– at St. Mark in Knoxville, TN

They are the living and the late saints,
those acorns under the lawn—
small brown keepsakes fallen
from the old tree’s patient hands.

Not an acorn tree, they say,
but a majestic Oak,
standing before St. Mark
on Northshore Drive,
where traffic hastens toward errands
and eternity keeps its hour.

People misname things,
as people often do with grace:
calling the seed the tree,
calling the branch the root,
calling attendance faith,
calling memory history,
calling this church
a resting place for the soul
on the road from Farragut
and Lenoir City.

Yet the tree says nothing.
It keeps its own counsel
through winters stripped bare,
through summers rich with leaf-song,
through autumn’s yearly wisdom
of letting go.

For the oak has long stood witness
in the Book before our books.
Under oaks, Abraham built altars.
Jacob buried idols at their roots.
Joshua renewed the covenant there.
Gideon received his calling
beneath their shade.

And Isaiah, seeing farther than most,
named God’s people
oaks of righteousness—
lives planted by the Lord,
rooted deep in mercy,
rising steady through the years,
branching wide in kindness,
making room for weary hearts.

Founded in nineteen fifty-six,
when Rocky Hill was still waking wide,
the church rose near its trunk
as hymn rises near breath.
Stewards came, altar guilds came,
Women United in Faith came too.
Brick by brick, vow by vow,
children carried in blankets,
widows leaning on canes,
young couples bright
with plans too large to measure,
all entered the long nave of years.

The roots went downward
where no committee could measure.
The branches reached upward
where no trustee could mend.
And wide they spread—
to kitchens and classrooms,
to playground laughter,
to hands that shaped the chancel broad
like the Lord’s arms opened to all,
to casseroles for sorrow,
to folded hands in waiting rooms,
to names spoken softly
after the benediction.

Who was planted first—
the congregation or the tree?
No archive tells.
The minutes yellow.
The witnesses pass.
Only rings beneath bark
keep count
of what was suffered
and survived.

Storms came.
Ice knew the weight of silence.
Wind practiced its ruin.
Leaves were stripped
as faith is stripped
when prayers seem unanswered.
Still it stood,
not boasting,
only there.

And acorns fell again.

Late saints now living
in the pockets of children,
in youth in-reach,
Fish outreach,
Sacred Choir,
and the Early Enrichment Program;
in the hands of old men,
in the quick surprise of squirrels,
in the dark grammar of earth.

New preachers, too,
budding from hidden roots
in the sacred oak of Rocky Hill—
voices rising where silence once prayed,
growing quietly toward light.

So the dead continue—
not upward only,
but downward and inward,
sowing what they could not stay to see.

For so God grows His Kingdom:
quietly and powerfully,
an acorn splitting underground,
a hidden life becoming shelter,
a small beginning rising slowly
into blessing for the world.

Sometimes churches grow around trees,
and trees around churches.
Sometimes one shades the other.
Sometimes both are wood
made holy by weather.

Stand there at evening.
Listen.
The leaves are not leaves alone.
They are names.
They are amens.
They are many small voices,
still falling,
still beginning.

— TaeHun Yoon, April 23, 2026