Tag Archives: peace

A Moment for Peace

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I’d find some peace if I just had more time;
quite often now, this notion comes to me.
Not as a nagging fault, but more sublime,
suggesting an impossibility.

But peace is built on just a second’s span
and in that tiny jot of life finds form,
requiring no deliberative plan
except to seek some shelter from the storm.

We think it so elusive that we chase
its shadows, stirring endless clouds of dust,
perpetuating our madness and stress,

instead of calmly waiting in one place,
not worried that our steeled resolve will rust,
or that we’ll give our lives a moment less.

And those great projects we cannot delay,
that we, in endless barter, trade and sell:
these too must pause; their bluster must give way
to quiet lulls and contemplative spells.

For peace cannot be found until the soul
finds in the chaos a low quiet song,
the words of which may seem mundane and droll
to those still lost in the wild, howling throng,

who judge those not in motion as great fools.
With progress, they would manufacture peace
and for a profit, offer it for sale.

But nothing will become of those whose schools
instruct in only war. Until they cease
to use the name of progress, they will fail.

16 FEB 2005

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Imagining

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Too much of what the world has been,
and is, and still might be,
has as its limits what we call
impossibility.

We reign imagination in
and relegate its course
to doomsday visions, worst-case scenes,
and dissipate its force.

But the first step in making change
is picturing it grow;
if we cannot imagine it,
we cannot make it so.

When Lennon said, “Imagine”,
it was not just empty talk,
but an instruction to our souls to crawl,
then try to walk.

Imagine that your point of view
is not all that there is
(to living, love or existence)
and you will learn just this:

That brotherhood and peace and love
were with you all along;
and required only listening
to one another’s song.

28 DEC 2004

for John Lennon

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Peace in Action?

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On one of the communities I manage, someone made a comment that it seems like all the peace-oriented communities are pretty comatose — not a lot of posting activity. This made me wonder about peace-makers, in general.

To me, a peacemaker is not someone who is all that interested in lamenting how non-peaceful other people are. In addition, they don’t necessarily work in groups. Peace, after all, begins with the individual — and anyone who is seriously interested in finding, and making, peace is always going to look at themselves first and root out in their own character, actions and psyche those violent or harmful impulses and manifestations which are antithetical to peace. That means, of course, a constant level of activity for the peacemaker that starts perhaps unperceivably (to the outside world) and radiates outward first to their immediate surroundings — co-workers, family, neighbors and so on. There isn’t a lot of point in organizing a sit-in half-way around the world if you haven’t got your personal act together first.

Marx said it best — the first step in any public revolution is the private revolution. Ramakrishna, talking extemporaneously about 50 years earlier, said it in a different way — unless you have personally experienced God, you’ve got no business preaching or teaching God to anyone else. First, you’ve got to shut up and listen. In other words, change yourself and you have already changed the world.

So I’m not really all that surprised that the “real” peacemakers aren’t clamoring up and down the “peace-oriented” message boards. After all, they’re busy doing what they need to do, despite a world that doesn’t value their efforts (and often doesn’t even realize their effects, because they are assimilated by osmosis, not radical paradigm shifts). For me, it’s enough that people interested in making peace have a refueling station such as peacetrain to pull into and share their experiences, encourage others and when they can, say just a word or two.

To sum up, to me you “make” war. You “spread” peace. The difference is that you can separate war, either philosophically or physically, from yourself.
With peace, that’s not an option. The Creator and Created are One.

Any thoughts?

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There are no words

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There are no words to capture this
exquisite moment of pure bliss
between the grasp and letting go
between the thought and need to know

There are no words that can express
the soft caressing tenderness
of just a second’s quiet peace
between holding and just released

Drowned out by a heartbeat,
its low murmur barely heard
below the gentle cry of stones
that wish to become birds

There are no words that can relate
the edge of time, the end of fate,
between the lines the phrases flow
and not yet sentenced, fade and go.

There are no words to ponder on
from hallowed texts, their marrow gone;
between each page, a film of dust
speaks what it can, to whom it must.

20 DEC 2004

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Late May at Twilight

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The night is late arriving yet again;
and in the day that lingers past its time
it casts tentative shadows, brushed in hues
of lavender and faded rose and blue,

while twilight, holding back its unsure breath
as if it means to swell and burst its seams,
drops only hints its patience has an end
and seems shy and unwilling to intrude

upon the sun’s last monologue, intoned
in barely whispered wisps of light.
It lets the final words slip out, then fade,
as finally, the dark blue curtain falls.

Against this backdrop, gentle mauve and pink,
the distant stars appear like bits of thread;
there is a quiet rustle in the trees,
and suddenly, the cool of evening comes.

27 MAY 2004

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The Garden Seat: a cyhydedd hir

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A quiet place to sit,
think what I see fit,
and watch the birds flit
around the yard.

Not so much to seek
(a crumb, so to speak)
to make each work week
that much less hard.

And yet, through each day
small things block the way
and my time to play
cedes to something.

But when time is spare
I seek out that chair
and just sitting there
do great nothing.

10 APR 2004

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And Still Another: a alba or aubade

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Before the first ray of morning sun comes
over the muttering lips of the sleeping world
(like the last soft warm breath of a restful sleep
is released from the tight grasp of that little death)

and there are not yet schedules to be met,
children to be shuffled off sullenly to school,
arrangements to be made, broken and remade,
the drudgery of household chores still untackled,

I listen in that dark and peaceful lull
to the gentle sound of her breathing next to me,
warm and serene under the sheets and blankets,
cocooned like a butterfly, just dreaming of flight.

31 MAR 2004

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