One Still Place

One Still Place
​​wire, paper, light

Original poem, written to accompany the sculpture:

One Still Place: Meditation on Psalm 46

Can you feel the tectonic plates
shifting underfoot? The great
chaos forcing mountains to
crumble and be eaten by the
earth, swallowed by the sea?

Can you see the angry flood
rising, a wall of water intent
on slamming all with suffocating death?

There is only one safe place.

What of all our human power?
Our nations set up like dams,
canals and jetties to hold back
the raging of enemies, human and otherwise.
In all our raging and bomb dropping
the story history tells us is one
of tottering folly, each power
subservient to the rumble of God’s “enough.”

It is not us who make wars end.
It is the Life Breather who
melts down the AK47s
who repurposes the bomb
for a life-giving energy source.

There is only one safe place.
Only one city shows rivers
overflow life to all cities.
Only one kingdom whose medicine
is glad laughter tumbling
unceasingly from the lips of
the children here, where every one
is a princess or a prince.

There is only one safe place.
Behind the lines of the angel army
that wages peace to the ends of the earth.

There is only one still place.
In the lap of the one
seated on the throne,
snuggled between the two strong arms
of the Lord of hosts who is with us.

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