Where Were You When the War Broke Open?

Kaleidoscope Tea Time for This Threshold Week

Sarah Skinner, Kaleidoscope Institute, June 2025

---

Dear friends,

This week, we’re offering our evening tea time a little differently—on a Sunday night. I hope you didn’t miss me too much (or maybe I do hope you missed me, because we’re friends—and I missed you).

This week, I was living my other life as a conference planner: 700 singers, 305 handbells, 16 chalices and communion baskets, 40 loaves of communion bread… and one raccoon (that’s a story). After all that, I found myself here on a quiet night, hoping to share tea with a friend.

As someone who helps plan “church,” I sometimes find myself seeking church in the hush between moments. This weekend, I found it walking through the Smoky Mountains at night, looking for a rare kind of firefly—Phausis reticulata, or the blue ghost firefly.

That’s where I was when I heard the news of war—beneath evergreens and endless sky, searching for small miracles.
I thought about my heart.
I thought about you.

Tonight, a friend told me she was hurting. I asked if I could place my hand gently on her shoulder.

Let this poem be that hand.
Let it be a reminder:
The Holy One is beside you.

---

Image credit: National Park Service, Beilenberg, 2025

Where Were You When the War Broke Open?

I was in the mountains
watching blue ghost fireflies
make stars in the underbrush.

I was lying on my back on cracked concrete
naming constellations with the god I love
and the headlines whispered war.

The stars did not have answers
I did not have answers.
I still don’t.

But I have the breath in my lungs
and I have the Holy One Who Stays
beside me.

And I have friends who sit counting miracles —light dancing the sky.
We looked for hope in each firefly, each satellite, each star, and plane.
I looked for where the Holy One wrote
love in the language of lightning bugs

In the distance, the flash of a storm answers
and in that light, I see you—
a spark in your eyes that sings like starlight

So now I've come to sit beside you
To place my hand on your shoulder
to ask softly:

Where were you, beloved,
when the war broke open?

Were you folding laundry,
or reading to your child at bedtime,
or finishing your sermon for Sunday?

I remember a war from my childhood
I remember where I was when the towers fell.

Is there a sorrow, a rage, or something you don't have the words for resting in your heart?

I remember wondering,
Begging with my heart to know
When someone would say enough.

I whispered to the Holy One: I am not ready for this
You don’t need to be ready.

I whispered to the Holy One: I am not good enough to stop this.
You don’t need to be good enough. You are enough.

I whispered to the Holy One: I don't know how to fix this.
You don’t need to fix it.
You need only to feel,
To be present for love.
To let your longing for enough become more than silence.
To let yourself be held by question instead of crushed by an answer.

Holy One, I am angry.
Holy One, I feel like screaming

You are right to be angry.
You are right to feel it in your bones.
You are right to want to fix it.
You are love refusing to go numb.

That scream in your heart is the sound of someone who still believes the world might listen.
That scream is your heart, unwilling to step over someone else's body just to keep walking.

Holy One, I am screaming
but praying for mercy
let this prayer be carried
like mountain wind.

But I don’t want to just sit in the feeling.
I want to fix it.
Don’t you?

I want to scream until the sky rips open
and drops the truth onto everyone’s doorstep.
I want every leader who ever called fire down
to fall to their knees and weep
choking on the ashes they've made of our dreams.

I want our children to get to live their lives.
That’s it.

I want the children to live.
All of them. Here, and across the sea.
I'm weeping for all of us.

And the Holy One whispered,
Tonight, in my arms, it's okay to grieve.
Grief is not in the way of action.
Grief is action.
Grief means we haven’t gone numb.
Grief means love is still present in the room.

So if all you can do today is feel it?
That’s not giving up.
That’s staying human.

The stars did not have answers
And you don't have to have the answers.
You just have to stay human.

The fireflies?
They are trying to find each other in the dark.

But I've already found you.
I've already found the Holy One.
And tonight? I'm beside you, too.

So whenever you read this,
remember: we can begin again.
One breath.
One step forward.
One quiet act of mercy
that spells love.

With love,

Sarah