Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Four Sonnets - Part 3

3.
The authors of history are among us still.
And believe me they believe what they believe
As sincerely as the millions who are simply looking for a life, a purpose.
Who are the good people? We are all good people
Except when we are not.  Meanwhile the forests are felled..
Who despises us and for what reason? Whom do we
Despise and for what reason?....
“What’s on your mind” we say to each other.
As though it’s some kind of weight.

.
I’m in a forest that we speak of in the day as being in danger of felling. As night falls it is too close to nightmares to bring into conscious thought.  If we do, our enemies might stalk us in the dark and keep our dreams of a beloved community from forming.  It’s hard to say who the enemy is – the oil companies that will come in to drill, and build roads and communities around them?  The government in Georgetown, Guyana that sold the mining rights out from underneath the Amerinians?  Or we consumers with our electricity eating gadgets and cars? 
This despising is a weight – I see it in the conservationists around me and I feel it in my heart.  If I could have the yellow breast of the macaw, perhaps I would be too delighted with myself and my kind to look at anything or anyone but in awe.


Whom do you despise and why?

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Learning About Indians - January 16, 2010


....White Eagle, he was called, or Mr. White,

And he strutted for money now, in schoolrooms built

On Ohio's plains, surrounded by the graves

Of all of our fathers, but more of his than ours.

...We called it fun. And as for Mr. White,

changed back to a shabby salesman's suit, he called it

Nothing at all...

Just yesterday I told my spouse, who is interview to work in congregations in the Midwest, that I didn't want to move there because in these lands they killed all their Indians. Then I added that well, we killed them everywhere. The plains, the mountains, the swamps, and the forests are full of dead Indians. Are their deaths to mean nothing at all? Should any of us be dancing when it is over the graves of so many? Perhaps it is knowing that in the dirt and rock there will always be ashes and bones, and is it in this awareness dance we must. So dear Haiti, with 50,000 dead this week, I dance to the rhythm of humanity's divided heart, a deadly game of "some for you and more for me."

What harm or suffering have you contributed to? How do you make meaning of this, and how do you live well when others live poorly, or vice versa?