The world cries beneath its hide,
Religion’s fractures never mending.
Nations split along fault lines made of lies,
And hatreds never ending.
The Holy Land burns again,
Smoke rises in the sky,
And still the whisper can be heard,
If you care to try:
Love one another.
Endless tension, endless blood,
The earth shivers with generations of grief.
Bombs fall like exclamation marks,
A human life is oh so brief.
Walls go up; hearts come down,
The Tree of Life waits patiently.
Its branches open, silent, aching,
Roots trembling for a drop of peace.
And still the call circles the earth,
Known by every child at birth;
Love one another.
Two thousand years ago,
A man gave the world its cure.
He offered the simplest of commands,
Holy, true, and pure.
The world pretends to hear him,
It nods its head and goes back to war.
His warning echoes through the centuries,
And won’t be dismissed forevermore.
His words are written on the heart,
There at the very core:
Love one another.
As endless sorrows multiply,
The cycle of trauma continues.
As children die of starvation,
There’s endless waste of food.
As money is saved and hoarded,
The price of human life is shrinking.
As corporate greed is awarded,
Collective dignity is sinking.
A paradigm built on profit’s wall,
Leaving compassion in tatters,
And above it all,
The heavens strain to be heard,
Crying the only law that matters:
Love one another.
Neighbours curse across their fences,
Families sharpen old offenses;
The rich forget the poor they pass,
The poor forget they fade like grass;
The lonely drift like dying stars;
We plunder oil to fill our cars;
And still the command returns,
Stubborn as hope,
Gentle as dawn,
Love one another.
Oh, how long will it be!
How long until we listen?
How long until the word takes root,
And the seed planted in us glistens?
I sit here with my head in hands,
With creation’s grief imprisoned.
And from the cross in the midst of history,
Where sorrow became a garden,
The answer falls like rain:
Love one another.
