More evidence of 'the graced ordinary' this week; ordinary lives well-lived, doing the best they can in ordinary and sometimes extraordinary circumstances. I first became aware of this in the novels of the late (and to my mind great) Kent Haruf, and the still-alive Marilynne Robinson. The ordinary folk- the parents, the neighbours, the siblings of the person in the middle of the story are never the heroes, but form the moral centre of those books, while around them uncertainties, dilemmas, wrong turnings play out, with the graced, ordinary background lives to somehow anchor the chaos, bring the ship, in whatever state, to port.
Thursday's gospel reading from the lectionary was the first verses of Matthew. Those dry, dull verses which give one account of the genealogy of Jesus. forty two generations, neatly arranged, of fathers and their sons who in turn became fathers, and only four women among them. But it struck me, in this line from Abraham to Jesus, that simply by living, marrying and having sons who in their turn married and had sons; all this somehow forwarded the purposes of God, brought the day of salvation nearer, until it was fulfilled in Jesus.
Some of those names were notable, a few were heroes, but most were only a name, recorded as a son and a father. The graced ordinary- there's much to say for it as it brings forward the purposes of God.
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