THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

June 1, 2023

 

Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations.

—William Blake

 

PEACE

 

Early Morning Hours

 

From the house silence flows

to the ebony lawn

glittering like a river.

A small candle flickers,

mirroring the moon

sliding down night’s curve.

Fir branches stand against the sky,

the hours’ tall sentinels,

and the hum inside silence

fills each shadowed crevice,

the world inundated.

 

 

The Only Now

 

The stripped body lies burrowed

in a flower well, utterly still,

and one wonders

if it has died into the nectar.

Sheltered by night,

in the morning the bee resumes

sipping, covered in pollen

bumbling from flower to flower,

his home where he stops,

satiated with sugared gold,

his life and eating and bliss,

sleep and journey all one.

 

 

Unexpected

 

Rampant weeds crowd bee balm and hyssop,

dirt clings to roots, leaves bend

and in the midst of this fecundity,

I am digging, pulling, only

the sun’s heat on my back.

Moving through the afternoon quiet

a feathered sound of wings

is near, slower and closer,

and a light weight comes to rest on my head.

Could it be? I reach a hand up,

the wings lift, rise, and are gone.

 

 

The Tree in the Universe

 

Light glints off cherries in the branches

swaying slightly in summer breezes.

 

I too am swinging, shimmering, high

in the tree, resting in a dark trunk

 

adrift and asleep, the sky

dappling the light in the tree,

 

above the ground air my companion, birds

my companions, jumping and wondering,

 

all of us in the branches, in the light,

time a mystery that moves in the tree,

 

off the ground, as my vision,

my mind unrolls in front of me

 

carrying my heart forward and backward,

inward, time and space a single pulse

 

and the cherries shine, the tree grows

quietly upward and outward, carrying me,

 

the birds, and all around, all around,

right here in the branches, in time and in sight,

 

I see that, yes, yes, each particle,

each moment turning in the sky,

 

in the tree, flowing between us,

in us, what I imagined, what I dreamed

 

and dreaded and is now here—all of it divine.

 

—Deborah Buchanan

*

 

A couple months ago my friend Ken Margolis was listening to the news. He heard a report on the war in Ukraine. Both sides were said to be running low on ammunition, because they were both using 1,ooo artillery shells per day. Two thousand artillery shells per day! More than one per minute. It was insane. He told his friends, including me. He wondered: Is there is anything we can do to bring this war to an end? That question prompted me to choose the theme “Peace” for this month’s peace, love, happiness & understanding. The word “peace” has two main connotations: the absence of war, and a calm, quiet state of mind. When I invited people to contribute to this issue, I said the topic is “peace,” but didn’t specify which kind of peace.

 

For me, the “two kinds of peace” are not unrelated. In the early Eighties I wrote a fairly long essay called “The Ecology of Violence, the Ecology of Peace: A Lived Revolution—Personally, Locally, Globally.” In it, I explored topics like Authority, Poverty, Education, Cruelty, the Media, Meditation, Economics, Ideology, Ecology, Family, Culture, Community, and many more. One of the primary insights of Ecology is that everything is  inter-related to everything else. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of “interbeing.” It seems to me that our “job” is to help to co-create a culture that nurtures all people, and to learn or re-learn how humans can live on this planet without destroying it—like all the other animals do.

 

My outlook on life has been shaped by the fact that instead of going to Vietnam to kill people, I went to India and studied with wise yogis. When I think of war, instead of thinking about brave soldiers fighting to make the world a better place, I think of that photograph of Vietnamese children who have been bombed with jellied gasoline. Every day the war goes on in Ukraine, more children die. More mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers die. It’s insane.

 

Here’s a poem I wrote:

 

My Foolproof Plan for World Peace

 

I hereby declare today to be International Love Day.

And a General Armistice.

All hostilities must cease on International Love Day.

Henceforward, every day is International Love Day.

 

—Johnny Stallings

*

 

Alex sent this poem by Tom Clark:

 

Bolinas

 

My wife’s recipe for a fairy:

Put buttercup pollen

And a canary feather

In a thimble. At midnight,

Immersed in my life’s current

However it may flow

In the giant life around it

That whispers like a tree

Rocked by evening light,

A tide of beams

Bears my dreambound boat.

The boughs drop peace,

A star wanders toward dawn

Over the dim wet leaves.

 

—Tom Clark

 

—Alex Tretbar

*

 

To me lately, peacefulness is just being a happy person and trying to make others understand happiness in just a few seconds of every moment. If one can achieve this their life will be happy. I found this secret on my journey to the golden path. A friend told me about the golden path years ago. I live there now and the town I live in on the golden path is called simple bliss.

