HOW ORDINARY LIFE BECOMES SACRED AGAIN

I used to ride my bicycle to the Catholic church near my home as a little girl. Nobody sent me. Nobody taught me. I just went. I sat through Latin masses I did not understand and I received communion alone and I looked up and asked one question. Not are you real. I already knew that. My question was how do I help the people around me feel what I already know is here. The peace. The joy. The awe.

I have been asking that question my whole life.

In emergency rooms at 3am. On helicopters dropping out of the sky. In courtrooms sitting beside women who could not speak for themselves. On a trail in Spain on day nineteen when my feet hurt and the next town was still ten kilometers away and a family of five came around the bend at exactly the wrong moment.

And now. At 71. In a spare room in Tallahassee Florida with skorts hanging on a rack and a book almost finished and a community just beginning.

The sacred did not leave ordinary life. We just got too busy to notice it was there.

I wrote a book before I walked the Camino called Are You The Christ. It was about looking into the eyes of every person you pass. The lawyer. The biker. The homeless veteran. The angry teenager. The obese woman on the train. The possible terrorist on the plane. And asking honestly whether you can see the sacred in them. Not the convenient sacred. Not the easy sacred. The sacred in the person who makes you uncomfortable. The person you would rather walk past.

That book taught me something I already knew but needed to say out loud. The sacred is not reserved for special moments or special people or special places. It is present in every ordinary Tuesday. In every difficult person. In every moment we think is too small to matter.

The Camino confirmed it. Not with a vision or a lightning bolt. With 500 miles of very ordinary walking. Blisters and bad weather and frozen breaded chicken for dinner and the particular exhaustion of putting your boots on for the thirty eighth morning in a row. And somehow inside all of that ordinary the sacred kept showing up. In a stranger from South Korea whose name I never learned but whose smile I still remember. In a woman named Sheena from Ireland who appeared at exactly the right moment every single time. In a coo coo bird that called at exactly the right moment on exactly the right morning when I had talked myself into a very convincing disaster before breakfast.

The sacred was never somewhere else. It was always right here. In the middle of the ordinary. Waiting to be noticed.

I am writing this from Anchorage Alaska where Gregg and I are on what we are calling an exploratory. Just wandering. Looking. Paying attention. This morning I found the sacred in ordinary things. In the way the light hits differently this far north. In strangers on a sidewalk who nod like they know you. In the particular quiet of a place that does not yet know your name. The sacred does not require a pilgrimage to Spain. It does not require a plan. It just requires slowing down enough to notice what is already there. That is true in Anchorage. That is true in Tallahassee. That is true wherever you are reading this right now.

That is what the Everyday Pilgrim is about. Not finding something new. Noticing what has always been there. The sacred in the changing body that keeps showing up anyway. The sacred in the grief that does not resolve cleanly. The sacred in the Tuesday that feels like just a Tuesday until you slow down enough to look.

And the Stealth Skort. Yes. Even that. A skort is not a sacred object. But what it does is sacred in the most practical sense of that word. It removes one layer of management from a woman’s day. One calculation. One barrier. And in that small clearing something shifts. Her body moves differently. Her mind quiets a little. And in that quiet there is more room to notice what was always there.

The peace. The joy. The awe.

Right here. In the ordinary Tuesday. Waiting for you to look up.

The Stealth Skort. Patent pending. Made by women in the USA from recycled materials. Four pockets. An unsnappable brief. For every woman who is ready to stop managing and start noticing. And if this resonated with you share it with one woman who has forgotten that her ordinary life is sacred. The river always knew it was. Buen Camino. Reverend Morgan Patterson. Founder Cover Yr Assets and The Everyday Pilgrim. www.coveryrassets.