PERESTROIKA AND GLASNOST

PERESTROIKA AND GLASNOST

It always takes courage to take up the subject of restructuring—whether it involves just the personal life, or our very society. Openness takes even more courage…and humility. We are talking about the state and the individual and the relationship between. Well, structuring, in general, is a big question which involves the relationship of what we might call the “without” to the “within”… and how that might remain always alive and fluid.

How to go to the core of principle and then think outward to application is a big task indeed, and obviously (in the temporal and the spiritual world) the structures we build eventually come apart and have to be rethought/rebuilt, I follow the news and I wonder if this is indeed what we are doing now? Is that what we are doing in this country—in the whole world?

I remember the huge tent villages my children used to create in our living room during the hot desert summers. I just watched with utter fascination and admiration as I saw those encampments grow bigger and bigger, taking up the walking space so that we had to tiptoe along the walls to get across the room at all, but I certainly had not the heart to interrupt their process. Eventually, and this would happen several times throughout a summer, the structures would come apart, as the quilts, fastened onto card tables by encyclopedias and other improvised objects, would begin to slip from their alignments. The disarray would spread across the entire ‘village’ and then when it got too unmanageable for them, they would take it all down and begin again. It was an amazing process to watch. They all just worked together, the three of them, and no one seemed to be the “boss.”

This really big and deep macro question of how to bring about the optimum development of society and the individual, at the same time, has been with me since I was fairly young. I might mention here Sophocles’ Antigone (rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state), and the work of Edward Deming (in his development of group work practices) in helping Japan rebuild after WWII. For my personal spiritual journey, in their contemplation of evolution, Loren Eiseley (evolving out of the tidepools) and Teilhard de Chardin (radial energy), have helped me along the way to come to some comforting thoughts within myself. I treat of this more specifically and at some length in our book Conscious Evolution: The Dance of Intuition and Intellect in the section entitled “Unity: Drawing Together from the Within”…from Chapter Five, I share this excerpt here below:

Unity: Drawing Together from the Within

When we speak of the “within”—what are we meaning? Sri Aurobindo often said that, even in our very cells, we are lit by God Light at the core. We are lit by god light…what does that mean?

Richard Grossinger, contemplates this phenomenon we call light in his book The Night Sky. In his chapter on occult astronomy he discusses with a characteristic look at the writings of others [especially Pierre Teilhard de Chardin--who wrote so much about the "within"] and then makes his own intuitive mystical synthesis:

“So we can look at the sky as a screen of hydrogen fires, or we can look at the same light as the divine component of creation transmitted eternally. The sun is the local embodiment of this material, and the Earth is constructed of solar material. When we imagine the primordial seas with their millennial rains and steam, the upheaval of the molten core, the emergence of bare rock, and the clinging life mantle, we can intuit an inside to this process so that the astral is transmitted through the elemental.

… We are encouraged to look anew into the night sky, and it is a hive of cells and souls traversed by divine light and the archetypal data of creation. In Gurdjieff’s system, light carries information from higher worlds into lower ones, information which can be transformed by physical nourishment and breath back into astral thought.” (Richard Grossinger in The Night Sky, pp.49-50) (77:49-50)

“When we imagine the primordial seas…” Can we then be like the ancient small creatures (as so eloquent described by Loren Eiseley in The Immense Journey) learning to survive in the residual tide pools as the oceans receded and withdrew from the land. These small creatures internalized the seawater—that which had been their supporting environment—and developed the circulatory system. Through individuation, having internalized the supporting environment, the codes and mores of our evolving social institutions, we can draw together by using the force of radial energy from the heart. We might think of this radial energy as ‘entropised’ energy which has built up our ‘within’—rather than having been dissipated throughout the aeons—radial energy now makes a rich conserve within the heart of humanity. Radial energy allows for the drawing together from within rather than being pushed together from without—thus allowing the optimum development of the individual as well as, and simultaneously with the whole, the collective, the community, the society,

It is basic to an evolving consciousness to understand that, to a more or less degree depending on circumstances, all persons are bound together in ties of consciousness. We are unified from our initial creation as a spiritual being. Our energy source is shared, thus enabling us to communicate without verbal speech. Reality extends beyond time and space.

