It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise.
A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an article that starts with "Einstein believed in God. But what he meant by that will unsettle you." Without reading more, how do we know what Einstein meant? He is not around to explain himself. What we think he meant is more like it. I dismiss the notification because I do not feel like being unsettled. I believe in God. I believe in good. I believe that God loves us. I believe that God is a good God. Why did God create the mundane?
My friend Chatty says that the mundane may not be something God created as ordinary, but something we perceive that way when we stop paying attention; in reality, the simple and repetitive parts of life give rhythm, meaning, and space for presence, suggesting that what we call ordinary may be full of quiet significance. That makes sense. It is all about perception. If we stop and notice and think about the mundane, we realise that there is more there. I have said so much already and I have not checked the dictionary definition of mundane.
Mundane means something ordinary, routine, or lacking excitement, but it can also refer to things related to everyday life or the physical world, rather than anything spiritual or extraordinary. Mundane comes from the Latin mundanus, meaning "of the world" which is derived from mundus, meaning "world" or "universe"; over time, its meaning shifted from simply "worldly" to also include the sense of something ordinary or lacking excitement. How often have we heard that we should enjoy the little things, for one day we may look back and realize they were the big things. And that is what I want to do with this book. Pay homage to the little things in life. If I arrange the letters of "mundane" I get "unnamed". This book is so mundane that it will be unnamed.
Comments