Opening Words:
"When you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart."
— Francis of Assisi
Check-in/Sharing
Topic:
Peggy Rosenthal has compiled a collection of poetry for Pax Christi titled Imagine a World: Poetry for Peacemakers. Here is one poem:
Waging Peace
by Sarah Klassan
"How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who
announces peace. Isaiah 52:7
Not something separate. Not
a convenient screen, a wall hastily fabricated
to keep a conflict's blaze contained.
Or the self safe.
Nor something hammered out at tables.
And never sentimental, say a moonlit evening,
an incandescent sky. The Pacific Ocean
on a breathless day. You might as well
wage peace as war. You'd have to stand
exposed at the crossroads of unguarded anger,
a presence, not an absence,
not gritting your teeth. Forcing your clenched hands
open. Your heart's hard core
and everything the stubborn mind conceals
revealed. Disarmed
you may become disarming,
the terror in your unmasked face
radiant, your unshod, wounded feet beautiful
beyond words."
For Reflection/Journaling:
Who is the most forceful and impressive peacemaker you have ever encountered? What did you learn from that person?
Check-out/Likes and Wishes
Closing Words:
"Peace and war start within one's own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families."
— Mother Teresa in Mother Teresa: No Greater Love edited by Becky Benenate and Joseph Durepos
To Practice This Thought: Whenever you get angry, vow not to add to the sum total of violence in the world.