Spiritually, we know that we must transcend the i of singularity and appreciate the ties to all life. By transcending the small i we begin to fully appreciate the spiritual bonds uniting us. This is a turning point in our lives, in our very consciousness. We finally know ourselves in togetherness. The isolation of the i has led to greed, aggression and war. Togetherness corrects those ills and accounts for so much more. Relating as companions for the journey, we can move the world forward to an entirely new dimension of being. Of this we are sure, a simple awareness exists within nature, evolving into higher forms as the spiral ascends. We have moved from that simple awareness to a human consciousness that, at this time on earth, must evolve into a higher consciousness of oneness with all that there is, if we are to fulfill our destiny and evolve humanity from the darkness of our age. Aggression, greed, self-centeredness, and war can now be seen in the light of horrible negativity and immaturity. Our evolving consciousness ushers in a new era of maturity and life.

We believe that the unity we seek can begin to be found if we first establish a dialogical connection with the expanded consciousness of what we call “the inner dimensions.” This direct knowledge of unity can be experienced and lived. It is our inner and our outer which together form our authentic essence. Understanding and experiencing this requires an openness filled with courage to change and transcend, to evolve and mature. To be locked into previous immature beliefs is to live within a cage of past shadows.

Again, we come back to the discussion of meditative practice for access to the “within.” The source of this experience is not physical. It is far greater than that. This knowledge, awaiting to be found, now gained by experience, is attained by a leap beyond our physical body, utilizing deep contemplation and/or meditation in order to pierce false blinders and limitations.

By having the courage to go beyond the traditional, the very core of our awareness is expanded. We can learn to live, even for brief moments, in a higher more integrated state of consciousness. Veils are pierced as a greater degree of knowing is lived. The gateway to reality is found as we encounter and go beyond the human made web of appearances and hurdles.

We all have come into the physical dimension for individual, positive goals. We don’t know of any and we can’t seek a supposed God’s plan by e-mail. No such plan has ever been known. It would be the height of folly to suppose that we can find one. We are not slaves, even to God, and can only conceive of individual plans, developed deep within ourselves and with help from our guides, hinted at in mystical experiences. These plans are always developed for our greater good and the good of humankind.

Our goal and that which leads us to a human unity is an internal, intuitional knowing, through individual experience at a higher level, that we are all part of the family of living beings. We can and must make our unique contributions to that in our own unique way. The grand goal is the fulfillment of our individual missions in that grand togetherness—the blending of our temporary world of appearances with that of the everlasting Reality. When we, on this planet, commit to the fulfillment we can begin, step by step, project by project, relationship by relationship, to finally move forward on a beauty path that is a winning one for each inhabitant, and for our individual and collective existence on this Earth. When that inner knowing, accelerated by contemplation and meditation is experienced, the march forward will be one with the hurdles overcome. As we move along the path we slowly gain deeper appreciation and understanding, leaving behind the commitment to a narrow world view.

Emersion and total commitment to a specific institution or world view, although helpful and even necessary in providing early scaffolding, structure and support, if allowed to monitor or censure our thoughts, can also be a barrier. Such entanglements must be cast aside if we are to go forward with complete freedom of unrestricted thinking.

The above recommendation may be viewed as suspicious by those who are afraid of thinking itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson provided a profound response to that thought years ago. He suggested that if we are all meditating on the same source we will achieve answers appropriate for each individual and always moving us toward the common unity where it all began. Meditation can overcome differences in intellectual reasoning since it can take us beyond a school or book or belief driven interpretation of encounter.