 

I also find peace in the sweat of my brow from a job well done. I can’t wait to work hard for the ones I love. Peace is free and it lives inside of us and if you have it in you, my friends, give it to those that don’t.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson

*

 

Siddhartha’s prayer    

 

When they asked why he left

his people and his palace, 

the response rose like fragrance from summer’s garden.

There is peace in every breath, he said,

and every heartbeat

and every footstep

that will no longer be forgotten

or forsaken.

I wish every thought to be a prayer

every word to be a poem

every touch an act of love,

and all to be 

as it already is.

               – amen

 

—Bill Faricy

*

 

Surrounded

Memorial Day 2023

 

Perhaps there is the sound of water,

the feel of a light breeze, comfortable

warmth, rustling leaves.

 

Maybe the colors make harmonies,

smell of sandalwood, taste

of cardamom on the tongue.

 

The temptation of a ladder rung

to a nest above ruins sharp

edged with smoke, mist.

 

Missed. We’re here. This list

of all that’s lost, endless. Still

fingers uncurl from a fist.

 

In the end everyone was right.

All we wanted was a sense of

belonging, a path, not a fight.

 

Instead, a respite, for now.

Forever? The crowd surrounds us,

whether we are aware, or not.

 

—Elizabeth Domike

*

                          Peace Tree

 

My calling is to rise. My purpose is to reach.

Where buildings fall, I stand silent in the shouting.

Even in billowing dust, I begin the next peace. If 

you splinter me, I will heal. After the battle, I will 

silhouette dawn. I have seen seasons pass, the rising 

of anger, fury of the storm, return of calm. I’m still

yearning for the sun, still delving into dark. Rooted

patriot of Earth, I drink the sky to give you breath.

Neutral in war, I shade both sides. Send my seeds 

across the border, I will be your diplomat of green.

If you plant me beside the graves of soldiers, I will

say to their mothers with my leaves what they 

might have said in the wind that stirs.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

Peace Within, Peace Without

 

Who doesn’t want to have peace within him or herself? Who doesn’t want to have world peace? I would say there are very few people in either category—a few, maybe, but not many.

 

Here is an inside aside:

Can you have peace without love?

Can you have peace without joy, either within yourself or in the ‘world?’

Is peace synonymous with love? Is love synonymous with joy?

Are there other words that define or are requirements for peace? Compassion? Connection?

 

Well, I’m just throwing these out there, as you can see, but let’s go back to peace within/peace without.

 

How can you be at peace within yourself and not be concerned about the world? It is overwhelming to think about trying to ‘fix’ the world, for sure. We all know how that feels. Might as well give up on that and just work on being at peace within yourself, right? Well, that is impossible, my friends. A spirit at peace is one who gnaws away, tackles, wrestles with—inch by inch, foot by foot—-some part of the exterior world that is hurting, be it other humans, other creatures, the world of nature. We do the work often never knowing whether or not we are achieving change, lessening hurt, creating love, creating bond and connection and unity. This is not why we do it; we do the work because the work itself is what grows peace within us. And—-we have to do it. 

 

Ha ha—but don’t get the idea that it is easy. It can be frightening, hurtful, frustrating, and really hard; but something in us is propelled to keep on. And whatever that ‘something’ is, brings (paradoxically) an inner peace.

 

So we have to be in the world, doing our bit, small as it is; but always, all of it, from all of us is growing peace in the world. And just think if each and every one were to do this! World Peace!!!

 

Working on the peace without is essential for the peace within…and vice versa.

 

—Jude Russell

*

 

The trouble with peace seems to be that it isn’t enough for us. Of course, war is the ultimate step in a power struggle to determine who gets the gold and the throne. So, in that sense, battle skills are the most useful of all skills.

 

But there is something more. At the same time we fear war, we lust after it. We sing of arms and the man. War becomes the context for heroism, nobility, and deep companionship. It also destroys the beautiful, kills the innocent, and generates hatred in future generations.

 

In spite of Elon Musk and other technological self-deceivers, most people feel intuitively that life and death form some sort of continuum. To manifest its cycle of renewal, life needs death. Does peace need war in some mysterious way?

 

When we think of Heaven, we think No More War, green meadows and grandchildren on our knee, not the whole thing blown to bits by an incoming drone. War has its lobby, its advocates and advertisers, its prophets and profiteers. It’s only fair that a few of us take the other, apparently less popular side, and advocate for peace.

 

—Ken Margolis

*

 

“Peace has been a theme in some of our earlier issues. Take a look at the peace,love, happiness & understanding Archive on the Open Road website. Here’s from June 24, 2021:

 

https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-6-24-21/

 

For July, send me something about your own vision of Utopia or Paradise.

 

peace,  

Johnny