Give peace a chance

Helping bring peace and deeper understanding, one life-sustaining young woman at a time: what an inspiration I have recently discovered the Creativity for Peace project to be.

Hereis a link to an article on this excellent project which brings Palestinian and Israeli girls together. Through dialogue and art projects they are learning both to meet their supposed "enemies" face to face and to become newly inspired leaders for their society.

"We're not only living the change we want to see. We're also creating a common history, after living a whole life of separation and boundaries," says the co-ordinator.

Everything today has the incongruity of a Paul Weller album

I've got a feeling
From the floorboards up
Call it a calling
If you like that touch
Call it what you will
I really don't care too much

I've got a feeling
And I know it's right
I get it most evenings
If not every night
It sings in the air
And dances like candle light

When we play, we play, we play
Mama, from the floorboards up
When we dance, we dance, we dance
Papa, from the floorboards up
When we sway, we sway as one
From the floorboards up

I get a feeling
From the walls and chairs
They tell me of the things that
Have always been there
And all that is not
Will have to go back to dust

© Paul Weller

William Blake: The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then cruelty knits a snare
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of mystery over his head;
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the mystery.

And it bears the fruit of deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through Nature to find this tree;
But their search was all in vain.
There grows one in the human brain.

Only Connect

We awake to the day and take one step.

When we are physically limited this step has to be in a world that is not in front of us.

I chose to connect and rediscovered a friend. His wife has now connected my next steps with her art.
See "Out There" here:
http://web.mac.com/louiznielsen/iWeb/Site/prints%20on%20paper.html

I knew something was ahead today. I connected with someone else and he showed me the doorway to enter.
“A throng of brazen echoes inside, a slow whisper of feet. The door knob turns”
http://www.thatelusiveclarity.com/2011/02/20/sunday-best-5-greenvoe/

Am I shut in? Or am I out there?

How low will British tolerance drop?

Egyptian social commentators were speaking on the radio of the Western fear of Muslims gaining control of Egypt. We Westerners have misunderstood, they said, how liberal their society is. Many women do not wear headscarves and the Muslims are intelligent enough to know that they are not a large enough majority to set up any Islamic laws. They described how, when the Muslims are called to pray and get out their mats, the majority non-Muslims move out of their way and let them do so.

Meanwhile in fearful Britain, as the English Defence League marches through Luton today, Cameron is exhorting the people not to be tolerant. Speaking in Germany - but broadcasting via the British media - he seems to be backing up the recent German assertion that the multi-cultural society idea has failed. He seems to be encouraging suspicion about (specifically) Muslims who do things differently in separate communities. How do we know they are not harbouring those radically opposed to our "British ideals", he asks?

Cameron should cast his eye over history and remember that Jewish communities, obvious by their Shabbat observance and annual building of booths in their gardens, freely gave the metal of their synagogue roofs to the German First World War effort.

They were a clearly defined people when a cruelly fixated group - democratically elected - took control over their lives. Much that was evil prospered - and many things were wrongly paraded as good -  while innocent people were forced to pay horribly for their apparent differences.

How low will our British tolerance drop? And how much fear will we allow to govern us?

Perfect love casts out all fear.

The Roller-skating Man

The phrase pokes out
As childish eyes gleam wide
In the half-lit room.
"That man
Roller-skating
In the painting
There."

Familiarity oozes rest when my gaze
Moves to that same frame,
Easing in to pampered vision.
Mediterranean sky mounts blue on ochre stones.
A shadowed archway rises bleached
To prouder finials.

The sketched town that peeks
Is menial in purpose.
Plain strokes of brush
Have filled the space with abstract pueblo form
That then takes life
As shadow touches artist's shade
And moulds
A skating leg.

Imagined thoughts draw up as mercury.
I will not freeze them down.
Darling, darling eyes refresh me.
A roller-skating man.

©HC Hunter

Robinson Crusoe Island 2010

Tears of relief and gulps of fear
Chest hammering from the uphill run
Hands grasp nightsheets around their frames,
For the foaming cliff
Tracked from above
Now falls.

The wall roars full-mouthed
Pouring, smashing, driving through the dark,
Concluding the ancient laws of force.

Air buffets the slope then sucks away,
Dragging home from their shores
Into the vacuum of the deep.

Shush the children's bad dream cries
Shush the beaches' sadder ebbs
Sobs softly shake from skin pressed on skin
As knees stoop to the sandy turf.
The remains are life-breathed dust
And dust.

Whose young heart somersaults in grief and joy
Inside her promised woman's body?
Alert brown eyes flicker to her neighbours',
Seeing their grateful weeping stares.
The strong arms that struck the gong
Alarming all and prising them from their beds
Are grasped and raised.

Life
You have salvaged life, our island daughter.
A generation shall flow again.

©HC Hunter