In the Face of War, I’m So Small – Yet, Love is So Big

I can’t make the
world be peaceful
I can’t stall tanks
from roaring down streets
I can’t prevent children
from having to hide in bunkers
I can’t convince the news to
stop turning war into a video game
I can’t silence the sound of bombs
tearing neighborhoods apart
I can’t transform a guided missile
into a bouquet of flowers
I can’t make a warmonger
have an ounce of empathy

I can’t convince ambassadors
to quit playing truth or dare
I can’t deflect a sniper’s bullet
from turning a wife into a widow
I can’t stave off a country from being
reduced to ash and to rubble

I can’t do any of that
the only thing I can do
is to love the next person I encounter
without any strings or conditions
to love my neighbor
so fearlessly that
it causes a ripple
that stretches from
one horizon to the next

I can’t force peace
upon the world
but I can become a force
of peace in the world
because sometimes
sometimes all it takes
is a candle, a single candle
lit in the darkness
to start a movement

“Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace”

--John Roedel

See with Every Turning Day

 

See with every turning day,

how each season wants to make

a child of you again, wants you to become

a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,

watch how it weathers you to a testing

in the tried and true, tells you

with each falling leaf, to leave and slip away,

even from the branch that held you,

to be courageous, to go when you need to,

to be like that last word you’d want to say

before you leave the world.

--David Whyte

Sometimes

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering

bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop

what you are doing

right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

--David Whyte

[Krista Tippett's Ted Talk on Living the Questions].

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyOcTu8B2IP/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Voltaire Quote

 

 

"Those who can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities"

--Voltaire

Things

 

What happened is, we grew lonely

living among the things,

so we gave the clock a face,

the chair a back,

the table four stout legs

which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues

as smooth as our own

and hung tongues inside bells

so we could listen

to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles

the pitcher received a lip,

the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us

was recast in our image;

we gave the country a heart,

the storm an eye,

the cave a mouth

so we could pass into safety.

--Lisel Mueller

[Photo of bell at the Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, NY.]

Crossroads

My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young —

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —

My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.

--Louise Glück (Vermont Poet Laureate and Nobel-Winning writer who crossed over October 13, 2023) 

October 10

 

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds
loud—a landmark—now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.

--Wendell Berry