No Ordinary Beings, We...

How do we see each other?

No ordinary beings, we

Who blunder pathetically

And wonder emphatically

Who stumble and fumble

And grumble too much

No ordinary beings, we

Who forget what matters

While our thought scatters

To life’s present tatters of

See-hear-taste-touch

No ordinary beings, we

Who run out of patience

And repeat mistakes and

Still need each other

Like mother and child

No ordinary beings, we

Of common commitments

And often insistent

Upon our own way

While mercy runs wild

No ordinary beings, we

Who wear pants-shirts-dresses

And need hugs and kisses

And grapple with greediness

Don’t you agree?

We are extra-ordinary 

Even in spite of

Our exterior write-offs

Because we are instilled with

Immortality

© Janet Martin

 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

1 Cor.15:54

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

― C.S. Lewis