The Temple Builders

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