This voice that we have from our new President is not a new voice, but a voice that has listened, learned, and stepped into it's own place. Today a friend sent me one of Mary Oliver's poems...a reminder of how this "change" manifests itself one moment and one action at a time.....let's remember that we get to "Wage Peace"
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwind 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 outbreath 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.
Comments
Wage Peace was shared all over the internet(wonderfully! I am so grateful!) but somewhere along the line, it picked up the wrong attribution (Mary Oliver) and an incorrect last line! If you Google Wage Peace, and especially, if you visit Elephant Journal, you will see the many instances attributing the poem to me, and the many instances correcting wrong attributions to Mary Oliver.
I am very happy to see Wage Peace here, thank you. I am hoping you would please change the authorship and the last line! Thank you, All Blessings,
Judyth Hill
judythhill@gmail.com
WAGE PEACE
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing 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, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath 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.
Celebrate today.
Judyth Hill ~ September 11, 2001