a call to apprentices in meekness

(after e.e. cummings)

listen—

     the hammers have fallen asleep  
     & even the nails  
          have forgotten their names  

somewhere  
     (between a whisper  
          and a workbench)  
the master is humming  
     the silence that made you  


you—  
     with your bright sharp  
          explanations,  
     your need to shine  
          like an unblinking sun—  

put them down.  


          (meekness isn’t  
               what you think  
                    it is)  


it’s a door that doesn’t lock,  
     a hand that doesn’t close.  
it’s knowing you could  
     shatter something—  
          and choosing instead  
               to breathe.  


the grain of the wood  
     is a psalm if you listen  
          with your wrists.  
the sawdust a cloud  
     of prayers nobody claims.  


be slower.  
unlearn thunder.  


in this room  
     of unspoken tools  
          you are being built—  
               not into a statue  
                    but a tenderness.  


and when you leave,  
     (do leave—)  
          leave the dust  
               on your palms.  

it looks good on you,  
     this gentle  
          unfinishedness.

An apprentice does not master a craft through lectures alone. 

He watches, imitates, and practices under the eye of the master. 

In the same way, James teaches that wisdom is shown “by good conduct” (James 3:13), not by clever words.

To apprentice in meekness is to enter Christ’s workshop, where truth is shaped into obedience. 

It is where knowledge becomes muscle, and understanding moves through the wrists, steady, responsive, and guided by the grain of His will. 

Wisdom’s proof is not what we can say, but what we quietly build with our hands and hearts.