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Maya Angelou's poetry is a shining beacon of truth in the murky times.
As Quakers worldwide witnessed the grotesque violation of the Westminster Quaker Meeting space by the Metropolitan police, an act that had not occurred in the living memory of British Quakers, we must double down on our insistence that Quaker houses of worship are inviolable places where the police, the military and government informants are not welcome as enforcers. We must draw a line in the sand about what we will tolerate as the encroachments on human decency continue unabated. Angelou wrote: When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze Is it so hard to imagine that we are now at an inflection point in American history where the sapling of American democracy is now bent and ready to break. This is not the birches of Robert Frost. This tree is much more fragile. This tree is only able to bend for so long before it will be crippled and twisted forever. What does this have to do with our blessed community? Is politics, the deeply temporal realm of man, not also in the realm of spirit? Should we allow our values (and soon our children) be consumed in the "minstrel show of hate." I would argue that there is a time for quiet and a time for witness (quiet or vocal). The brave and startling truth is that "We, this people", as Angelou wrote "have the power to fashion this earth..." We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it. And when will we come to it? The hour is getting late. We cannot stand by and wait for the oligarchs' campaign to implode. It won't. In our own spiritual discernment I urge all Quakers to:
For the entire poem of Maya Angelou https://www.best-poems.net/poem/a-brave-and-startling-truth-by-maya-angelou.html ~ Joseph Olejak
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I hear the surf in Palestine sifting through the sand
amidst the scream of missiles and the flinch of metals. Kites once snapped in wind unspooled by children’s hands. Fresh produce is now rare in Gaza’s markets. Meat, chicken, potatoes, yogurt, eggs and fruits are completely gone. Lament the loss while dialing Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand complicit in the genocide by shipping contraband bunker busters to Israel instead of water, food, fuel, medical supplies and kitchens to the fringed by the sea Palestinians. Crops and livestock have been decimated, there’s a stout demand for veterinary supplies, what animals will low by the manger, what star will rise in the East, how long will the Menorah’s candles last or when will the Ramadan fast be broken in the already broken evening? Who will play the flutes or read stories to the children, who will dance in the squares? Have they unearthed the railroad in the Gaza strip, repaved its airport, rebuilt her port? Fool pier that boondoggled off the coast shuttled by befuddled Army Corp of engineers, smashed by uncharted seas in untested currents. Clog every road to Gaza with trucks stuffed to the gills with food, President Trump’s number is 202 455 1111 Tuesday –Thursday ten minute waiting time and you get a live person unlike Schumer or Gillibrand. ~ Bob Elmendorf |
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April 2025
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