The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. Mahatma Ghandi

Revenge

At times ... I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I'd rest at last
and if I were ready -
I would take my revenge!

But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who'd put
his right hand over
the heart's place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they'd set -
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.

Likewise ... I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn't bear his absence
and who his presents thrilled.

Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbors he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school...
asking about him
and sending him regards.

But if he turned
out to be on his own -
cut off like a branch from a tree -
without mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbors or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I'd add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness -
nor the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I'd be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street - as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

~ Taha Muhammad Ali ~

(Read by Taha Muhammad Ali and translated by Peter Cole,
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, October 7, 2006)

 

 

When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness.  Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.

     Margaret Wheatley

In the Cards

Midnight. She complains
in the nursing home they
play too slow, forget what's
led, make up their own rules,
cheat. My grandmother, 89, abloom
in her flower-print dress and Ben
Hogan golf cap, her tinted gray
spectacles and cane, her sensible
shoes, reviews the sleepy bidding.
She's waited all year for this:
her children sprawled around her
at the table one last time,
their scores climbing brightly
on the score pad.

Wide awake for once, she exclaims
how she's amazed by each new day,
her one blind eye a pool
of blue glacier water, her other
eye asquint and smiling, her lips
blue in this warm room, taking
tricks for all she's worth.
The evening blurs into beer,
smoke, Velveeta, and sleep.
Oh my, she remarks, hearts
are trump? And they are,
and we hold the cards she's dealt us,
and we make our startled bids,
or go over, or go down.

 

Ronald Wallace

 

q

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

p

Love in the Classroom

-- for my students

 

Afternoon.  Across the garden, in Green Hall,

someone begins playing the old piano –

a spontaneous piece, amateurish and alive,

full of a simple, joyful melody.

The music floats among us in the classroom.

 

I stand in front of my students

telling them about sentence fragments.

I ask them to find the ten fragments

in the twenty-one-sentence paragraph on page forty-five.

They’ve come from all parts

of the world – Iran, Micronesia, Africa,

Japan, China, even Los Angeles – and they’re still

eager to please me.  It’s less than half

way through the quarter.

 

They bend over their books and begin.

Hamid’s lips move as he follows

the tortuous labyrinth of English syntax.

Yoshie sits erect, perfect in her pale make-up,

legs crossed, quick pulse minutely

jerking her right foot.  Tony,

from an island in the South Pacific,

sprawls limp and relaxed in his desk.

 

The melody floats around and through us

in the room, broken here and there, fragmented,

re-started.  It feels mideastern, but

it could be jazz, or the blues – it could be

anything from anywhere.

I sit down on my desk to wait,

and it hits me from nowhere – a sudden

sweet, almost painful love for my students.

 

“Never mind,” I want to cry out.

“It doesn’t matter about fragments.

Finding them or not.  Everything’s

a fragment and everything’s not a fragment.

Listen to the music, how fragmented,

how whole, how we can’t separate the music

from the sun falling on its knees on all the greenness,

from this movement, how this moment

contains all the fragments of yesterday

and everything we’ll ever know of tomorrow!”

 

Instead, I keep a coward’s silence,

the music stops abruptly;

they finish their work,

and we go through the right answers,

which is to say

we separate the fragments from the whole.

 

     Al Zolynas