The Temple Builders
The temple builders
are mostly tired I think,
not visionaries,
so much as laborers.
Moving one stone at a time
with calloused hands
and long ropes—
using strength and
leverage and hope.
One lifetime,
one corner,
one stone,
is not the scale
we aspire to.
We want the finished temple
before us at the end of the day.
We want to stand back
and admire our finished work,
certainly not our daily labor,
one simple stone.
It isn’t some higher calling
that gets them up each morning.
No, it is the old woman
who lived through
the dark years, the dark days,
when no temples were built,
except deep, deep in the heart
where they could not be found
or destroyed.
She knows,
though they do not,
why they must build the temples,
shifting them out of their hearts,
and onto the soil,
one stone at a time.
In morning dark,
she rouses them without apology,
for she knows
that without them
the temples will crumble
and be buried in the hearts
of those who have
carried them for so long.
Now is the time for labor,
she says,
and she hands them
a pail of rice.
This has built temples for centuries,
she says,
and she doesn’t mean the rice
Someone must hold the vision,
she says,
and she doesn’t mean the temple,
or at least not the whole temple,
but the single stone
they will move today.
© 2025 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD