I’m re-blogging a timely and truthful post from one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Midwest Mary:
The New America The new normal, new America–fear, prejudice, injustice, chaos.Nepotism. Not positions for the qualified.Benefits for the wealthy. The…
Poem–The New America
Each Monday morning I find a poem in my email from a former colleague at Georgia Southern University, where I taught for a zillion years. Eric calls his service Carpe Monday/Seize the Poem.
Yesterday’s was particularly insightful.
From 1914 to 1918, Flanders Fields was a major battle theatre on the Western Front during the First World War. A million soldiers from more than 50 different countries were wounded, missing or killed in action here. visitflanders.com
The poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’, by John McCrae, went on to inspire the use of the poppy, which once grew on the battlefields of Flanders Fields, to become an enduring symbol of remembrance across the world.
HAVE A BLESSED MEMORIAL DAY 2024
I have recently started getting a beautiful weekly poem service provided by a pre-retirement colleague of mine from Georgia Southern University.
This week’s poem is titled, “Perseverance Prayer.”
“There is no one who has not their hour and no thing that has not its place.” —Pirkei Avot, 4:3
Perseverance Prayer
Be it rug or couch or bed, the dog
can’t help but turn and turn and turn again
before lying down, his angle always
a little off, the vantage never
quite as desired. Still the ritual persists.
Yet once in a prairie gone tall
with summer, high grass whispering
with afternoon breeze, he began—one, two,
three times around—and the stalks found
new joints with each of his orbits, swaying,
kneeling, prostrating away from him into
a massive golden wreath, an ideal bed.
A pursuit others call pointless is often just
the right action in need of its right place.
–Jessica Jacobs
from Unalone (Four Way Books, 2024)
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel that I am going round and round and round in circles and not exactly sure where to land.
But I believe there is a “right place.”
A new blog category featuring quotes and prayers for peace for our troubled world.
O Lord, awaken the consciousness
of all peoples and their leaders;
raise up men and women
full of love and generosity
who can speak and act for peace,
and show us new ways
in which hatred can be left behind,
wounds can be healed,
and unity can be restored.
Amen
Henri J. M. Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy
Marveling at two poetic views of peace …
THE ROCK CRIES OUT TO US TODAY
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one. — Maya Angelou
Our creaky, old and narrow stairs leading up to our second floor abode.
Looking up from outside …
And looking down from inside …
Here’s to the man who invented stairs
And taught our feet to soar!
He was the first who ever burst
Into a second floor.
The world would be downstairs to-day
Had he not found the key;
So let his name go down to fame,
Whatever it may be.
— Oliver Herford
NealEnJoy 