"exceptional"

standing in the hallway of the widow's house, i put down my egg salady bagel and said, "i know it's strange to philosophize at a time like this..."
"no, it isn't," dad said.

i laughed. "well, ok, it isn't. anyway, the other night, we went outside to see the lunar eclipse. and i said to adil, 'there's nothing special about this: a rock is casting a shadow on another rock. there's nothing spectacular about it... and yet, it's beautiful.' in fact, lots of people were out freezing their toes and noses off, watching the moon turn red. but there's nothing so amazing about it. same with this," i pointed around me. "it happens all the time. hundreds, thousands of times a day. it eventually happens to every person. there's nothing unusual about it... but it's ugly and painful and shocking, every time. even though it's ordinary."
"yeah," he tilted his head. "in the end, it appears that perhaps everything is extraordinary."

whenever i ask my dad how his day was, he says, "extraordinary." he doesn't mean to imply that something terribly unusual happened, or that the day went spectacularly well. he means it literally: it was unlike every other day he has ever experienced. entirely unique.

we let things become ordinary when they needn't be so. we let it happen to words, touch, rites, exchanged glances, sunsets, numbers, brushstrokes, and elephants. we let it happen and, all the while, say that we seek meaning and hunger for wow. we're, um, ridiculous.

"finding God in the ordinary" and all that isn't about injecting spiritual mumbo jumbo into the banality of everyday life, reinterpreting everything in some tenuous way. and it's not about retreating from the ordinary so that something magical can happen. i mean, sometimes it is, but it shouldn't be.

lunar eclipses and weak knees and friends' deaths and kids' prayers happen because rocks cast shadows and people are attractive and cancer cells grow and parents drag their offspring to church. ordinary, mundane things. but - without ascribing purpose at all - i think it's safe to say that they have the power to shake us out of the ordinary. to open our eyes to that truth my dad spoke, just hours after shaking a shovelful of dirt over his friend's coffin:

everything is extraordinary.