If a new self is to be found there must be courage and love in the attempt to ascend the ladder. We have often said that we must go “naked” toward the spiritual domain in meditation. We clearly meant that we go with an open mind, free from all intellectual persuasions or biases. All who have succeeded in meditation would support that recommendation. It is foolish to draw strict parameters if one is seeking a truth beyond the human. That experience is one of an intimacy with our birthright, that final awakening of our expanded consciousness, the experience of inner, loving relationships with all levels of creation, including the Divine. It is the majestic experience of loving knowledge that binds together the unity of humankind and the spiritual where false subjectivity has no home. There, only love and harmony are to be found. Now, here, that time has come.— (Sheldon Stoff and Barbara Smith Stoff are also authors of a new book—The Akashic Field: It Makes Every Place in the Universe Part of the Neighborhood)

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLICANS

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLICANS

From the Good Book…
“And the man said,
The woman whom thou gavest
to be with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat” …

Consciousness in motion…
What ho now! How goes
this old dragon from the deep loch?
The chorus stands up—Arafat sings…
“The womb of the Arab woman is my strongest weapon.”

The chorus swells in number…
Santorum, Limbaugh, Scalia…
while down there in the deep loch—
that sea of the deep unconscious
Carl Jung stirs too. He rubs his eyes and asks,
“Are we going to finally heal this wound?”…
And glaciers move.

–Barbara Smith Stoff
March 11, 2012

THE PATH THROUGH THE HEARTLAND

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.

–Dalai Lama

 

Every step of the journey—

Whether into a puddle

Or onto a rocky shore

Or into the green glade—

Is valuable

Beyond all reason

Beyond all knowing

Beyond even our imagination.

–bss February 14, 2012

A MUCH NEEDED GIFT FROM DAVID MAZEL

A MUCH NEEDED GIFT FROM DAVID MAZEL

By Barbara Smith Stoff

Some time in that amazing decade we call ‘the seventies’ I discovered the stories of David Mazel, who was then publishing them in The Christian Science Monitor. It happens also that, during those years, I was teaching high school English classes, and I began to bring these stories into my classes for my students. Even today, I have an old file in the cabinet, with yellowed pages saved from Monitor issues, which shelter these stories by Mazel.

In those days, I found that my students responded with amazing spiritual resonance and began to write stories of their own. Needless to say, I was pleased beyond words. And that’s where these stories send us…beyond words…far beyond words into a world of the intuitive experience of love and wisdom. In later years I began university teaching—often with classrooms filled with working adults returning for needed degrees and personal growth. The resonances deepened.

And hereby hangs a new tale. My husband and I were working on a new book (THE AKASHIC FIELD: IT MAKES EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE PART OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD), a book about the field of being behind the physical manifestations of life, and we wanted to include Mazel’s “The Gift” in this book. Now long retired, we dug into that old metal filing cabinet for that yellowed page from the Christian Science Monitor, dated June 21, 1979, and then began the process of seeking permission to reprint the story in our book. After countless hours of internet searching, emails, and telephone calls, we found that there are forty four persons listed named David Mazel, yet we have been unable to locate that one David Mazel, so special to us, so, with sorrow, we decided to take the story out of our manuscript. But our search turned up real gold anyway. We found that there is indeed a volume of his amazing stories entitled MY HEART’S WORLD: STORIES BY DAVID MAZEL, of which we did find two ancient used tomes, and purchased both and have given one of those to a granddaughter—passing on a metaphorical violin one might say.

The point here is that we feel strongly that this book, now out of print, should be republished, and a new edition should include that story of the gift which was originally published in the Monitor. This special story of “THE GIFT” does not show up in the existing print volume, but may I say, modern day publishers please take note: There is much emphasis, and demand, for “action” stories and crime stories, while now, during these tumultuous and troubling times, David Mazel’s “MY HEART’S WORLD” would be a deeply needed gift to this trembling world.

Please scroll down to read David Mazel’s THE GIFT—Believe me, it’s very much worth the effort of the scroll:

THE GIFT By David Mazel (from The Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 1979)

My maternal grandfather, Zalman Podkovnik, was surely the strongest man in the world. When he flexed his bicep for me to feel with both my hands, I couldn’t believe that he was mere flesh and blood, not solid iron. The globe of the world in my bedroom, that Atlas held up, looked littler than his bicep. Even when he flexed his fingers, I could see mini-globes.

