Eventually, Bodhi’s early existential questions fade. As a high school senior, fascinated by history, Bodhi visits the southside of the Mountain of Mortality on a field trip organized by the modern Church of the Weeping Willow. After a long flight, Bodhi boards a bus that drives into Sodom on its way to the hotel. 

Bodhi looks out the window and says to himself, shocked:

what am i seeing

people living in tin

suffering from poverty

while the wealthy grin

in streams of sewage

innocent children do stand 

flies swarm the butchered meat

trash chokes the broken land

dust hangs thick in the sunlight

smoke curls through the street

eyes follow from the shadows

where hunger and heat meet

how can they live

in a place without hope

what can be done

how to help them cope

i must get involved

understand suffering’s strife

help mend what seems broken

and make this work my life

Later in the trip, the students visit the Promised Land. As they arrive at the Wailing Wall, Bodhi stands in awe of the countless people bowing in rapid rhythm, their bodies seething with devotion, foreheads pressed against the stone, rocking as one body. 

He watches pilgrims pressing folded notes into the cracks between stones, darkened by countless hands, as if feeding a beast. As Bodhi steps closer, an old man wearing a simple uniform approaches and says: 

welcome visitor
to these surviving stones
the last breath of a house
where heaven touches bones

i am called shomer
a keeper, not a guide
i watch what gathers here
and what the stones decide

this wall was never meant
to stand alone in time
it marks what is not healed
when the sacred fell from rhyme

the prayers are pressed like seeds
into each fractured seam
hoping time remembers
what history broke mid-dream

the stones do not reply
yet tremble with intent
as if they know how often
waiting turns to consent

Bodhi stands silently for a moment and then responds:

and what of the killing
done in god’s own name
how does faith survive
that kind of holy flame

i see devotion here
but something chills the air

a hush that comes before command

when mercy is not there 

Shomer responds:

when endings are declared
and truth’s vulnerability shown

 some trade trembling hands

for laws carved out of stone

flock come to mourn what failed
some beg for what must start
some wait for the fire to fall
and burn the human heart

our wall is a doorway

leading time to cease

when the messiah comes

with judgment and peace

the end of days
will mend what’s undone
but many can’t wait for god
to finish what has begun

so they prepare the ground
with borders, blood, and law
and call the work obedience
to still their private awe

remember this young one
the wall does not demand
but those who claim it speaks
are always ready to command

Bodhi watches as Shomer disappears back into the rhythm of prayer. The Wall hums with devotion, yet something beneath it unsettles him – something quieter, but harder. Leaving, he cannot shake the feeling that what he has witnessed is not only faith, but the moment before faith becomes command. 

Bodhi carries that unease home with him. With that quiet weight still resting in his mind, Bodhi enrolls in the Willow School.