A voice from the dark called out,
'The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.'
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
~ Denise Levertov, "Making Peace", in BREATHING THE WATER
When the prayer makers thought of the soul as a garden, they liked to picture in it the Creator setting a breeze into motion and the flowers of the soul to dancing. On a gray morning or a dark night, in late autumn or in barren years as much as in brighter times, the imagination of such dancing signals that divine activity is all around us, only waiting to be recognized. May the prayer and the dreams that goodness might displace everything that is flawed in the soul come to be realized for another dancing day.
~ from WHEN TRUE SIMPLICITY IS GAINED by Martin and Micah Marty