Decoration Day

“Oh, say,”

the song begins,
as cortege follows caisson
to the altar of the vacant chair,
“Can you see?”

The band, impeccably uniformed,
follows, slow of cadence,
to offer last rites
for the flag-draped remains
of those days of yore and gore,
of that cause that is no more.

“What so proudly we hailed,”
at the blood-soaked field of battle,
where vegetation has at last returned,
and the songs of birds redeem all
that has been forgotten of the promises
of life, of freedom and of happiness.

“If a foe from within strike,”
few remember these lines,
“down, Down with the traitor
that dares to defile,”
over cans of beer and burnt flesh,
the memory of bands of brothers
and sisters, lost to time and tide.

“By the millions unchained”
to most blessed eternal silence,
“who our birthright we have gained,”
and then lost whilst a fool bargained
arms to nations, for the waging of more wars,
and dictated malfeasance
on “the home of the brave.”

“Can you see?”
The graves lie deep
beneath their heavy stones
and, even flower-bedecked,
unseasonal rains flow over them as tears,
to mourn the dead and the destitute living,
a reminder of our ultimate failure:
War did not vanquish war.

© 2019 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

//

In 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in reaction to civil war engagement, wrote this verse to the “Star-Spangled Banner” – which appeared in songbooks of the era:

“When our land is illumined with Liberty’s smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By millions unchained, who our birthright have gained,
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.”

Love Came as a Child

For them that walk in starkness,
a lucid dream appears;
for them, a retreat from darkness
draws on the horizon and cheers.

Yea, there was a second and a third,
but when was spoke the first word,
that indeed was a concept: Love.
(Sung, as if from somewhere above.)

Then, held safe from all harms
as might lie in the wild,
from Labor to a mother’s arms,
Love came as a child.

Love, appearing as light,
thus cast darkness away
into new realms of night,
visible as shades of grey.

Abundant, how abundant,
and full, oh, so verily sooth:
Love, to all life incumbent,
our charge, our care, our truth.

What the shepherds saw,
what, to worship, sages sought:
loving care should be the flaw
to defy any, all, prizes bought.

The metaphor of the cattle stall,
is both the sermon and reminder:
A peaceable kingdom is here for all,
but only when we are in deed kinder. 

Love, as a child, came down—
Incarnate Love, we cannot shirk;
Life, Love’s cradle and crown
is, in every generation, our work.

© 2018 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Dear Ones, 

My wish for you, now and always, is that Love be your most abundantly shared and greatest flaw. Imagine the epitaph: “Their one flaw was that they loved too deeply, too much…” May your days be filled with everything that can be shared with love and laughter; even hardship is soon overcome where Love is lively and at work. Many hands move the work forward, onward and upward. Blessings to all!

A Message for the Season: Preach the Gospel of Peace

For more than half my life, this time of year has been accompanied by multiple performances of Handel’s Messiah. I have sung all the different historical versions of this oratorio, both as chorister and as soloist. I have three different editions of the score for this masterwork, and these are the most used scores in my music library.

The libretto for this oratorio was assembled by Charles Jennens, who used snippets of biblical scripture to form a narrative that follows the church year from Advent through Easter. With every year and every single iteration, I discover and hear the piece anew.

This year, four sections of Part II stood out for me, although I would rather have them heard in a different order. In Scene VI of Part II, the bass sings the aria, Why do the nations so furiously rage together? This is followed by the chorus, Let us break their Bonds asunder.

Here are the complete texts for these two sections that comprise Scene VI:

ARIA – Bass

Why do the Nations so furiously rage together? and why do the People imagine a vain Thing? The Kings of the Earth rise up, and the Rulers take Counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed. (Psalm 2:1-2)

CHORUS

Let us break their Bonds asunder, and cast away their Yokes from us. (Psalm 2:3)

This year, I felt as though the two sections from Scene V, immediately previous to Scene VI, should follow these texts.

ARIA – Soprano

How beautiful are the Feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. (Romans 10:15)

CHORUS

Their sound is gone out into all Lands, and their Words unto the ends of the World. (Romans 10:18)

This year, 2017, has been difficult and painful in so many ways it would take too long to enumerate them all. I know so many who have been personally anguished, injured, suffered financial setbacks and job losses. Friends and family members have died, as well as exemplars and cultural heroes. Our family has experienced all these things; perhaps, so too has yours.

