March 25, 2012

Another lovely morning.  Sunday, and except for the one mockingbird trying to impress a lady, it's very quiet.  Sunlight is warming up the trees and the cane.  My heron statue is standing in a little pool of taller grass, stately and observant.  There is not a bit of wind this morning, haze blues the trees across in the park, and fades the sky to the merest hint of blue.  Rarely is the air so still.

It's the morning for the blessing, Sunday, and it lives up to its name today!  I know the farmers are worried about things like asparagus sprouting, and apricots and apples blooming so early, and I know their life depends on these things but it's hard to believe, here anyway, that there will be more cold this year.  Even up north, it's been in the low 80s for several days.  I think this year we are just having a long slow warm spring that will soon enough be summer.   The seasons in Houston . . . almost summer, summer, still summer, not quite summer.   And I am not unhappy about that one little bit.

For today a poem with an title that caught my eye . . . Wage Peace.  It was written after 9/11, all poems from that time on are written after 9/11 no matter what they say.  This one has something that can be said every day, good advice for living in any world.

 Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out
sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music,
Learn the word for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
Imagine grief as the out-breath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Don't wait another minute.
Celebrate today!  

Judyth Hill (9/11/01)

I like . . . remember your tools . . . seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.  Daily things that are useful and bring in the freshness of outside to our interior life.  Breathe in confusion and breath out maple trees . . . vote for life!  Swim for the other side.  That's sometimes a hard thing, to set out swimming for the other side, you have to believe you will get there, you have to have something to aim at, you have to have some faith the water will hold you up and that if you trust it you will survive.  I love that this poem is full of the ordinary things we do, make a hat, say thank you, play music.  I wonder if it's possible to wage peace as fiercely as we have waged war.  The problem with peace seems to be there has never been any, at any time in the world, someone is always making war, civil war, now there's an oxymoron, world war, tribal war, local war . . . conflict seems to be built in to every human civilization.  Someone always wants what someone else has, power, territory, goods.  Someone wants people to believe the same way they do, and everyone has a belief and so many believe only their belief is the right one.  People are afraid of difference, they think different is bad, or wrong, or unacceptable.  They want to get rid of difference, different skin, different history, different faith.  It seems that the people who want to wage peace will have to be the most extreme kind of warrior in a world where war is the norm.  They will have to police themselves with all the vigor others wish to police the world.  They will have to love all people, not just the ones like themselves, they will have to act peacefully, they will have to swim with sharks and not become sharks.  They will have to celebrate each day, and treat with everyone, call everyone family, forgive the unforgiveable.  Even while writing this I can see such a task will be daunting, but we have begin somewhere.  We are not asked to be perfect in our love, just that we begin to love in that way, that we make the effort to live only in love.

For today, I am swimming for the other side, through this lovely day, this morning of freshness, I am celebrating today with every breath!  It is a beginning.