🔒 Amy Uncut: When is Our Ordinary Time?

Hey, everyone hope this finds you well. We are coming in for another Amy and Cut. Until I start releasing chapters of your core strength. I wanted to talk some today about this, about a concept that I have just been meditating on, and that is one of ordinary time. So, as many of you know, I grew up in the Catholic Church and, just to be very clear, the only reason we transitioned out of that is my husband didn't grow up in the church and we just needed to find one that suited our family so our family could grow better. So I still hold it with great love and respect, but I'm not an active participant there. But in the Catholic Church there are different liturgical seasons. So one that many people are familiar with is Lent, which of course, started two days ago, if you're listening to this live as it comes out. There's Advent, which is the anticipation of Christmas. Also, people, many people, know this. There's the season of Easter. There's several seasons in the church calendar and then there are seasons of ordinary time, and ordinary time it's not in anticipation of anything, it's not celebrating anything, it's just going along with the normal processes and the typical rituals of the church, but without anything extra, and that's how I understand it to be. So I'm hoping I'm saying that right. It occurred to me today that Amy Connell LLC and Grace Health this didn't occur to me today, this has just occurred to me very rarely has seasons of ordinary time. I'm always working towards something, I always have a project, and some of that is just because of the way my brain works. I can now say that I am gifted in strategic thinking and visionary, or vision, which helps me really push forward. But I also think I'm missing out without much ordinary time, and so to pull this down and apply it to all of our lives, I think that there's a couple elements of ordinary time that I can glean from the wisdom of the Catholic church and apply it to my life. So, number one, ordinary time is scheduled. They can look at the liturgical calendar and know exactly when it is, and a lot of that is because there's the same things in a rhythm. That is that kind of candles. Ordinary time doesn't just happen because it's like, oh well, nothing's going on right now. Ordinary time happens because it is scheduled and we anticipate that as well. Sorry about that. Another thing that is good for me to remember, and I think for all of us is, ordinary time doesn't mean vacation. So we're still doing the things that we need to do. We just don't have a bunch of extra. So in the church there's we're still celebrating mass on a daily basis or weekly basis, we're still going along. Again, it's just without the extra. So that doesn't mean that I need to schedule in vacation. I mean, yes, you do need to schedule in vacation too, but I don't need to schedule. But scheduling in ordinary time for me means the podcast keeps producing, I keep putting out stuff on social media even though I don't love that part, I keep doing that kind of stuff. And so maybe on a personal level, it's well, I continue doing the things for my family, but it's not having all of these extra, just extra stuff with it, or planning or projects or anything like that, and this, I don't know, is necessarily congruent with the church. But I do wonder if ordinary time is also an invitation for me to do some things that help me thrive holistically. And I'm speaking, I'm specifically thinking of connection. So I don't know how your world works, but I will often think, oh, I need to see this person and I don't have time, I'm too busy, and then I don't see them and I get holed up in my own little world. So maybe it's an opportunity to not have all of this extra stuff on my plate and lean into opportunities to go walking with friends or have them for bed, go to lunch in the middle of the day I mean, what's that like? Or something like that. So I don't know if that is anything that you might be able to apply to your life, but I think that we all need to schedule in some ordinary time. If nothing else, I think it's beneficial, I think it's helpful and it's good to have that time to be restorative as well, after anticipations and celebrations and I know that I'm saying this right as we are entering the Lenten season but maybe that's the time to schedule in some ordinary time in your own life, even though it's different in the liturgical calendar. That is my Amy and Kat. Like I said, I have been thinking about this for a long time and I'm not sure I did a great job at making it broadly applicable, but I figure, if it's been on my heart and my soul for a while, then it's something that I should probably at least share and maybe it is applicable to you. Have a good weekend, everyone.