Peace Meditation

Martha K. Grant sent this poem to me earlier this month, and it seems a fitting time to pass it along. In the midst of the holiday season, I need a reminder to take the time to do a little raking. The poem is by Jan Jarboe Russell,  a writer of merit and depth, who also happens to be one of my NIA teachers. If you have a chance to take a class from Jan at the Synergy Studio, or read something she's written (often for Texas Monthly), do so in the certainty that you will benefit, heart and soul, body and mind.

LET ME HEAR SILENCE

One day I visited a Zen monastery
in Hiroshima. Groups of monks took turns
raking white rocks in a certain pattern,
praying silently that the world might never again
witness the explosion of an atomic bomb.

Standing in the prayer garden,
less than a mile from Ground Zero,
I had an irrational thought:

What if the real reason we have not
blown ourselves up isn’t the billions of dollars
spent on defense since World War II?
What if the real reason we are alive
is because funny-looking guys
are silently raking rocks,
far from the centers of world power?

Nah, I thought—
but then again,
a little rock raking couldn’t hurt.

-- Jan Jarboe Russell

The poem originally appeared in Texas Monthly.

For more from Jan, see her Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson or this column in the Express-News that explained why John McCain and Sarah Palin are not "original mavericks."

Comments

[PaMdora]

What a great poem. I was in Hiroshima once and at their museum is a huge room, the walls covered in paper. The mayor of H, a big part of his job is to write a letter of protest to the responsible agency everytime there is a nuclear bomb test anywhere in the world and those papers were copies of the letters. It was scary to see how many letters there were, but at the same time, hopeful that someone was protesting.

[sansue]

Yoga and spirituality go hand in hand. Hath yoga is a great exercise for both mind and spirit. Spiritual medicine is fantastic for the soul and mind as well as for the body. People should pay more attention to this great tool of healing. If we have many rewards in life which can be many ferris wanli dimensional to transients to our biology and in more agreement of our attention to find the truth behind the metaphysical reformation of life. This is because our attention always go towards the traditional medicine that may or may not cure the real problem.