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" A good traveller has no fixed plans,

and is not intent on arriving "

Lao Tzu

Wage Peace

November 16th, 2015

Honolulu, Hawaii: A lantern draped with a flower lei floats on the water

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.

~ Judyth Hill

oaklight

10 Responses to “Wage Peace”

  1. Thank you for sharing .
    In the darkness of last night I was struggling …and I found this.
    Using this as as the basis of breathing meditation returned some peace to myself through my breathe I trust also to the outer world /|\

  2. It is so nice to see understanding of the peaceful struggle to overcome violence here, thank you. It’s not enough to fight the good fight, we must manufacture calm benevolence within each and every heart. My heroes are those who faced down their own violent hearts and were still, Lennon, Mandela, the tank guy in no particular order. Women too who instinctively know how to forgive violence and play it down. Even at Greenham Common, fighting for peace as a warrior seemed not my thing, like onward Xtian soldiers…?
    It was the wise peacemaker who drew me to druidry years ago, Awen to that!

  3. Thanks Judyth for writing, and Philip for sharing, this poem. It errs on the side of love, which is the only place I want to be.

  4. Thank you ~ Merci ~ Terima kasih ~ شكرا لكم السورية shukraan lakum alssuria

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