This week, I’d like to share with you a lovely poem I’ve found. It’s filled with the power of being positive. I can’t help but think of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, as she is known for turning difficult situations into positive ones. The Clever One she is sometimes called. This poem calls us to be clever. To be courageous.

WAGE PEACE
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothespins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea…and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived. Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill, September 11, 2001