Daily Sauntering

Seventy-three years—

and still
you teach the morning
how to bloom.

Your hands
have painted love
into our home,

your heart
has turned ordinary days
into grace.

Each day I give thanks to God.

Long before we met,
He prepared someone
so beautiful,
so kind,
so gracious,
and so lovely
to walk beside me.

In you,
God has given me
a life of comfort,
of blessing,
and of quiet happiness.

For this,
my heart overflows
with gratitude—
every single day.

Thank you
for walking beside me
through every season,
sharing every joy,
and carrying every burden
with love.

May God’s light
continue to shine upon you,

and may your life
keep flowering
with joy,
peace,
gentleness,
and quiet beauty.

Happy 73rd Birthday,
my beloved.

With all my love,

TaeHun, July 17, 2026

https://www.facebook.com/wanhee.yoon

The deepest beauty of Gyeongbokgung
does not rest
in painted eaves,
weathered pillars,
or roofs
that lift themselves
toward the Korean sky.

Neither is it found
only among ancient pines,
where the wind
recites forgotten dynasties,
nor in the careful hands
that once measured
wood and stone
into harmony.

Its true beauty
dwells within a people—

a people
who remember
what flames could never erase.

Kingdoms collapsed.
Palaces were consumed.
History bent
beneath invasion,
division,
and the long labor
of grief.

Yet the first design
never vanished.

Hidden beneath ash,
it waited
like a seed
sleeping through winter,
holding within itself
the memory of spring.

So the phoenix returns.

Not because
it has escaped the fire,
but because
it has learned
that fire
cannot destroy
its original song.

Stone rises again.
Gate follows gate.
Courtyard answers courtyard.

But what has truly returned
is not architecture.

It is the quiet courage
of a nation
remembering
its own face.

At Hyangwonji,
the moon lays
its white silence
upon the water,
as though heaven itself
were reading
the ancient heart of Korea.

At Gyeonghoeru,
where earth
offers its reflection
to the sky,
the unseen spirit
of the people
walks among the columns,
gentle as evening light.

Simple,
yet inexhaustible.

Radiant,
yet without pride.

Tonight,
across the Pacific,
another moon
rises over my home.

Its silver path
crosses oceans,
mountains,
and the years
until it arrives
within my heart.

Then I know—

distance
has never measured
the homeland.

The homeland
lives wherever
memory remains faithful,
where love
still bows
before its beginning.

For the greatest palace
is never built
of cedar,
granite,
or gold.

It is raised
within the human spirit—

where hope
survives every ruin,
where beauty
is reborn
from faithful remembrance,

and where,
like the eternal phoenix,

a nation
rises again,

bearing light
for generations
yet to come.

— TaeHun Yoon
July 23, 2026 (Edited)

It was my birthday.

The morning came
as every birthday morning comes—
light entering quietly,
birds rehearsing
their ordinary hymns.

Yet far away,
over Houston,
another morning
lost its way.

Houston—
the city that once
lifted human footprints
toward the moon,
the city that taught children
to look upward
with wonder,
forgot,
for a moment,
the sacredness
of the earth beneath its feet.

A white work van
crossed Magnolia Park.

Nothing remarkable.

Only working men
carrying their lunches,
their tools,
their unfinished dreams.

Among them
rode Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

For thirty-five years
he had lived in Houston.

He built houses
where strangers became families.

He raised three sons
who called America
their own home.

His hands
left no monument,

only roofs against the rain,
walls filled with laughter,
doors opening
to another tomorrow.

Then,

within a few brief moments,

the ordinary morning
was broken.

A stop.

Confusion.

A gunshot.

Dust rising.

Voices trembling.

One father
did not return home.

Somewhere,
a son heard
his father’s desperate cry
through the small window
of a phone.

No child
should inherit
such a memory.

I do not know
every truth
of that morning.

But I know this.

Life
does not belong
to those who carry authority.

Life belongs
to the One
who first bent over dust
and breathed.

Only God
creates life.

Only God
holds its final breath.

Every law
must kneel
before that greater law.

Otherwise,

justice becomes noise,
strength becomes fear,
and power
forgets
its own humanity.

I think
of immigrant hands.

Hands
that harvest fruit,
pour concrete,
hang drywall,
care for the elderly,
prepare our meals,
clean our schools,
build our churches.

Quiet hands.

Faithful hands.

America
stands upon them
more than it knows.

Lorenzo—

your name
is no longer hidden.

It walks
through Houston.

It is carried
by those
who refuse silence.

It is spoken
in prayers,
in marches,
in tears,
and in the quiet hope
that truth
will not remain buried.

Freedom
is not simply
crossing a border.

Freedom
is leaving home
for work
and returning home
to those
who wait at the table.

Justice
is not revenge.

Justice
is truth
walking patiently
until mercy
finds every wounded place.

Even now,

another Voice
echoes across history:

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”

The cry
from Golgotha
has never disappeared.

It still rises
where innocence suffers.

It still waits
for hearts
willing to listen.

Yet beyond the cross,

morning comes.

The stone moves.

The garden breathes again.

The Resurrected Christ
still walks
through fearful cities,

calling every nation
beyond fear,
beyond hatred,
beyond revenge,
toward love.

Perhaps
that is America’s
unfinished journey.

Perhaps
that is Houston’s
greater moonshot—

not reaching
another world,

but learning
to cherish
every life
in this one.

And may July seventh
be remembered,

not only
as the morning
Houston forgot the moon,

but as the morning
when many hearts
began again
to remember

the image of God
shining
within every human face.

– TaeHun Yoon, July 13, 2026

Thirty-eight thousand feet above the earth, feel like as in the Heaven,

the airplane glides through a white silence.

Clouds drift beneath me like unwritten letters.The wing bends gently west to east, stitching continents together with a silver thread.

Canada fades. Alaska loosens its grip. Russia passes beneath like an old dream half remembered at dawn.

And somewhere ahead—

Korea.

Not merely a country, but a pulse beneath layers of time.

A tiny life crosses decades.

Life continues without asking permission from absence.

My thoughts arrive before I do.

The solemn breathing of Brahms’ Requiem rising through a concert hall.

Ancient palaces standing between memory and glass towers.

The restless trains of Seoul carrying millions of stories through the veins of the city.

Fifty years have passed.

The town of my childhood has vanished into highways, apartments, and names I no longer recognize.

Yet disappearanceis not the same as loss.

My mother’s voice remains.

They live in a country no map can display.

Half a century folds inward like the closing pages of a beloved book.

Below me, mountains gather in silence.

Rivers remember their direction.

Roots wait patiently beneath stone and pavement.

Distance becomes memory.

Memory becomes prayer.

And deep beneath history, beneath nations, beneath the noise of every age,

A voice crossing a thousand years, calling from the shore between myth and homeland.

Soon the wheels will touch earth.

Soon I will step again onto the soil that formed me.

Home is not a Place waiting at the end of a journey.

Home is the light carried within the traveler.

It crosses oceans. It survives years.

It sings through every departure.

And at last,

it brings us back to ourselves.

– TaeHun Yoon, June 1, 2026

세월과 우정이 깊은 골짜기로

깊어질 때 즈음

바다건너 고향 땅에

친구들 만나

백발머리 주름 새로 흐르는

그리움이 구름되여

흐드러지네.

“Flow”

As the years pass

and friendship deepens

into a valley worn by time,

I cross the sea

to meet old friends

upon the soil of my homeland.

There, among white hair

and newly etched lines of age,

longing begins to flow again—

gathering like clouds,

drifting softly,

spreading across the sky.

— TaeHun Yoon, June 6, 2026