Posted in poetry, tagged acceptance, appreciation, choice, gratitude, inspiration, neighborhood, peace, perspective, positive attitudes, racial equality on February 19, 2025| 1 Comment »
Your neighbor is the man who needs you. Elbert Hubbard
My Integrated Neighborhood
“Need help carrying groceries?”
a young man calls from across the street.
Wednesday evening and our trash cans
are at the curb ready for weekly pickup.
Our next-door neighbor
moved them before he
tended to his own.
I smile at gifts surrounding
my husband and me,
at the brown, black, and white faces
that reveal hearts exploding with care.
Garbage exists
inside and outside the population.
Love moves it along.
Posted in poetry, tagged appreciation, choice, inspiration, Muhatma Gandi quote, news broadcasts, peace, peace and justice, perspective, war on June 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »
There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow .
Mahatma Gandhi
After the Bomb Blast
Where is the cameraman’s face,
as he zooms in on the hungry bleeding child?
Is the small boy frightened of a creature
carrying a camera? Does that person
bring bread and bandages?
Then the camera moves to the next atrocity
and delivers sensationalist stories for the 6 o’clock news?
On the other side of the screen
viewers chew carryout pizza
and wait for the next commercial
to get more beer from the refrigerator.
Where is the cameraman’s face?
A minute-long film
can’t tell the full story. Somehow,
may the captured moment ignite help
and not more hunger and pain.
originally published in For a Better World 2024
Posted in inspiration, tagged black and white films, Eddie Izzard quote, guns, old Westerns, peace, TV on May 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »
(photo of television after the show ended.)
“They say that ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ Well, I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don’t think you’d kill too many people.”
Groan…another Western
I pull my hearing aids out of my ears. It doesn’t help. Someone on the TV in the living room must be ready to pull out a gun. The conversational tone screams it. I fill in the script. “You stepped on my toe. And I’m gonna kill you for it.”
Okay. I admit it. I’m a peace monger at heart. Worse. One who drinks iced tea and hasn’t had a beer in thirty years.
Yes. I am certain there is a plot somewhere in the black-and-white episode one room away from me. Perhaps it is worth the gunpowder to follow it. The dead actors could get up after the script and appear in another episode. Or at least they could during the 1950s when the film was created.
Another gun blast. “Do you hear me, Marshall?”
Ignore it, Terry. Pay attention to your world. Breathe… Now breathe again. Get it out of your system and move on. Murder never solved any genuine problem. Life doesn’t come with a script.
Peace.
Posted in poetry, tagged choice, directional apps, driving, inspiration, panic, Paulo Coelho quote, peace, perspective, positive attitudes on March 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination”
― Paulo Coelho
Lost—Again
The directional app on my phone
remains mute, while the road twists
and my mind twists with it
into lost places I’ve been.
Memories explode bully-style inside
my brain synapses, creating panic.
No sound, but an arrow on my screen says
turn left at the next corner. I remember
the shop with the worn yellow sign.
And space in my head and heart opens.
I know to move through uncertainty.
Celebrate my detours. Consider
the possibility that others hide pain
behind strange, sour, surly behavior.
May peace be made from pieces,
one imperfect turn at a time.
Originally published in For a Better World 2020
reprinted previous blog
Posted in poetry, tagged acceptance, Anne Frank quote, appreciation, choice, encouragement, experience, hope, insight, inspiration, oppression, peace, perspective, positive attitudes on January 23, 2024| 1 Comment »
Trickle Up
Anne Frank’s words:
“I don’t think of all the misery,
but of all the beauty that still remains.”
Her voice was forever silenced.
Yet, her heart rings true in this oh-so-similar era.
Hope. Insight. Peace. They grow inside seeds
that don’t recognize their worth when planted.
Small, invisible in a world
where power and greed rule.
May buds of integrity bloom, then refuse to die.
