Wednesday's Word: Ordinary (3 September 2014)

            Recently in the news we learned that hackers had broken into ‘the Cloud’ and stolen intimate photographs stored there by various celebrities.  While there are many cautionary aspects to this story, one in particular is significant to me.

            What is it about celebrities that preoccupies so many of our contemporaries?  Everywhere we go, we are confronted with tabloids and magazines that promise to deliver up the secret lives of the rich and famous.  Our television channels are full of so-called ‘reality’ programming that is not ‘real’, not illuminating, not even entertaining.

            I have come to the reluctant conclusion that our society’s obsession with the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ is, there is no other word for it, demonic.  It’s demonic for two reasons.

            First, its guiding narrative is that ‘ordinary’ life is flat and dull.  Instead of encouraging us to discover our own specialness and to seek joy in the everyday wonders of our lives, the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ encourages corporate envy of our so-called ‘betters’ and dissatisfaction with the peoples, places and patterns of our daily lives.

            And because we are led to believe our humdrum daily existence is relatively unimportant, the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ disempowers us.  We come to believe that who we are and what we do does not matter.  It is this aspect of the cult that is most dangerous to the common good.

            “But we have this treasure in clay jars”, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians (2 Cor 4.5a), today’s first reading for the commemoration of Gregory the Great whose papacy (590-604) came during a time of particular difficulty for ‘ordinary’ people.  Not doubt Gregory would agree with Paul that when ordinary people who are afflicted but not crushed, when ordinary people are perplexed but not driving to despair, the life of Jesus, the treasure we hold in the clay jars of our lives, is made visible.  When ordinary people are persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, then the life of Jesus is made visible in such ordinary lives.

            Contrary to the spirit of the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’, there is no power greater than ordinary people who can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine because of the treasure held within these lives.

Richard Geoffrey Leggett

Feast of Gregory the Great