Our Seattle Peace Chorus in partnership with the Courage Ensemble were deeply honored to create this beautiful, timely and inspiring virtual gospel music. Please enjoy!

Enjoy this moving, harmonious Christian blessing in Amharic and English:

Our dear friend Quan Yin read this today during her online Sufi Class. She thought it was by Mary Oliver (and it has that flavor!) but in fact it is by Judith Hill.

Wage Peace

By Judyth Hill*

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.

* Sometimes mistakenly attributed to Mary Oliver

I found this incredibly beautiful poem this morning after my meditation in the Earth Prayers book.

Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-bells.
Lacewings rise from rock incubators.
Wild geese flying north.
And I can’t remember who I’m supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon
myself, have mistresses in maidenhair
fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday:
a blank shimmering space forward and
back. I want to think with my belly.
I want to name all the stars animals
flowers birds rocks in order to forget
them, start over again. I want to
wear the seasons, harlequin, become
ancient and etched by weather. I
want to be snow pulse, ruminating
ungulate, pebble at the bottom of the
abyss, candle burning darkness rather
than flame. I want to peer at things
shameless, observe the unfastening,
that stripping of shape by dusk.
I want to sit in the meadow a rotten
stump pungent with slimemold, home
for pupæ and grubs, concentric rings
collapsing into the passacaglia of
time. I want to crawl inside someone
and hibernate one entire night with
no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant
loam. I want to melt. I want to swim
naked with an otter. I want to turn
insideout, exchange nuclei with the
Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of
summer I want to make blind motion,
using my ribs as a raft, following
the spiders as they set sail on their
tasselled shining silk. Sometimes
even a single feather’s enough
to fly.

Robert MacLean, in Earth Prayers, p.26-7

Kira Kull read this to us during a Zoom event and I was deeply moved and wanted to share it with all of you.

Rainforest

By Kira Gayatri Kull

Dedicated to Bayna-Lehkiem El-Amin

If this world were a forest,
I’d be one tiny white mushroom at (almost) the top of the canopy
Who’s been given enough sun and the right amount of rain
With just enough sight to know my height
And see the shade cast down from those above.
Here’s a little of what I learned and I promise it’s all with love.
At what point do we forget we’re all just creatures in this forest?
Surrounded by many others,
All deserving of life, but born into different worlds.
The soft moss, baby beetles, large ferns, and flying spiders
Each sip the same air and suffer when fire flares.
And when one species is at risk,
Our delicate ecosystem begins to crumble
Now too many beetles, suddenly receding moss,
Everyone suffers the domino effect of this loss.
If the health of the whole, and therefore each individual group,
Is dependent on the rest,
How is it ok that I have to curate my clothes for safety, let alone success?
And if I choose ‘wrong’ it becomes my fault for being harassed,
My fault for lesser pay,
My fault for choices that were never designed to go my way.
Now let me be clear: I’m privileged, too.
My skin works like opal magic and for years I didn’t know.
I thought cuz I was nice and smiled and shed a tear they’d say,
“Just get home safe” and “You have nothing to fear.”
Then I came here, to New York City:
Dense old-growth canopy, rich with diversity.

Suddenly in high quality I see
The way my browner friends come into negative contact with
authority.
It’s not fair I won’t get caught,
Not fair I can walk away
Not fair I’m the one presumed innocent
When, for the same,
My friend with kinky hair gets locked away.
So while the catcalls for wearing nice clothes, tight clothes,
(because I have to so I fit in at work with the corporate bros)
and the typecasting as ‘smart’ (for my glasses) or ‘butch’ (for my size)
won’t let me show my range unless I start to heavily exercise.
While those opposing standards pain me,
Near impossible to compromise without compromising me,
The women and people of color who know more, do more,
Even the ones who earn more, but are seen as less
Will remain more likely to be put under arrest.
Yes. This forest is under duress.
And we have to untangle our ancestors’ mess.
It can’t be ignored any longer,
Cuz if we don’t put this raging fire out,
There will be nothing left but ash for us to talk about.
Unless.
We start listening, learning, and acting through our love
Begin to support the youngest trees and lift each other up
Create irrigation systems of peace, so everyone can fill their cup.
Because out there in the forest pines grow right next to oaks
and it doesn’t matter at all what color fall provokes.

This was just posted in Rev. John Mabry’s online journal “Covid Tales” which I highly recommend. As I read this my heart burst open with recognition of a Divine message. I hope it touches you as well.

“Corona Corona” by Susan McCaslin

What kind of crown bears death?
What kind of queen hefts quarantine?
Parasitic in a liminal zone,
you are a spikey shell
unaware of the damage wreaked.
Our economies forged dark streams,
pathways for your kind of havoc.
We check our devices,
listen to the newscasts,
watch our Netflicks flicker,
hunker in the void
co-avoiding physical contact,
incarnate and encapsulated
dreaming new modes of being

Dreaming new modes of being
I wonder why I’m addressing you.
You’re just one of many sub-streams –
SARS, Spanish flu, Bubonic Plague.
We sit with storytellers, re-configure
Boccaccio’s Decameron, clutch Julian of Norwich’s
Revelations of Divine Love, ponder Dicken’s
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,”
self-isolate with Camus’ The Plague
knowing nothing’s new under the sun.
Stranded in para-doxology, we give thanks for
this contemplative pause
from compulsory progress, Gaia’s chance
to take a breath as the wild creatures return.

Taking a breath as the wild creatures return,
we peer through the global membrane,
ears cupped to a hermit thrush’s spiraling song
held in the arc of a great blue heron’s flight.
When poems interweave
with light and dark they sing, stranded
between lament and praise
thanksgiving and trembling,
our vast unknowing graced by love,
small acts of compassion,
heartwork of the justice imagination,
prayers for collective transfiguration.
Can we uncrown ourselves as lords of creation,
since heavy crowns bear death – not regeneration?

“Corona Corona” first appeared on the online blog of Lesley-Anne Evans: https://buddybreathing.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/napomo-poetry-party-

It appeared subsequently in Dialogue Magazine (Nanaimo, British Columbia) and Sage-ing magazine (Kelowna, BC)