Spread the word: Peace
My new mantra, less is enough, consumes my world.
My poetry has become “succinct.” Restore and Goodwill’s shelves are full of my burger belongings. I give away books. (Free libraries rejoice). Less IS enough. Consider a world with fewer guns, tanks, uniforms, shields, violence, fear, eruptions of rage, jealousy, frowns and harsh voices.
Thich Naht Hahn wrote, “Peace is every step.” Wendell Berry shows this in a poem.
There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes,
and the way
is not a way but a place
Consider compassion. The Dalai Lama wrote, “With kindness, with love and compassion, the essence of brotherhood and sisterhood, one will have inner peace.” Oscar Romero adds, “Peace is generosity.”
Peace is on my mind. Imagine how it would be if families were at peace (a good place to begin.) Suppose we built bridges instead of walls?
I live in Asheville. I seek peace out doors, our garden, mountain trails, the Arboretum. Wendell Berry writes:
Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet
Where can we find quiet? This is one noisy world! Again, Wendell is on it!
The world of machines is running
Beyond the world of trees
Where only a leaf is turning
In a small high breeze
Roget’s Thesaurus, one of my favorite writing tools, a lot like the trowel I use in the garden to get at the root of things, has these synonymns for peace: harmony, accord, serene, calm, armistice, quiet, order, nonaggression, and truce.
This poem, by Robert Bly, a Minnesota poet. Indeed, this poem is the reason for this month’s column. It is his fault. I read his poem, Call and Answer, and was filled with the duty to “cry out.”
Call and Answer
August 2002
Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?
I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”
We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing: they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.
Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.
How come we’ve listened to the great criers – Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass – and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?
Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.
by Robert Bly
I could not finish without one of my favorite William Stafford poems.
This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.
Birds fly here with any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed – or were killed – on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.
by William Stafford
Peace for the earth and its creatures
peace for the world and its peoples
peace for our fathers
peace for our mothers
peace for our brothers and sisters.
The peace of heaven’s vastness
the peace of ocean depths
the peace of earth’s stillness
to bless us in the night
to bless us this night.
~ from Praying with the Earth by John Philip Newell
Shalom – Carol Bjorlie