Blue-eyed, tall but not towering, and with always a sad smile hovering about his lips, he wasn’t a weight lifter, or a wrestler, or a boxer, or any professional strong man. He worked for the garbage company. From the time he was twenty till far into his fifties, at hours of the morning when the limbs of most mortals in the city were heavy with sleep and existence, there was my grandfather lifting can after can and banging them empty into the back of the garbage truck. There were his muscles moving old mountains and making way for new.

But what is a man? Is he body, or is he spirit? Is he what he does or what he dreams? Or is he simply and always a surprise?

Early one morning, the morning of my seventh birthday, when midnight had barely completed its last bow to the sky, my grandfather shook me by the shoulder and woke me up. He had his own key to my parent’s house, and must have sneaked in, for all was quiet.

“Davie,” he said, “how would you like to see me lift the world?”

“Lift the world?” I said, wide awake at once. “Really? The whole world?” I had a vision of my grandfather replacing Atlas under all the globes of the world. “Yes, please!” I said.

“Get dressed,” he said. Then, going over to my window, he pulled back the curtain and pointed outside. Tens of thousands of snowflakes, tiny as tiddlywinks, were tumbling down. It was as if the sky had turned its pockets inside out and were giving away its entire hoard.

“These are the best nights for lifting the world,” my grandfather said. “The snow makes everything lighter. Even garbage. Come, I’ll show.”

Bundled up, I tiptoed after him out into the snowstorm. There was the garbage truck, its red “I’m stopped” lights blinking. And up inside the cab, my grandfather’s partner, a young man with a sleepy smile and snow in his hair. I scooted in between them, and off we went.

That morning, on the way to lifting the world, my grandfather showed me garbage cans that looked almost like people who’d gotten tired of walking, had sat down to sleep, and then been draped with garlands of snow by children who felt sorry for them, who wanted even them, the weary, to look young and festive. He showed me white bundles left on top of the cans, bundles of rags, clothes, bottles, “little bundles of yesterday,” he called them, that didn’t fit in. He pointed up to a clothesline where sheets and shirts and socks were “dancing together” to keep warm.

“Are you a poet, Grandfather Zalman?” I asked.

“How else,” he answered, “could I lift the world? Muscles alone aren’t enough.”

I rode in that garbage truck, up alleys, down alleys, for hour after magical hour. If I got impatient to see my grandfather lift the world, he quieted me with candy. If I got sleepy, the banging of the cans restored me. I didn’t even worry that my parents would wake up and think I’d been kidnapped. My grandfather had left them a note: “Am taking Davie for a ride with me. Not to worry. All is well. Love, Zalman Podkovnik.”

Finally, at dawn, he stopped the truck at the top of a hill overlooking the city. Streetlights were glowing blurrily, and bedrooms blinking awake. It was still snowing hard. My grandfather reached under the seat and pulled out – a violin and bow!

“These I found in a garbage can,” he said. “They’re not broken. They’re not even scratched. Who would throw away such beautiful things? God knows. Maybe somebody who didn’t look what he was doing. Maybe somebody who had no sense. Maybe somebody who gave up; somebody who decided the trouble was in the instrument, instead of in him. No matter. I found them.”

“But Grandfather Zalman,” I said, “you told me you were going to lift the world.”

“I’m lifting it.” he said. “And I’m giving it to you. Happy birthday, my grandson.”

“This is the world?” I asked, looking down at the astonishing gift in my hands.

My grandfather nodded solemnly. “What we do with it,” he said, and sighed, “that isn’t so good. But what we could do with it, that’s a dream. That’s the end of garbage and the beginning of music. Remember this, Davie. Remember who first lifted the world for you.”

That was the morning I became a musician.–David Mazel, 1979

**** [Note: Barbara Smith Stoff is co-author with husband Sheldon Stoff of Conscious Evolution: The Dance of Intuition and Intellect, and The Akashic Field: It Makes Every Place in the Universe Part of the Neighborhood. Both are retired from university teaching.]

