We once lived inside a voice
in a garden green and gold.
All we needed we were told.
We listened and we learned to hold
all hope and longing in a choice
to nod Amen and give God fame
as we were planted in one name.
But we were blinded by the chance
that we might be a voice alone.
We offered up our flesh and bone
to grasp at what we could not own,
and so began a restless dance
between old glory and new shame
as we left behind the ancient name.
A tower we thought we could build
to make our measure something seen,
a structure that would never lean
but mark us each as king and queen
so we could keep ourselves fulfilled.
But this was all a fragile game.
Our tongues were sundered by the name.
We wandered then and wander still,
across the hills, across the sea,
enslaved by what we thought was free
and groping for divinity,
as if we were not wholly ill,
and were not fading from the flame
that burns within the name.
Still with patient grace God spoke
and sang a savior into sight,
one from himself for men to fight
and bring us all into his light.
From deathly sleep we all awoke
and found a covering for our shame,
knit from that eternal name.
It should have been that all was lost
and scattered souls from hope depart,
but God gave his unending heart
to call us back from worlds apart.
And on a day called Pentecost,
the voice set flame to earthly blame
and called us home into the name.
Stone to stone and seam to seam,
the Spirit crafts and shapes and sands,
uniting strange and distant lands
into a frame marked in God’s hands,
holes where holy love was dreamed.
God builds to show the world he came
And readies rooms within his name.