Poet, Author, Composer....
Prayer
I went to a five-day workshop year ago just outside of Boston with Kathleen Norris. It was rich. So is this quote: “Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.”—Kathleen Norris
SONG: We Need Plowshares
We Need Plowshares
In Isaiah 2:4 it says “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
I think a great deal of the time many of us feel there is nothing we can do. We live our lives as peacefully as possible but how can any one of us influence governments and those greedy for power? I’m not sure one of us can. But I do believe that ten and twenty, and hundreds and thousands banded together to say “NO” can begin to influence world leaders.
Right now we are headed in an impossible direction and it is going to take many of us to turn things around.
Thinking of my grandchildren, I would sign up in a minute to be one of those thousands who speak up.
Souls and Bodies
C. S. Lewis once said: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
Violence / Non-violence
I believe that today’s quote requires some thinking back through history and what leads to what and why. Here’s the quote: People try nonviolence for a week, and when it doesn’t work, they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.—Theodore Rosak
Life and Meaning
Here’s a quote from Joan Chittister: Life happens quickly but the meaning of it only comes slowly, slowly, slowly.
SONG: People Want Peace So Much
People Want Peace So Much
Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke the words that are the beginning of this song in London in 1959: I wonder when governments will listen to the people? Or, I wonder when the people will insist that their governments “get out of the way” and let them have the peace they want.
It’s a round and it is truly a round between governments and people.
What would it be like to have peace? How long has it been since there has been peace around the world, and no war going on anywhere?
Google that one——but it certainly isn’t now.
So get ready to insist.
SONG: I Didn’t Know
I Didn’t Know
My mother and I had talked together long before she died about her dying. We read books together (for instance, “Last Letter to the Pebble People” by Virginia H. Hine), we had conversations, we wrote about it in letters.
And when I sat by her side the last seventeen hours I thought, “This is it—she is dying.”
But IMMEDIATELY after her death, it was different. There was a part of me that screamed silently “NO.O.O.O.O——I do not accept this. This is not what we were talking about.”
And within months this song came to reinforce what I was feeling—I truly didn’t know what it would be like. I didn’t know how hard it would be. And I wanted her back.
Listen to the wanting.
The Greatest Strength
Here’s a quote we sometimes have a hard time believing. It comes from the book Travels In a Stone Canoe by Harvey Arden and Steve Wall. The quote is: “The greatest strength is gentleness.”
Getting Older
Here’s a quote from Madeline L’Engle: The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
SONG: Peace Makers
Peacemakers
Can you be one? A peacemaker?
I love the last verse: Move toward the vision of peace now created. Stands in its center, move toward the dream. Touch the stranger. Banish the fear and feel wholeness, healing, there is a singing: Blessed are those who make peace for they shall be called the children of God. May I be one of them!
It’s almost a prayer. The last line is a prayer but it’s also a word of determination. A word of commitment.
In my book it promises: I will love my neighbor—even the one across the world that threatens me. I will love my enemy and yet in a way since I love my neighbor I will not call anyone enemy. I will take action wherever I am that is peaceful. I will join with others. I will BE peace.
New Release!!
Daybook of Personal Faith
Mama and Me
