|
| |
|
|
| |
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I cannot go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
--Theodore Roethke
|
|
|
|
Joy's Updates - Straight from the Horse's Mouth.
|
|
| |
Saturday, May 12, 2007
I'm Harry
This is from Bill Moyers Journal:
"I'm Harry."
When people are having a good time, you don't want to be the skunk in the garden. And this week, people were having such a good time at that big White House welcome for the Queen. The New York Times says her majesty was "making Americans go weak in the knees." Sometimes we colonials seem so dazzled by British royalty that I wonder if General Washington did defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown.
But a less playful thought also occurred to me watching the first and royal families all gussied up. I couldn't help but think of Prince Harry, the Queen's grandson, who is headed for Iraq with a cavalry regiment, even though he's a conspicuous target for assassination or kidnapping. There's angst in official circles that other members of his regiment will be put at graver risk because of his celebrity. So guess what his comrades -- his fellow soldiers -- are doing? Rather than petition the Queen to keep the young man home, they have gotten shirts printed up with the words across them: "I'm Harry." Marvelous, no? The commoners and the Prince are in this together: one for all and all for one. What a notion -- that war should be the great equalizer, that no one's son or daughter is privileged from duty or danger.
You have to wonder how the last four years might have been different if only our President had asked sacrifice from everyone. Instead, mostly folks from the working class and professional soldiers are doing the dying in Iraq, while the rich spend their tax cuts. War on the cheap, except for those fighting it.
Watching all the wrangling in Washington this week over timetables and exit strategies and benchmarks, it occurred to me that this travesty might end much more quickly if what is happening in Iraq were not just word-play to our leaders -- something others die for while officials talk, talk, and talk. Suppose the next time they pow-wow and palaver the President and Congress were asked to wear shirts with the words written across them, "I'm Harry."
See another article about Prince Harry's going to Iraq and the t-shirt here. What do you think about all this?
11:42:00 AM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
