This Sunday is the beginning of my favorite season of the church year: “Ordinary Time.” (Well, at least it’s my favorite name for a season.) The altar turns as green as the leaves on the trees. The high drama of Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost fades into the distance. We travel with Jesus through the Gospel of Mark, and hear the ancient stories of Samuel and Saul, David and Solomon as we gather together week by week, keeping time as the names of the days on our bulletins become a bit repetitive: “The Second Sunday after Pentecost,” “The Third Sunday after Pentecost,” “The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost…”

I’m sorry to say that this is the origin of the phrase “Ordinary Time”: it’s “ordinary” as in “ordinal numbers” (2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th…), not “ordinary” as in “normal.” You’ll sometimes hear it called the “season after Pentecost,” as well, and that’s fitting in its own way. Two thousand years later, after all, we’re still living in this long, long season after that first Pentecost!

But it’s that other sense of “ordinary” that’s been a gift to me this spring. After an extraordinary year, it’s been amazing to have so many extra-ordinary moments. Life isn’t back to normal—it isn’t even back to “new normal”!—but every day, there are more and more beautiful, ordinary things happening. They’re so ordinary, in fact, that they’ve become… extra-ordinary.

Every time we travel to visit family without needing to juggle complicated testing logistics before and after, it’s an extra-ordinary moment. Every time I see preschoolers playing together outside without having to wear masks, it’s an extra-ordinary moment. Every time we get to sing a hymn—even just one or two, even with masks on!—it’s an incredible reminder of how much we have lost, and how much joy the return of a simple thing can bring.

So that’s my prayer for you, during this long season after Pentecost. May it be an ordinary time, filled with extra-ordinary moments.