Random thoughts of journey happenings

'Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! you don't want to be the last!'. This, called out by the one of the adults to a group of very young children at the beach today. I can also remember that being said to me or to my friends - is it something that is always said to groups of children. But today I thought for the first time, ' what is wrong with being the last?'

Why, I wondered, do we think it important not to be the last? In this particular case little Ollie (as I discovered his name to be) was doing his own thing and that included not keeping up. I rather liked the look of Ollie - maybe that is why I asked myself the question. But I think too of my friends in L'Arche. Many of them tend to be the last or somewhere near and many of them are among the most interesting and caring people I know - perhaps because they are not so focused on keeping up?

That's all.

The other thought about little random things that are part of the journey also happened this morning. Across the street where the construction site is there was, suddenly, a lot of activity. This activity included several fire engines, a couple of police cruisers, yellow tape around the whole block - not just the construction site. No ambulance so presumably it wasn't someone who was hurt. But it was most certainly an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence and gained, needless to say a lot of attention. 

So it made me think of that very phrase about things that are 'out-of-the-ordinary'. These are things that are not what we expect, they may be a bit mysterious because we don't understand what is happening, they may be a bit shocking but it seems that the important thing is, we notice them because they are unexpected, different. Which implies a sense that we all have of 'the ordinary' which mostly fills our day and is, for the most part, the stuff of our time on earth. 

I wondered, if we paid more attention to 'the ordinary',  would we start to see in it too, more things that are extraordinary, out of the ordinary? I am going to try to look more carefully from now on.