Most of the time, I dwell on how screwed-up this world is. Just about every day, I read the news...or I try to, and then I throw up my hands and say, "Shit. The world is going to hell in a handbasket."
But. But. It's Easter season. It's a time for celebration. And it's the middle of Passover, so in the midst of thinking about captivity, we have to remember that liberation is coming.
And, as such, I'm going to post things that make me think that there is hope for humanity after all.
1. Jamie Moffett, a friend of mine, has started an organization called Kensington Renewal. Kensington is Philly's poorest neighborhood, and Jamie, who has lived in Kensington for the past 10 years, is trying to turn some of the "abandominiums" into owner-occupied homes.
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about it here. And if you'd like to help out financially, you can do it here.
2. George Zimmerman was arrested. While this doesn't guarantee anything, and it doesn't make Trayvon Martin's death better, it's a (baby) step in the right direction.
3. This kid is awesome. Seriously.
4. The Wailin' Jennys won a Juno award for Best Roots & Traditional Album for their newest album Bright Morning Stars. I kind of love them, so here's "Bird Song."
5. And because poetry is always appropriate:
e.e. cummings
"spring is like a perhaps hand"
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
So, everyone, tell me: what gives you hope for humanity?
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This is terrible, I keep trying to think of something, I know there's hope, but it seems to be personally in short supply.
ReplyDeleteHave an April poem instead?
And in the first warm days each step
pushes you against a weight,
and you don't want
to resist that weight,
you want to stop, to return
to darkness
--but treaties made
over your head force you to
waver forward.
You are appalled to consider you may be destined
to live to a hundred.
But it is April,
there is nothing unique in your losses,
your pain is commonplace
and your road ordained:
your steps will hurt you,
you will arrive
as usual
at some condition you name summer:
an ample landscape,
voluptuous, calm,
of large, very still trees,
water meadows, dreamy
savannah distances,
where you will gather strength,
pulling ripe fruit from the boughs,
for winter and spring,
forgotten seasons.
Try to remember it is always this way.
You live
this April's pain
now,
you will come
to other Aprils,
each will astonish you.
-Denise Levertov, from "Talking to Oneself"