Peace
Gerard Manley Hopkins

WHEN will you ever, Peace,
wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and
under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you,
Peace? I’ll not play
hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do
come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor
peace. What pure peace
allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting
wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my
Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave
Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter.
And when Peace here
does house
He comes with work to do, he
does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

D-Day at Seventy Years

As I do my morning dishes National Public Radio reports from Normandy, and my reflections spiral into a deep longing for another way to define “The Greatest Generation.” For me it would be a generation which refuses to be satisfied with a “piecemeal peace,’ but instead does the hard work of self- examination and conversion, work which leads to whole and lasting peace.

Today I choose to honor the hundreds of men who refused to go to Normandy, and those who risked scorn and poverty to support them.  They were men who believed that if we as human beings had been awake and living lives of nonviolence, the dictators would have been kept from power and D-Day would not have happened. You can read their stories and learn about the film,”The Good War And Those Who Refused to Fight It,” at http://www.pbs.org/itvs/thegoodwar/ww2pacifists.html.  The film is available from PBS USA and likely from your public library collection.  Clips are available on youtube.

photo credit for dove: hapal via photopin cc CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECOR