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For this first day of the still brand-spanking-New-Year here are Happy New Year Roses (cut from my garden today!) and a Happy New Year Poem (read as part of our New Year's Eve service last night at All Saints!)
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WAGE PEACE
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.
3 comments:
Dear Rev. Russell:
I was thinking of you and your church this morning as we dug out from 12-inches of snow in mid-Michigan.
Before venturing out I was watching the Rose Parade and remembering how my mother and stepfather allowed me to go with some friends from St. Luke's of the Mountains to camp overnight in Pasadena so we would have a good seat for the parade.
Looking on television it appears that many of those wonderful curbside spots are now filled with bleachers, but the memory lingers.
The night we camped out was pretty cold (not Michigan cold) but cold enough.
It looks like your weather is a darn sight better than ours and I look forward to the Illini upsetting USC.
Thirty years in Michigan and my college at Michigan State has turned me from a Pac 10 to a Big 10 fan. Where I was once a fierce USC partisan (my next door neighbor played for them in the 1950s and used to take me to the games) I am now an unabashed Big 10 rooter.
I do root for Pac 10 teams if they are not playing the Big 10.
All this to say, Happy New Year!
A sinner saved by God's Grace
Jim from Michigan
great poem! Happy New Year dear Susan
Thanks to all for not bringing up the Rose Bowl score!
A sinner saved by God's Grace
Jim from Michigan
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