permission to be ordinary

I just read a post by Cat Valente, about how we all want to be Protagonists of a Big Exciting Story, and at the end of the post she says:

But every day it doesn't happen, and the water bill has to be paid, and the rent still goes up, and no one has a flying car, and we can't even see the magic of our handheld, world-networked devices because if we were living in the future it would be a better story, and no one would feel lost the way we do, and no one would be confused as to where they stood, and no one would be unsatisfied, or afflicted with ennui, and everyone would be a hero.

And if we were the final generation, cradled in the hands of an angry God, no one could ever say we were ordinary.

And my immediate reaction (channeling my best friend's sermon) was, "But the good news is that we are ordinary."

As I was reading Cat's post, I often found myself thinking, "I do not want the Apocalypse to come, because I have no useful skills in case of apocalypse, and it would not be a good experience at all." And when I got to the end and channeled the opening line of Ari's sermon, I thought that yeah, it is good news that we are ordinary. We do not have to be Exciting Protagonists. We just have to live our own lives, to live into who God created us to be.

And each of ours is a beautiful story. We are, each one of us is, a bright brilliant beloved child of God who is so so beautiful to behold. God gives us permission to be ordinary. God says that we are beloved just as we are.

(Interestingly, I was thinking about Christine Lavin's "Katy Says Today Is the Best Day of My Whole Entire Life" earlier today.)