This country has become mired in cynicism and hypocrisy that is being played out in the highest government offices by people who mock the notion of common good; such people actively work against equality, each according to their need. These people are not “public servants” but are rather self-serving.

The Nations of the Earth may engage in this “game of thrones” – but, the planet cannot survive such hubris, much less the inhabitants. We must break the bonds of… what, exactly? Power? Wealth? Narcissism? The bonds are cultural, and not limited to our culture alone; but certainly our culture has driven this venality and actively unraveled our national sense of empathy. Portions of our citizenry have been taught to fear and despise others, and those defined as such are treated as scapegoats for every problem we experience.

We learn about this in grade school, don’t we? About petty bullies mistreating people they have objectified and labeled as inferior. This thing we learned about in grade school is being played out big time in our national life, and is threatening all our international relationships.

What is to be done? What can we do? What can I do, or you?

We can Break their Bonds asunder. Those people do not speak for me or for you. They may cast their edicts, but we know the truth behind their lies. We can and we must act to do the right thing, whenever and however possible, despite the warped edicts of petty despots and bullies.

How do we Break their Bonds asunder? By Preaching the gospel of peace, and sending that message out from our homes and into our neighborhoods, towns, cities, counties and states. What is the gospel of peace, precisely? It is the message that we all belong, that we all have dignity; and we honor this by working toward peace, by spreading good will, and acting toward goals of mutual good with everyone we meet. This is true citizenship.

The Kings of the Earth will fall from grace. Well, to be honest, some of them have never had anything akin to grace, in the first place. We can't let that stop us from working as a positive force for good. We might yet fold the negative into the positive...

My wishes for you on this day, at this hour – and in all the days and hours that follow:

• Only do to and for others what you would have others do to and for you; accept every gift of grace and good intent. 
• To break the bonds of oppression asunder, counter negativity and bad actors by doing good and spreading good wherever you are. 
• Watch for those who need assistance, and offer it however you can; even a smile can change a person’s day.
• Preach the gospel of peace and harmony; you don’t have to be loud, obnoxious or even religious to make your glad sound go out into all lands.

All of you are beautiful, who spread the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. I give thanks for the many of you I am fortunate to know and encounter in my life! 

May the light of your peace illumine every place where you step foot, and may 2018 be a year of blessing and positive transformation for you, your families – and your communities.

Reply to a Message from Magistrate Zhang - a translation

In these later years, I value silence;
worldly concerns no longer stir my heart.
I now move through the days with no plan
but to retire unencumbered to the woods of my youth,
where pine-scented breezes can play through my robe
whilst the moonlit mountain amplifies the music of my lute.
You ask if there are laws governing success or failure;
I say: Hear the song of the fly-fisher, rising up from the riverbank.

English rendering of this poem by Wang Wei (699–759)

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Afternoon at the Lake

There is a moment,
in the depth of the afternoon,
when the summer sun is hottest,
that the soft light of peace gathers
to settle the dust of day.

The tread along the footpath
does not disturb the hum of hushed bees,
nor the meandering of dragonflies
from shore over the center of the lake,
coasting on any errant breeze.

While the blue green algae rests
in a shaded nook along the far shore,
the black crowned heron stands,
motionless, watchful,
awaiting the slightest stir
in the shallows that might signal lunch
—food to fuel night flight.

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Truly Human

This is something like a prayer, to see if a simple strand of words can be a catalyst to unity and dedication.

Violence, on the rise,—
            tasked to criticize,
            ostracize,
            criminalize,
            and victimize
—solves nothing.

Life is a blender,
            in which we surrender
            to learn, to render
            and engender
            hearts to be more tender
—inclined toward cooperation,
if not affection.

If we are to carry forward life,
there is a need to end strife;
we need to make a progression
away from mindless aggression.

This calls for us to reframe
            and retrain,
            even entrain
            and entertain
an understanding what civilization means,
            and retain it.

In order to survive,
            we must realize,
            and prioritize,
            modernize
            and acclimatize,
            fraternize
            and solemnize
A truly compassionate bond,
that we may recover,
            or even discover,
what are the needs
and what it means
to be truly human.

