Wage Peace

I heard this poem at a Spirituality conference this weekend and thought I'd share.

Wage Peace
By Judyth Hill*

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildingsand flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping childrenand freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallenand 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.


* Sometimes mistakenly attributed to Mary Oliver