The Sacred Ordinary is a blog series originating from a writing course led by Ellie Roscher for the Collegeville Institute, centering on the sacred ordinary. The authors read and wrote essays designed to make ordinary moments shine, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share these essays with the Church Anew audience. 

Those rhythms of shapes pulled out of clouds,           

drawn from the heads of trees?

No connection

to me.

Car windows on the highway

which pulse red, as sun sets,

while children sleep in a backseat.

Not mine.

Yet, shadows flicker on sidewalks

blink, nod, wink their heads. 

The trees full of eyelids.

As if 

they are kin.

Rain comes in sheets. 

Night billows below the streetlamps

in patterns too complex

to understand

or sleep.

But, when finally, I learn the ring-ness of human things,

how rhythms pulled away aren’t left behind at all.

I know I walk in shoes that are not mine.

I walk in patterns pulled from clouds, 

the pulsing red of suns, 

and the tossing heads of trees.

Nothing left behind at all,

but snapped into shapes as old as grace.