Shall we go, I say,
into the darkness? Nay!
In despair for us, I pray:
Let us resolve
to evolve!

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 8. Wind howls over the sea like a wraith

                 8.

Wind hovers over the sea like a wraith,
the howl and yell
measure time, and tell
the story of our weak and waning faith,
as it slowly crumbles into ruin.

Smoldering wreckage
we have not found,
loss incalculable by pound,
like another of a bygone age,
hijacked and crashed,
other hearts and hopes dashed;
our lives, those lives and these
traded for political gain,
or with revenge to appease
a movement not for peace,
only for blood-soaked increase
within a culture of death.

We stand at the shore,
praying for an answer,
hoping we are wrong, and more,
waiting for a cure for such cancer
—cannot this corruption finally be consumed
so that corruption itself will cease?
—We presume all are doomed,
but what was it all for?

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Eleven, Eleven, Eleven: a meditation

November 11^th has become less a day of observance and more sort of loaf-around, generic holiday kind of day. Is it blasphemous for me to say such a thing?

How many people realize, or remember, that what we call Veteran’s Day was a day that was intended to mark the cessation of war in the world?  Armistice Day was what they called it, back then. It is known elsewhere as Remembrance Day, a day for red poppies and solemn music, for prayer.

The day commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, commemorates the end of “The War To End All Wars.”

The irony, of course, is that this treaty did not end all wars. It did not even completely end the hostilities of World War I. The armistice served to drive further political wedges that led the way to more militarism, more bloodshed and ethnic cleansing—all of this leading directly to primary causes of World War II. The reasons for this are many, not the least of which was the redrawing of borders over traditional ethnic boundaries to placate certain authoritarian leaders who were looking to an expansionist land-grab to shore up their fascist, totalitarian dominions.

What happened in Europe is nothing less that what happened to the ancient Jewish tribes in biblical times; the cultural centers of many small states were destroyed or heavily damaged, and the people were resettled to other places, so that the conquerors could have their traditional homelands to use. The economy of Europe was made unstable for generations.

But, let us set aside this observation and engage an aspect that is elusive and theoretical.

Armistice is only a temporary function; it is an agreement to ceasefire while negotiations are made for a peace that will hopefully be lasting. The unfortunate truth is that war has become an economic tool too useful to turn aside for anything so difficult as cultivating a peaceful world.

Indeed peace, as a theoretical, like infinity, it is too difficult to contemplate. Essentially, it means that people have to strive for the best of everything in a way that is cooperative rather than competitive. The human psyche is only prepared for domination, for dominating or being dominated. Our brains are preprogrammed for quick reactions, but only from the lowest part of the brain. Lashing out is the first response; it is so much easier than having a reasoned conversation.

So, this is possibly why we, in the United States, could no longer call this remembrance Armistice Day. The name had to be changed, in recognition that a lasting peace was no longer the objective. We had to pay homage to the instrument of the hegemon, by honoring the sacrifice of its pawns.

Blasphemy! (I can hear the grumbles.)

The ancients recognized the problem. If there was to be just governance, the arbiter could not very well be human, given how we are each and all preprogrammed to react from our lowest, when challenged. This is how it was expressed, by an old geezer named Isaiah:

Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—
only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil…

Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers. Daughter Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a cucumber field, like a city under siege…

If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword…

See how the faithful city has become a prostitute! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her—but now murderers! Your silver has become dross, your choice wine is diluted with water.

Your rulers are rebels, with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.

Times have not changed, in several thousand years, nor has the inherent nature of people.

We do no honor, to war dead or war living, to perpetuate armed conflict! I do not agree that we need to honor bloodshed. I will never agree to that!

The spoils of war are destroying the hope that life can continue on this planet. We teach our children war games, but not how to resolve conflict from our highest selves. We teach that killing is honorable, and what is worse, we make guns available to everyone so that they can use them for that purpose—as if it is a sacred right! Children die in our streets at home and in foreign streets where our soldiers patrol. Ignorance and thoughtless waste abound in a world that is, by nature, beautiful, if only we wouldn’t pollute and profane it.

We should not honor bloodshed. I do not agree to that.

I believe we can only honor our Veterans by working toward a world without weapons, a world without war, a world without dominating bullies.

