5.04.2007

Poem for the Day

I'm looking for a poem for my installation at the church in a few weeks. And though I will not use this as it doesn't fit with any sort of thematic or liturgical movement called for an installation in my beloved denomination, I really like this poem so I'm going to share it with you.

Wage Peace
By Judyth Hill

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing 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.
Celebrate today.

5 comments:

Pastor's Husband said...

That's gorgeous! Use that one!

BTW,I wrote a longish technobabble email about how you can add that pic to your sidebar without re-arranging your site. But your sidebar looks great now so I don't know if you'd need it still?

Basically all the answers have to do with getting your feet wet with the "edit html" tab in the template section, AND using a URL to post a photo instead of uploading it from your computer with the "browse" button...

Alseep yet?

Great poem!

Pastor Peters said...

I think I'll save this one for Flag Day or Father's Day. Again, neither of these days have ANYTHING to do with the church. But, whatever. Oh, I love daddies. Especially mine, but it's not in the Lectionary.

I'm looking for a poem about fishing out and outreach. Songbird is going to preach a kick ass sermon about John 21:1-6. But, I would like a nice poem.

Thanks for the help on the sidebar. But, I fell asleep...

Anonymous said...

i like this poem. a lot.
-mark

http://stumbling.typepad.com/blog/

i have to log on anonymously, as the new blogger doesn't like my old log in :(

Anonymous said...

Oh - I love it. Flag day or Memorial day would be good. Funny enough, that's Senior Pastor's B-day. Kind of changes my view of flag day. :)

I might need to borrow this one!

Unknown said...

Kickass? Okay. I'll see what I can do.
I love that poem, by the way, had it posted in my office for a long time.