– The Many Faces of One Humanity

[Poem as Reading the Bible]

After the waters,
after the ark,
after the mountain
rose again from silence,
the earth began
to breathe.

A dove returned
with an olive leaf—
small as a whisper,
yet enough to tell the heart:

Life is returning.

And Noah’s sons
stood beneath the widening sky—
Shem, Ham, Japheth—
three branches
from one wounded tree.

From them
the nations gathered,
and the earth became
a thousand faces.

One people became many,
one tongue became many tongues,
one memory became
a multitude of memories.

And yet—

beneath the names,
beneath the borders,
beneath the songs
that rose in distant lands,

there remained
one breath.

One earth.
One sky.
One human story.

A tree does not cease
to be one tree
because its branches
turn toward different winds.

So perhaps
difference is not the enemy
of unity.

Perhaps the Holy One
never desired
a world without difference,

but a world
in which difference
could become harmony.

I read the names
in this ancient genealogy
and wonder:

How many lives
are hidden inside them?

How many mothers
waiting beside a fire?

How many fathers
returning from the field?

How many children
looking upward
into an unfamiliar night?

How many travelers,
farmers, builders,
strangers and dreamers
whose names have vanished
from human memory—

yet none
from the memory of God?

We count generations.

God remembers faces.

We draw borders.

God remembers breath.

We call one another
stranger,
foreigner,
enemy—

but the image of God
does not disappear
when a human hand
draws a line.

Humanity is a tapestry
still being woven,

thread beside thread—

sorrow beside hope,
memory beside memory,
wound beside wound.

And though the cloth
may seem torn,

the Weaver
has not abandoned it.

I have lived
inside this mystery.

Born on one shore,
I crossed an ocean,

carried one homeland
inside another,

learned another language,

walked between cultures,
between memories,
between worlds.

Perhaps every immigrant
knows something
of Genesis 10—

that the earth is larger
than the place
where we were born.

That home
can travel with us.

That memory
can cross the sea.

That God
is not confined
to one language,
one people,
one nation,
one history.

At seventy-seven,
I look again
upon the many faces
of humanity.

The years have taught me
how easily we make
a small world
inside a larger one,

how quickly
we mistake our own room
for the whole house of God.

Lord,
companion of my soul,

teach me to listen
before I judge,

to learn a name
before I make a category,

to see a face
before I see a border,

to build a bridge
where fear has built a wall.

For what is a nation
if it forgets humanity?

What is a language
if it cannot speak mercy?

What is faith
if it has no room
for the stranger?

The Creator’s table
is larger than my table.

The song of the earth
is greater than my song.

Not one voice,
but many.

Not one color,
but the turning spectrum
of creation.

Not uniformity,
but harmony.

Not sameness,
but belonging.

And perhaps
this is the old mystery:

we become whole
not by becoming one thing,

but by learning
how many things
may dwell together
without destroying
one another.

So let the branches grow.

Let the languages rise.

Let distant peoples
sing beneath distant stars.

Let every face
remain a face,

every name
remain a name,

every life
a sacred syllable
in the unfinished poem
of God.

You belong.

They belong.

We belong.

The earth belongs
to all of us.

And all of us
belong to God.

The ancient names
fall slowly into silence.

But the breath remains.

And the journey
begins again.