Verily, I say unto you, we have more important things to do than appease (and act as pawns for) bullies! Life, as we know it, is at stake.

The only true Armistice Day is the one where we all win, and we all become veterans to a past that is over and done.

The old geezer envisioned it this way:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

And their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

Neither shall they learn war anymore.

Honor our veterans for their service, but not their servitude to a culture of corruption and death. 

Strive for good, heal the sick, uphold the widow and the orphan, clean up the polluted planet, teach new ways to deal with conflict.

Let us not wait for the Eleventh Hour that signals our destruction; let us begin, this very moment, to build anew.

Ready?! 

GO!

Surpassing Fair

A final measure
of music for your pleasure,
fading and receding,
for even sound needs
equivalent rest.

A quiet followed the
cascading dome of
waning tone,
a quiet so deep and engaged
that we froze,
with awe and with reverence,
marveling at the beauty
of our own vital participation
in the mystery of silence.

you invited yourself here today
to realize and to celebrate
the truth and beauty,
the possibility
of life without subjugation,
without mongering, hate
or destruction.

you are here,
and you are hearing
sun and moon and stars
merged with your souls
in harmoniousness
and peace.

this is real
and you can feel it;
there is but One,
and That is called Being.

this moment is forever
and is yours to keep;
it is the gift you bring
—the gift we all bring to
the beauty of Being.

This is the peace
that has eluded
understanding,
in part because
you did not remember
it was yours to be,
yours to bring and share,
yours, surpassing fair.

A next heartbeat,
a newer breath,
and the room shimmered,
setting us back into our seats,
then raising us to our feet,
returning us
from the well of souls
our silent music had made
to appreciate the musical offering
that took us there.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Social Contact or Social Contract? Thoughts on 9/11

There could have been many titles for this entry, but this is the title I ended up with.

This blog has been quiet for a week, as I took some time for reflection on life, on tragedy, on love and the notion of an everlasting.

I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2001.

Just the day before, my entire family had traveled home from Seattle by plane, following a cruise to Alaska, the kind of trip none of us had ever taken before. During the cruise, a horrible virus ran its way through the passenger list, and I had been hit hard by it at the end of the journey, while our toddlers suffered mild cases of seasickness. Despite these things, we had all had a wonderful time, but we had returned home late at night, and I was very ill by then.

The next morning, my husband was feeding the children when a phone call came. When he got of the phone, he turned on the television to see the news. He called to me from downstairs and said I needed to come right away, as something very important and very disturbing had happened and the happening was actually still in progress. The repeating loop of the collapsing towers made me dizzy. I reeled back up the stairs to my sickbed and said, “turn it off.” I could not think or breathe.

We all know what that event was, and we have been beating our breasts over it ever since. Arguably, this event galvanized Americans like no other event since the Civil War. It has been ten years, and we still vent pain, rage and sorrow over what took place. We want to lay blame, but I conclude that the blame has mostly been laid in the wrong hands.

We ourselves are to blame.

As a nation, we have traded the national treasure of our ideals in equality for a complacency that looks the other way when it comes to real social justice and equity. We have put our trust in leaders who are just plain crazy and obviously out for all that they can amass for themselves themselves. The leaders have been bought off by huge megalocorporate business entities that promote societal mores of greed and worship of money. The megalocorporate god giveth jobs and then taketh them away when no one is looking, or hideth them from certain kinds of candidates or offshore them. We thought they were working for us, because we are their people and they are our megalocorporations. Little did we know that we were being sold up and sold out, just as is happening nearly every nation in the so-called “third world.”

The worship of money and power is home to roost, and it did not start with that fateful day of September 11, 2001, but it has been a thread embroidered in our national policy, foreign and domestic, for well over fifty years. It started well before Eisenhower’s warnings about the consequences of the military industrial complex, and before WWII. This is a fatal flaw that was seeded well before 1900, 1860, 1770 or even 1492. Indeed, the flaw has existed since before the fall of Rome, before the repatriation of the Jews, before the events detailed in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

George Steiner writes—and these words were penned in those days before 9/11:

Inhumanity is, so far as we have historical evidence, perennial. There have been no utopias, no communities of justice or forgiveness. Our current alarms—at the violence in our streets, at the famines in the so-called third world, at regressions into barbaric ethnic conflicts, at the possibility of pandemic disease—must be seen against the background of a quite exceptional moment. Roughly from the time of Waterloo to that of the massacres on the Western Front in 1915-16, the European bourgeousie experienced a privileged season, an armistice with history. Underwritten by the exploitation of industrial labour at home and colonial rule abroad, Europeans knew a century of progress, of liberal dispensations, of reasonable hope. It is in the afterglow, no doubt idealized, of this exceptional calendar—not the constant comparison of the years prior to August 1914 with a “long summer”—that we suffer our present discomforts.

