It’s okay if you can’t go somewhere.’”

To connect with the dirt from which we were formed. Yes. Did we not just remind ourselves of that formational dirt on Ash Wednesday? And then like a thunderstorm that dirt seemed to be washed away in a pandemic. We thought it was causing us to postpone this formational moment in favor of isolation and limited contact. We thought we had to postpone the holy touch of the ground in favor of the ground we take for granted and see only as useful. We failed to find love in the ordinary. We failed to be like children. 

Children see through our postponements even in times of germs. Children point us to the fantasy of everyday dirt; and the wonder of everyday flowers. Children help us wipe away despair and replace it with the sacrament of the ordinary.
It is ironic really that in this time of germs and obsessive sanitizing; we really need to remember the holiness of dirt.