Virginia sent this poem to us all with a fresh and welcome view on silence.
Love from Peri and Barbara and Virginia
When I read this poem it's like I am following a youth with a lantern who is leading me through narrow passageways that are at once sublime, jarring, and compelling. These passageways have been walked by generations who have not found the key to a new and transformative gateway into the field of the fertile crescent complexity. As I meander, I am confronted not with frightening spectres of 'other' outside of me, but of facing anything inside that says I am not you. Then, in the quiet that falls like grace I listen, truly listen.
Virginia Gillespie
Quiet Psalm
Let there be a quiet that falls like grace,
over all of us:
over our hands
which have slowly become guns,
our teeth, now daggers,
and over our hearts,
which explode with the suicide bombs.
Let us take ourselves back
to the first time we saw each other
on the Fertile Crescent,
where we drew water to drink
from the same river,
or back to the first playground
where you asked, What's your name?
and I responded, I am you.
Let us follow this unmentioned history
back in time so that we may see
that the suffering of one
is the suffering of all,
and furthermore,
the responsibility.
Let us gather up our missiles,
our shrapnel, our tanks,
our nuclear threats, and our hatred
and ask:
How could I have thought
to use these against you?
And let there be a quiet that falls over us like grace,
as we stand dumbed by the asking.
And then
let there be a Listening
for the deepest of answers.
- Silvio Machado