Author tags: David Mazel “the gift” ,poetry, music, books, metaphor, family, love, akashic field,

UNICORN RISING

UNICORN RISING

grazing on green violets in spring

we hear with gentle hearts

the soft sounds

of new music

from green gold reeds

as the sun warms a new Dayrose

on slender vines

strong enough to weave new clothes

for the Emperor

born from the breath of the Unicorn.

–Barbara Smith Stoff

ANOTHER CAT : ANOTHER CHRISTMAS MEMORY

REFLECTIONS IN UKAIAH’S GOLDEN EYE

This cat you rescued from the night

has grown sleek and shiny black.

Here in my lap she wafts her tail

in contented response to my praise

and looks at me.

Sunday is quiet now, before Christmas.

Vivaldi deepens the sheen of tinsel

and from such a glow I admire

tall Eucalyptus against scudding clouds

and turn to light the candles. I remember

a time upon time of blonde curls

and bright blue eyes, sheer joy, perfect grace,

flesh from mine, heart’s utter devotion

in red corduroy elation and royal ruffles

beneath fragrant fir. Benedictus…bene…

bene…child crystaling gaze. Rarest gold.

Such alchemy offers immortal loveliness,

and Ukaiah is my witness to this truth.

–Barbara Smith Stoff

ICELAND BECOMES FIRST WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY TO RECOGNIZE PALESTINIAN STATE

ICELAND BECOMES FIRST WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY TO RECOGNIZE PALESTINIAN STATE

I am pleased to read this. Oh so many years ago, when my children were in high school, we had an exchange student from Iceland, for a whole year…what a wonderful experience that was…and we all learned so much. I also believe that Iceland was the first country to use fuel cell cars as municipal vehicles…it’s worth keeping an eye on Iceland! They have wonderful poetic legends also!

This is from a letter I wrote to a grandchild…one of my favorite stories about Iceland: “I am thinking of you so much up there is the Norse world…have decided to lurk around Norse history websites just to be near you…in my imagination anyway. You might enjoy this (below) which I posted at 12:38 p.m. December 19, 1999, on the poetry forum in the New York Times. I think it says a lot about the power of writing, and especially of poetry.
“ There is a wonderful story in the Icelandic Sagas which tells of a king whose son drowned, and the king laid himself down on his bed and refused to eat, to die of a broken heart. Saying that she would go with him into death because she was devoted to them both, she came to sit silently beside his bed. After a while the king asked, “What are you chewing on?” “Dulse,” she said. “It makes you die faster.” “Then give me some too,” he said.
After another while the king found that he was thirsty, so she gave him some water to drink. Then he asked again and again, because the seaweed had made him very thirsty. She then told him that she had been putting milk in the water, and thus they would not die so soon after all. She said that while they were waiting to die, it would be a good idea if he made a poem in memory of his son, and her brother, whom they both loved. “I will carve in runes the words of your poem, as you say them to me,” she said.
The king agreed, and he began to speak to her of all his sorrow over the loss of his favorite son, and all his fury against the seagod. Then he began to feel better. When he had finished the poem, he got up, made the funeral feast in accordance with the ancient custom, sent his daughter back to her home with handsome gifts, and took up his ordinary way of living. He lived to a great old age.
This fascinating lady would be Thorgerdur, associated with the Goddess of Fate, in Icelandic myth, and daughter of Egill, the great poet.”–Barbara Smith Stoff

ICARUS REMEMBERED

ICARUS REMEMBERED
By Barbara Smith Stoff

And we are here again to honor and to remember. I see Paul Sonin’s photo of the Pentagon memorial benches, those benches, each one cantilevered over water. To me, those benches look like the wings of Icarus downed—ever so many wings reminding us of earthly flights suddenly cut short in the splintered morning of what started out as just another ordinary day.

I am reminded of Bruegel’s painting, “Landscape with the fall of Icarus” where only the white clad legs of Icarus can be seen sticking up from the water, if one looks closely. Those wings, crafted from imagination, inspiration and courage, have not served.

Auden’s poem “Musee Des Beaux Arts,” describes that painting…pointing out how the world turns away from disaster and private suffering and moves on. In another poem about that same painting, this one by Charles F. Madden, “The Fall of Icarus,” we read “none has seen the silent fall of Icarus/ through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light/nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight/of his remembered waxed and winged flight.”

As I gaze now across the landscape of benches, it is comforting to see those ethereal feathers of hope made concrete, anchored in earth, yet hovering as if in flight over the waters…the soul flies on, but leaves a reminder for us.

And we have not turned away. We remember in public the private sufferings. With these wings we remember and we may pray, as individuals, for our collective humanity to continue. We may pray as with James Joyce, as he stands on the shore contemplating his own flight over the waters toward maturity:

“Amen. So be it. Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race…..Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.”

Each of us privately forges some contribution to all life. Perhaps in those concrete wings, something of the essence of each departed soul has been distilled and offers back, for all to see, a symbol of hope for humankind–a more benevolent evolution.

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART
By Barbara Smith Stoff
I see too,
remembering Auden’s Icarus,
that when it comes to suffering
they are seldom wrong
these reporters and their cameras,
the way they catch tragedy on the human face,
and yet sometimes they fix for us
in their instants and afterimages
…something achingly beautiful, incandescent…
so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.
I have kept it here on my desk,
for weeks now, have studied her expression…
hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,
perhaps clear only to her.
I have met those eyes, the lips
pursed to appeal from her side.
I know little of sides and battles,
but I know that face.

Here are the poems which inspired me and my students:
MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS
By W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,
Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

This one is from DOORS INTO POETRY, by Chad Walsh (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962)…

THE FALL OF ICARUS (From Brueghel’s painting)
by Charles F. Madden

The bulging sails by a riotous wind caught
pull the ships and their rigging nets toward shore
to be emptied. The sailors quickly will calm their floors
and their houses in the evening light will melt into the mountains.

And on the hill with one foot planted in the earth
his plowing almost done; his eyes cast down and fully shielded
from the sun which now is growing shadow, the farmer
turns in soil and toil the final circles of the day.

Below him a quiet pastoral: on lichen bearing rocks
the feeding sheep, the quiet watching dog, the silent shepherd
so stalking with his eyes the homing flights of birds
that neither he nor the intent fisherman closer to the shore,

none has seen the silent fall of Icarus
through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light,
nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight
of his remembrd waxed and winged flight.

–Charles F. Madden

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

Ultimately the voice in the whirlwind says

I am this love

which drips like honey through earthly caverns

…to the high altar…

poetry is the rich conserve—

the talisman for transit

through all comings and goings

moment to moment

aeon to aeon

music from the great organ

always othering to itself

but yet comes home.

–Barbara Smith Stoff

 

 

HIGH WITNESS

Meister Echkhart

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

HIGH WITNESS

as we are camped out here

on this more often and indeed very darkling plain

Djwhal Khul tell us to be the high witness

we have our electronic campfire

we sit facing the television

we move through the ceremonies of Kennedy funerals

through the ceremonies upon the death of a princess

we bear high witness

we bear high witness to war after war

there is Desert Storm

the Towers fall

oil explodes in oceans

earthquakes come

tornadoes come

and then the fires

 

Netanyahu speaks to Congress

Obama speaks to Parliament

 

in 1939, a ten year old boy writes

of the terrible scar of war

and pleads for leaders to sit down together

sit down together and talk things out

work together

this scar is a terrible thing

these wars…

 

long deceased now,

that ten year old yet watches

still keeps watch for these children

 

we sit facing the screen

we watch and listen

all the world speaks now

cries out in pictures

the grandson of a Kenyan cook in the British Army

stands before the British Parliament

as President of the United States

and says “It will be years before

these revolutions will reach

their conclusions”…

and says, “We have a say in how this story ends.”

he quotes Churchill: “…wherever the bird of freedom

chirps in the human heart…”

there is the eye that sees

–Barbara Smith Stoff