Pause.

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing 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; memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the out breath 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.

Judyth Hill. “Wage Peace.”

 

Eternal Listener . . .
Enliven your people with compassion
That peace and justice
Might flourish.
Restore us, O Holy One;
Let your face shine upon us,
Teach us to love.

Nan Merrill. From “Psalm 80,” Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness.