Some say that we live our lives
in ordinary time, fraught in a world
beyond our comprehension, beyond
our control, and not the ordinary time
of the church, which is now anything
but ordinary as we must live it.
People talk of the new normal as if
furious that abnormality can be normalized
by labeling it as such, rather than acting
to return things to the old normality.
We live in fear of so much, of so many,
looking for someone, something
to magically appear and assuage it.
So much of life goes unlived as we
struggle to live a different life while
this one, for better or worse, the only one,
goes on around us, paying us no heed.