Wednesday, November 21, 2012

THANKSGIVING, DARK THOUGH IT IS SOMETIMES


While rereading Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies a couple of nights ago, I came across a lovely poem by W.S. Merwin that captures my own sense of the need to remain grateful in a world that is often riddled with war, loss, and injustice.  Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and may you find something in this poem that also resonates with your own lives.

THANKS

By W.S. Merwin

                    Listen
                    with the night falling we are saying thank you
                    we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
                    we are running out of the glass rooms
                    with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
                    and say thank you
                    we are standing by the water looking out 
                    in different directions

                    back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
                    after funerals we are saying thank you
                    after the news of the dead
                    whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
                    in a culture up to its chin in shame
                    living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

                    over the telephones we are saying thank you
                    in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
                    remembering wars and the police at the back door
                    and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
                    in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
                    with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
                    unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

                    with the animals dying around us
                    our lost feelings we are saying thank you
                    with the forests falling faster than the minutes 
                    of our lives we are saying thank you
                    with the words going out like cells of a brain
                    with the cities growing over us like the earth
                    we are saying thank you faster and faster
                    with nobody listening we are saying thank you
                    we are saying thank you and waving
                    dark though it is

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

HOPE FOR A NEW AMERICA

BARACK OBAMA
44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
President Barack Obama did not just win reelection tonight. His victory signaled the irreversible triumph of a new, 21st -century America: multiracial, multi-ethnic, global in outlook and moving beyond centuries of racial, sexual, marital and religious tradition.
Howard Fineman
"Barack Obama Reelection Signals Rise of New America"
Huffington Post, November 7, 2011 

The arc of the moral universe is long, 
but it bends toward justice.

Martin Luther King


FORWARD!