Spirit invites us to weave this garland,
and many have been called, many have begun.
From Vancouver Island, some carried a carved totem
in 2001 to the grieving people of New York City.
Before them, Peace Pilgrim, Granny D.,
the Nipponzan Miyohoji.
Satish Kumar’s Path without Destination
and Mahatma Gandhi’s Great Salt March,
the March on Washington and
the Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage,
Brother NorthStar's walk for One People, One Earth,
and all kinds of Sojourners (for) Truth.
And for millennia we have circumambulated the sacred:
Muslims the Ka’aba;
Christians the labyrinth at Chartres,
Buddhists their pagodas,
Three religions the one mountain, Kailash.
And now all of us
the One Earth itself.
It is a big earth for small feet.
But each of us only needs walk our piece.
Our continuity will blend into one stream
the many sands, people of all religions and none,
people who make peace
by their walking, by talking, by listening,
who make peace by holding these truths:
peace is possible,
peace is essential,
peace is sacred.
We walk to sanctify the whole world and all on it.
So begin to walk from here,
the country that our leaders say wants war,
stream from west to east, north to south, j
oin people from every religion calling for peace
in their own languages.
Every people has prayers for peace.
Humanists and socialists’work for justice is a call for peace.
Diplomats invent careful rituals of peace.
Peace is under all the warmaking,
rumbling like a readying fault in the earth,
waiting for the moment the wars end.
Peace is even how the warmakers sell war:
they say we’ll have security, safety, freedom
from harm if we disarm
[them].
They name bombs Peacemakers, label troops Peacemakers,
know what we really want,
implicate us,
take our taxes and our young.
Listen... we can begin to hear the answers.
Each who has prayed for peace
since this latest war began rumbling
will hear her own answer, will hear,
and it is not much, not grandiose, what we are called to.
Simple things, like listening.
Like being peace.
As simple as not doing anything at all:
not going, not paying.
Like not training and arming our future enemies.
And bigger steps, like honoring the rule of law,
discovering old and creating new systems of true justice.
Like us white Americans eating enough of the Thanksgiving gift of turkey medicine
that we finally turn and begin to give back.
Join the Great Give-away, from north to south,
west to east, forgive the debt,
and pray to be forgiven our stealing.
Pray there still is a place on this earth we belong.
Pray to find the place on this earth we belong.
We will keep walking.
When we come to an ocean, we will sail.
When we come to a border we will cross
like an unstoppable wave of refugees,
or we’ll meet pilgrims from the other side and pass
the torch, the beat, the momentum;
we’ll hand over a new ark, exchange seeds, medicines, signs of peace.
No destination, just movement.
No goal but to radiate from the center of our gravity,
the earth our wheel,
our path the tread,
our walking the medicine.
When we close the circle,
we will have made a medicine wheel with Earth’s center as hub.
We will know at last the Earth as round.
We’ll finally sense that space is, in fact, curved.
As we stand, this divine light that comes in through crown
and out through feet is the same beam,
straight through the earth,
curving through space,
returning to us.
It threads through all centers,
it is the one center, everywhere, of this
divine, infinite, beloved universe.
I know if each answers her own call,
his own piece of the peace,
the world will be transformed.
As exquisite as that closing circle of the horizon,
this will have been the Pure Land all along.
All will belong.
-Karina Lutz
"Karina Lutz worked as an environmental activist; editor, reporter, and magazine publisher; professor, yoga teacher, and workshop facilitator; farmer, carpenter, and seamstress. Her books are Post-Catholic Midrashim and Preliminary Visions; other poems are linked from karinalutz.wordpress.com.
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