There has never been an earthly utopia, and we cannot pretend that, as modern Americans, that we are color-blind and truly act with justice and fairness toward all. It is not human nature to be so, and I doubt that the human race can evolve beyond its brutish nature. Is there moral high ground for allowing our own people to be illiterate, unemployed and homeless? How can we talk about leaders in other countries who allow such realities on their own turf?

The events of September 11, 2001 are still unfolding. We cannot claim the role of virtuous victim for those events, neither can we justify those aspects that continue to unfold daily. In our name, our government has done terrible things, including arming our enemies to act against us. Islamoterrorism was created by our government, moving pawns over its giant chessboard.

Our government set this horror in motion. We have allowed our government to do terrible things. We are responsible.

We have all been taught that we have the right to say and do anything we want, and so everyone does, with little or no thought as to consequences. And then we are shocked when something goes too far or the consequences become too great.

People have been taught to talk themselves silly, and they do. Conversely, people not been taught to listen or to hear, or to critically think about their individual choices. The quiet of circumspection is missing from our daily lives.

We have bought into the myth of privilege and elitism. We have bought the lie that we are entitled.

Healing can only come once we understand our individual roles in this great tragedy that is our world. Healing can only come when we agree renew and actually live a social contract, rather than wring our hands and obsess over our social networking and ever-present media.

Healing can only begin when we address the following questions:

What is enough? When is enough enough?

Goethe was a brilliant thinker. And he was being brutally candid when he said:

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

As we remember September 11^th, may all that is Divine rain down peace on all who have been touched by violence and all of us who are left to face the events that continue to unfold.

For, those events are still unfolding.

Stalemate

Long a monument to inaction,

the days and ways to change
fly as birds on the wing.

Control is the final destination
for those who must be right;
if not me, then no one.

Passive-agression has a face:
blank eyes smolder with hate;
why are you not in my image?!

No brilliant strategy can bind;
the way to freedom, step away
and proclaim the game unworthy.

The resulting stale mate
claims a winless victory
and a libation of gall.

Birds on the wing fly away,
leading days and ways to change,
leaving droppings on all monuments of inaction.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Memorial Day

Open, oh holy earth,
open and accept this flesh,
this flesh that once breathed
and walked carefree above ye,
little knowing, little knowing.

We have committed much to death,
where we might have planted seeds for peace;
we have committed too many to war,
where flesh has lost to gross weaponry,
and, dear earth, you have lost holy ground,
to the insanity of blood and rubble.

Open, oh holy earth,
open and accept this flesh,
accept this sacrifice
we made unknowingly,
and now painfully regret;
please let us consign to you
the body of our honorable servant,
late and lamented, spent
—renew the sanctity of your guest.

Then, allow us to attend to thee,
oh, gentle—oh, most holy earth,
—to tend those wounds
we made in the name of death,

to amend for our grievous sin
against you, against life,
little knowing, little knowing.

Open, oh holy earth,
open and accept now this flesh:
a living sacrifice
to life and renewal,
to seeds and growth,
to nature and nurture,
to love and life,
to life loved,
as never life
has ever
been
by us
but, nevertheless,
is
in you.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

A Prayer for Peace

Dear Divine, Life-Giving Being,

We call to you from the silence of despair over our war-torn world.

You gave us the gift of peace, and we have never known what to do with it; it passes our understanding. Because we have no blueprints with which to define how peace is to be lived, we need you to guide us to new ways. Open for each of us the wisdom eye, and show us how to remove war from our thoughts, remove war from our words, remove war from our hearts. Fill our minds and our words and our hearts with new ways of communication and cooperation, for the sake of all people.

