The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
and while I am making my way,
someone else steps down ahead of me.”
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
—John 5.7-8
Around the angels and the waters
Jesus skirts,
far from the pool of your will,
your ability, your resolve, your place,
the dice of who is next,
while those who know
trouble the waters of opinion.
The healer knows more of sickness
than the sick.
Never mind the clamor as the air stirs.
Beneath the crowd of noises within
he says quietly, whispers even,
like ripples of troubled waters,
what echoes so quietly, echoes
in the little portico of your heart,
beyond all desiring or deserving
and all that isn’t healed:
Stand up, take your mat, and walk.
No running by the pool.
_________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
ww.unfoldinglight.net