Posted in poetry, tagged apathy, choice, dignity, empathy, gratitude, greed, peace, perspective, Rev. David Beckmann quote, war, world hunger on July 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »
“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.” – Reverend David Beckmann, president of Alliance to End Hunger.
My Name Is World Hunger
My name is world hunger.
I am both well-known and ignored.
I appear anywhere around the globe
where war has assaulted and destroyed
dignity and peace. I live where
there is too much or too little water.
I flourish where greed sings
every important song and
silences smaller voices.
I was created, not born.
Like disease, I am not normal.
Yet, I long to be healed,
to be in tune with the whole,
rounded into softness,
not rounded inside the bellies
of my victims.
My name is world hunger.
I did not choose existence.
May I slip inside history,
remembered as a shameful plague,
corrected and shaped
inside a power known as peace.
I am willing, so willing
to belong to the past,
gone, but never forgotten.
published in For A Better World 2023
Posted in inspiration, tagged Franz Kafka quote, haiku, harmony, inspiration, lynching, nature, peace, perspective, poetry, racial prejudice, tanka on April 26, 2023| 2 Comments »
I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face. (Franz Kafka) WE CALL IT VISION Sometimes poetry speaks truth better than lines of fact. I don’t have many syllables to share today. One haiku contains lines containing 5, 7, 5 syllables, and one tanka delivers spaces of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables. Peace to all. DURING A BLACK-AND-WHITE TV SCENE ” I don’t see color,” says a white man to lynching as he leaves the scene. COMMUNITY The flower sees bees coming and opens petals. Possibilities. Plant and insect share alike. Even as the stem stands still.
Posted in inspiration, tagged Abhijit Naskar quote, choice, hate, inspiration, peace, poem, small beginnings, violence, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism on December 30, 2022| 1 Comment »
“It is character that should be the sole measure of judgement in the society of thinking humanity, and nothing short of that would do.” ― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism CONTRAST The news broadcasts the story in an infinite loop. Nine people killed, one an unborn baby. Boy or girl, identity as unknown as the reason for the bullets that stopped them. I listen to commentary about hate and racism while a winter-pale goldfinch travels from tree to wire, a place where robins perch. The wire is long with plenty of room. Perhaps, there is no genuine connection. Only a brief metaphor. And yet I wonder if change can begin with subtle movements toward peace. bird illustration made from public domain photo, colored pencil, and chalk
Posted in inspiration, tagged apathy, choice, depression, determination, experience, Mahatma Gandhi quote, peace, peace and justice, perspective, war on October 9, 2022| 1 Comment »
An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. ― Mahatma Gandhi Men willing to break their own arms rather than race into fire and death, war games played without winners. The news spreads in endless loops on screens with color but no dimension while some watchers gasp, yet others pass a bowl of snacks, grateful the pain strikes in another language, continent, time zone. Human beings willing to reach beyond a huff or pant. One country touching another. One person letting peace stretch beyond a closed room. We will not let war cage the world with hate. Or apathy. Or depression. It will take time, but, let us discover peace. Together.
Posted in inspiration, tagged choice, Hafsat Abiola quote, metaphor, patience, peace, poem, truth, universal acceptance on June 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are. (Hafsat Abiola) Peace Recipe Set spirit temperature at warm. Forgive. Inside and outside the home receptacle. Sprinkle awareness. Listen for minor changes and slow cook. Watch the product, not the clock. Peace can be both served and recreated as ingredients intermix. Add truth and blend it with patience, an uneven, unpredictable process. The mixture is as necessary for an effective final product as oxygen for breathing. Water for life. Allow contents to simmer, open-lidded. Take care. Hate enters and boils when placed in a closed pot on high flames. When the recipe is denied by someone or something, begin again. Vent excess heat in a safe environment. Practice the recipe and serve daily without expecting instant satisfaction. Peace development can take many forms. It can be the yeast in bread dough in another family’s house. Let it rise where it can. And know you are part of the core of world change. published in For A Better World 2022
terrypetersen 