But, meanwhile, be with the children, be with the mothers, be with the fathers, and all the brothers and sisters, for that is indeed what we all are to one another; be with us and fill us with the understanding of peace that you meant for us to have. Lead us to know that peace is an action verb dictating the right way to life. 

Amen.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

A Quiet Revolution

At sometime clipped,

by studied hand or wind,
winter-shorn branches,
in defiance of rain and cold,
stick out shoots and buds
like saucy little red tongues.

A green fringe soon arrives,
to dawn and then to crest,
with a hint of passion’s hue
blushing from unfurling tips;
daily, yet unhurried, arrives
some new, impish posture.

From ever entwining green,
flower buds arise, carelessly
insinuating most contrary beauty,
here,—within our noise and need—
even here,—from our crumbling rubble—
staging a popular dissent.

Wherever a war-mad world
breeds destruction and death,
a counter-insurgency rises,
peacefully demonstrating,
affirming life’s supremacy,
in brightly arrayed revolt.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Civil Discourse 101

Discourse is a form of communication, more commonly referred to as discussion or debate. These days, we seem to be really bad at it. Instead of exchanging ideas, we seem to be talking past each other.

Yelling. We hear a lot of it—as if loudness is required, in order to get the point across. The folks that are yelling seem really intent on being heard, but when their turn to listen comes along, the faculty of hearing seems missing. So, many exchanges are not exchanges at all, but shouting matches where the one with the highest decibel level wins. Yelling at and past one another, but neither side being heard.

Lost, in the yelling and escalating anger, are the issues, not to mention possible solutions.

Fifty years ago (nine months before I was born) on this date in 1961, John F. Kennedy gave his inauguration speech, of which I excerpt the following passages:

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals…

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."¹



And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.



All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

Those words are as timely and fresh, today, as they were when they were first spoken. There is a lot more in that speech that makes it seem dated; the Cold War and balance of power in the world is clearly at issue. But if we focus on the bits that I have printed here, we should see that we have a lot of work to do; we have not passed "Go" with very much of Kennedy's list of goals.

A lot has happened in fifty years, but not the realization of that bright and shining dream. And in that time we have belabored much the issues that divide us, without ever realizing the great promise of justice, security and peace.

I ask you to remember the promise, and to renew it in your heart.

I ask us all to begin anew, to relearn civility, to renew our commitment to the dream, renew our efforts in civil dialogue, that we may finally, and as a united front, discover the path of action that will make the dream a reality.


//


Kennedy, John F. Inaugural Speech, 1961. http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html

No Writing Peace

There is no writing peace;

peace is an unnatural word.

Peace should be
an element ubiquitous,
like water, light and air,
born into all cells and fibers,
an active ingredient in bread,
planted as a crop,
mixed into cement,
displaying ultimate flexibility
along with diamond hardness,
wearing like iron,
yet as soft as down,
yielding to every need.

Peace should be
all things to all people,
indeed, all Being.

Instead, the human world
is built on the shifting sands
of arguments called diplomacy,
and the groundwater
liberally laced
with discord,
tribal enmity,
provincial vision,
irrational governance,
top-down authority,
and condoned oppression.

This thinking erodes the earth
by a grasping of more than is required,
and profanes life by promoting death,
while claiming to make sense
of an insensible world.

There is no writing peace.

Peace may be a beautiful word,
but until the word can
write people
to right action,
and the kind of living
that comes as naturally
and habitually effortless
as water, light and air,
the sands and time,
then its beauty is meaningless
and has no real place
in the language of life.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Multicultural Center

Humanity:

a plural noun,
naming a species
known as mankind.

Swift to divide, conquer,
label, condemn and control;
soon to be extinct
—unless a maturing
awakens people
from a childish
and deadly
slumber.

Awakening is not a revolution
of wars, weapons and
the spilling of blood,
innocent and guilty,
but is nothing less
than an evolution
to the Grand Opening
of the Multicultural Center.

This is the place
where divided mind
becomes one,
melting alchemically
into a plural Heart,
the seat of universal
compassion.

At that opening,
every window and
all the doors
of every singular heart
shall be flung wide open
to the light of Life,
a truer rite of passage,
so that the living play of radiance
reveals the visible spectrum
of all people
as joined in living
a lifelong embrace
of all colors,
all kinds,
all sounds
of life,
to be of one being
on the Earth.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen