Where Answers Fail
--Jonathan Galbraith
We have learned to fill the silence
with noise that sounds like living—
screens that glow like borrowed suns,
voices speaking without seeing.
We build our towers out of answers,
stacked high against the sky,
but somewhere in the scaffolding
we forgot to ask why.
A man can map the stars to atoms,
trace the age of distant light,
yet still lie awake and wonder
what makes a soul feel right.
We’ve conquered miles and minutes,
bent the world to speed and will—
but the ancient ache within us
sits, unmeasured, waiting still.
It whispers in the quiet moments
we’re so careful to avoid,
not cruel, not loud, just patient—
a question shaped like void.
Not all progress moves us forward.
Not all clarity is sight.
Some truths arrive like breaking—
a fracture made of light.
And maybe what we’re chasing
isn’t out there, vast, unknown,
but something far more costly:
to finally be alone—
not lonely, but uncovered,
with no pretense left to tend,
to face the silent question
we’ve outpaced but never end.
And in that stillness—stripped of all
we thought we had to be—
there stirs a deeper calling,
not from us, but through us—free.
A voice not born of echo,
nor shaped by fear or claim,
but ancient as the longing
that has always known our name.
Not emptiness, but presence.
Not silence, but a call—
the hunger was not aimless;
it was pointing all along.
For buried in the question,
where all our striving trod,
the answer waits, unshaken—
the quiet pull toward God.
Apr 5
Apr 5, 2026 at 1:26 PM UTC
Where Answers Fail
--Jonathan Galbraith
We have learned to fill the silence
with noise that sounds like living—
screens that glow like borrowed suns,
voices speaking without seeing.
We build our towers out of answers,
stacked high against the sky,
but somewhere in the scaffolding
we forgot to ask why.
A man can map the stars to atoms,
trace the age of distant light,
yet still lie awake and wonder
what makes a soul feel right.
We’ve conquered miles and minutes,
bent the world to speed and will—
but the ancient ache within us
sits, unmeasured, waiting still.
It whispers in the quiet moments
we’re so careful to avoid,
not cruel, not loud, just patient—
a question shaped like void.
Not all progress moves us forward.
Not all clarity is sight.
Some truths arrive like breaking—
a fracture made of light.
And maybe what we’re chasing
isn’t out there, vast, unknown,
but something far more costly:
to finally be alone—
not lonely, but uncovered,
with no pretense left to tend,
to face the silent question
we’ve outpaced but never end.
And in that stillness—stripped of all
we thought we had to be—
there stirs a deeper calling,
not from us, but through us—free.
A voice not born of echo,
nor shaped by fear or claim,
but ancient as the longing
that has always known our name.
Not emptiness, but presence.
Not silence, but a call—
the hunger was not aimless;
it was pointing all along.
For buried in the question,
where all our striving trod,
the answer waits, unshaken—
the quiet pull toward God.