Extra or Ordinary?

I figured that Leap Day would be a big deal... after all, it only comes around every four years. Given my excitement over the lengthening days driven by the elegance of celestial mechanics, I imagined that I would take similar delight in the observance of this quadrennial calendrical nudge designed to keep our human timekeeping aligned with the turning of the world.

Leap Day 2012 Snow
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

The arrival of snow– an oddly novel event in this strangely dry winter– bestowed some enchantment upon the campus as students trekked with unaccustomed difficulty to classes recently made more arduous by exams and paper deadlines in these final days before spring break, which begins on Friday. Yet, as I spent another day at the office– working steadily through a research project for a dean, a series of documents for another department, and a guide to local attractions and services for attendees at a conference this summer– this February 29 passed rather unremarkably.

Snow settling on the shrubbery at my window

The tenets of Ignatian spirituality urge me to diligently seek and reverently praise the signs of God's presence, Christ's companionship, and the Spirit's guidance that I encounter in the course of a given day. Although I strive to apply these principles faithfully through my practices of prayer and reflection, I admit that it's more fun when the insights are profound, exciting, and undeniably strong. That's what I expected for an occasion as evidently significant as Leap Day, which has been inviting me to consider how I would spend an extra day. (Prayer, conversations with brethren and friends, a hike in the woods, and writing letters to distant companions topped the list.) However, such thoughts gave way to an uneasy sense of disappointment, perhaps even regret, that today I neither noticed nor strove to enact anything that, in my perspective, would be considered truly remarkable.

Smith Hall
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

Having said this, I recognize that such a perspective is perhaps too narrow, too blind to subtle beauty, too organized and rational to appreciate the mysticism of the ordinary. If it's accurate to surmise that God desired that this should be my lesson for Leap Day 2012, then I can recognize no small amount of gentle pressure, and an even greater degree of loving admonition and encouragement, to deepen my desire for and acceptance of a graced ability to see and savor the trappings of the ordinary as gifts no less priceless and satisfying than the resplendent manifestations of the sublime. God willing, I'll grow in this capacity each day, rather than awaken to this and other lessons only once every four years.