As we approach the end of the year and the end of my first semester with common cathedral, I am feeling reflective on my experience with this community and everything they have taught me. I decided for this week’s post I would challenge myself to write a collection of haikus about my experience thus far. Haiku is not my go-to poetry format, but I find it helpful when I want to condense a lot of feelings and ideas into a succinct space.

Here’s what I came up with:

as it gets colder
community grows warmer
come inside and stay

we are complex folk
but laughter makes us simple
we meet ourselves there

the wheels keep turning
the fire we built stays burning
home is where we are

and when we forget
that faith is our natural state
we come back around

trusting the process
hope the process trusts us back
we’ll end up somewhere

strong enough to find
better answers than the ones
that are before us

This last haiku is a direct quote from our community member Chandra, who said this during a prayer in Bible study last Friday. Because it was so beautifully said, I immediately wrote it down in the Notes app of my phone. While writing this, I realized the quote naturally fits the syllable structure of a haiku!

That’s all from me this week. Next week we will be premiering Richie Berman’s play, “Fix the Damn Sidewalk”, at 1pm. Come make it if you can, and spread the word!

–Mary Schwabenland