Night spills across the earth like oil,
thick with the hush of waiting.
I slip between waking and the deep unseen,
where time is unstitched and silence sings.
I stand at the doors of the church,
stones heavy with the breath of ages,
wood worn smooth by a thousand nameless hands.
Inside,
shadows gather among the pews,
the living and the dead whispering together,
waiting, always waiting.
The door opens.
A man steps forward,
woven in the fabric of wealth and privilege,
his hands soft with the ease of power.
Upon his wrist,
the world ticks in silent numbers,
measuring moments he believes he owns.
The air shifts around him,
and I, too, am drawn into his gravity.
“Welcome,” I say,
“sit in the seat of honour,
where the air does not bite,
where comfort folds itself around you like a blessing.”
Then another enters.
A shape, a whisper,
a wound in the fabric of the world.
His hood drawn tight,
his skin etched with dark runes,
his face lined with years he has not yet lived.
The storm still clings to him,
the echoes of exile.
A smell lingers in the air.
Something in me pulls away,
an old reflex,
a learned fear.
“Stand there,” I murmur,
“there is space in the shadows.”
But shadows do not hold silence.
A wind rises,
not of this world,
a breath from the hollow places,
where heaven’s wildness breaks through the cracks.
Above me, unseen wings stir the air,
and the Wild Goose of Love sings.
Not in words, but in fire.
Not in sentences, but in storm.
She cries from the hidden places,
from the heart of the forgotten,
from the wound of the world itself:
“I love both. I call both.
Yet it is the broken I gather first,
the lost I fold beneath My wing.
For those who are whole do not seek healing,
but those who are shattered long for my touch.
Blessed are they who hunger.
Blessed are they who weep.
Blessed are they who have nothing
but the ache of longing.”
And the dream shifts.
I stand now in a place without borders,
where the fabric of the earth is thin,
A holy space,
where time bends into a single breath.
Before me, a table,
long as eternity,
a banquet displayed,
woven from cross and covenant,
from hope and lament.
At its head, a figure—
not draped in power,
but wrapped in the hush of mercy,
wounds still fresh, a wounded brow,
eyes deep with a love that kisses the earth.
His hands rest upon the table’s edge,
scarred, open, waiting.
And they come.
Not the kings, nor the privileged,
but the ones the world unmade,
the ones with voices like broken bells,
the wounded, the traumatised, the sick,
the ones forgotten, the marginalised,
the ones whose prayers died in their mouths.
They take their place,
not as beggars,
but as the firstborn.
They are the sons and daughters the Father always wanted.
And I see it now—
the Kingdom does not stand with the strong,
it welcomes the weak,
gathers in the low places,
seeps into the cracks of a world that has forgotten how to love.
I turn to the One at the table,
the One with nail-scarred hands,
the One who knows the weight of every name,
the One who will wipe away every tear.
“Lord,” I whisper,
“what of the rich? What of the strong?”
His gaze does not waver.
“They, too, are welcome.
But the door is low, and few will bow to enter.
All are welcome, but the last shall be first.”
And above me, the Wild Goose sings again,
her cry a shattering,
her cry a summons,
her cry a wind that will not be tamed.
The table stretches.
The light deepens.
The welcome does not end.
He washes their feet.
He binds their wounds.
And I wake,
the weight of the dream settling in my bones,
the fire of it burning deep within my heart.
I rise,
step toward the threshold,
and open the doors wide.
——
Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025
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