After the Noise

Do not come to me now

in the rush.

Not in the swell of the room.

Not in the chase

for one more high place,

one more moment

to prove you are here.

I am tired

of mistaking intensity

for presence.

Tired of thinking

you must always arrive

in thunder,

in tears,

in the room lifting itself

towards the rafters.

No.

Come as the whisper.

Come as the breath

that barely moves

the dust in the chapel light.

Come as that still small voice

that does not force itself

through the speakers

but waits

for the noise to fall.

I do not need

another mountain.

I need the road.

I need the slow miles

where love learns

to walk again.

For perhaps your kingdom

comes less like fire

and more like yeast.

A patient ferment.

Something hidden

working through the whole.

Not spectacle.

Not the sudden rush

that leaves the body empty

by morning.

But the quiet work.

The slow work of love.

Like dough rising

under a tea towel

in the dark kitchen.

Like roots

going down

where no one claps.

Like rain

entering dry ground

one drop at a time.

This is harder grace.

To trust what cannot be felt.

To believe

that healing may come

without drama.

That holiness

might look like washing up,

answering the text,

putting one foot

in front of the other,

showing up

without needing to soar.

Meet me there.

In the ordinary.

In bread and kettle steam.

In the walk home

under a bruised evening sky.

In the silence

after the singing stops

and the room

is only a room again.

Teach me

not to chase the summit.

Teach me

not to hunger

for the spiritual high

as though love were adrenaline.

For I have known

the crash that follows.

The ache.

The emptiness.

The sense that if I do not feel it

then perhaps you have gone.

But you have not gone.

You are in the ferment.

In the hidden leaven.

In the slow undoing

of fear.

In the long, holy patience

by which the heart

learns not ecstasy

but trust.

And if I still reach

for the noise,

sit with me.

Stay long enough

for my breathing to slow.

Long enough

for the old panic

to loosen its grip.

Long enough

for me to know

that love need not shout

to be real.

That your kingdom comes

not always in flame

but in embers,

not always in wind

but in breath,

not always in the heights

but in the deep,

dark,

fruitful earth

where grace

takes its time

-Rev’d Jon Swales