Isaiah 9:2
"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned."

I spent a significant portion of my youth exploring the caves of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.  I am indebted to my brother, Larry, for introducing me to this interest and exploration in/of the bowels of the earth.  It has been close to thirty-five years since we were last in our spelunking gear and descending a hole together.  Last week we rectified that time lapse reality.
In actual fact, we entered three caves in three days, Saltpeter, Tawneys and Smokehole.

One of my favorite things from our spelunking past was to find a large cavity in a cave, turn off my light and sit alone in complete darkness, in utter silence.  (Note: In the days of old we used Carbide Lights, namely, a gaseous flame.  Eventually we learned this wasn't environmentally friendly.  Today, we use LED Lights). More often than not, such an exercise would at some stage lead me to yearn for light.  In other words, the darkness was rather captivating for a short period of time but with a statute of limitation attached.  Fortunately, Larry would crawl or walk down a corridor of the cave (depending on the cave's anatomy) and I would see the light on his helmet moving towards me and eventually filling the space I occupied with welcomed light. 

As we come to Ordinary Time, we embrace that liturgical time in the life of our church when God enters the ordinari-ness of our lives.  And, we acknowledge that God's entrance makes our lives quite extraordinary. The thing is San Joaquin, we need to await it (not passively).  We need to be looking for it.  We need to anticipate it.  We need to yearn a joining with God and in that moment be prepared for the holy realization that there is nothing ordinary when it pertains to God.  We need to await (actively so, in some instances) that light coming from another part of the cave-of-our-lives.  We need to be looking up the corridor-of-our-lives.  We need to yearn the light which illuminates the cavities-of-our-lives where we may be sitting and waiting in darkness.