{"id":1173,"date":"2015-02-11T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:49:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:49:39","slug":"feb-11-kayla-mueller-august-14-1988-c-february-6-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2015\/02\/11\/feb-11-kayla-mueller-august-14-1988-c-february-6-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Feb 11 – Kayla Mueller August 14, 1988 – c. February 6, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, February 11 – \u201csurrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses\u201d Hebrews 12:1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yesterday afternoon, judging from email traffic, readers on this list are thrilled that Detroit\u2019s North Side urban garden won the national M-Gro contest and will use the $40,000 to create a teaching farm for children. Last night in the West Side Redford Theatre, Mayor Mike Duggan spent one hour imagining Detroit\u2019s rebirth with a litany of specific neighborhood promises made credible to that packed house and lots of us who watched on tv by the long list of promises made by the Mayor\u2019s administration last year. I\u2019ve lived here 34 years and felt like an old-guy homie, thrilled by Detroit\u2019s emerging version of what Denise Levertov calls \u201cMaking Peace.\u201d Later last night, after UDM\u2019s 9:30 student residence-hall mass, I came home to learn that Jon Stewart has announced that he will be leaving The Daily Show, his 17 year masterwork where biting humor and passionate commitment to human depth in a hard world have stirred courage in millions of people. Lots of us will miss him.<\/p>\n

A \u201cgreat cloud of witnesses” all on the same evening. A hard world, crowded with women and men at work about re-birth.<\/p>\n

This morning I woke to an NPR account of Kayla Mueller\u2019s martyrdom in Syria at age 26 as a captive of ISIS. Those who knew her speak of an unwavering commitment to compassion; lived in some of the world\u2019s most daunting places of violence. It was the news about Kayla that led me back to Levertov\u2019s \u201cMaking Peace.\u201d The poem transformed last night\u2019s and this morning\u2019s disparate array of news into what Hebrews 12 calls \u201csuch a great cloud of witnesses.\u201d Late yesterday & this morning appear to be a moment in time of sheer human courage and beauty.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s because Pope Francis just named Bishop Oscar Romero \u201ca martyr,\u201d that I think of Kayla with that word. In Greek, \u201cmartyr\u201d means \u201cwitness,\u201d or \u201cone who bears witness,\u201d or perhaps \u201cone who pays attention.” On hard days and in hard places it helps to pay attention to the sheer beauty of women and men who bear witness, and go way out of their way to make peace.<\/p>\n

Best to read the poem aloud, with pauses, several times.<\/p>\n

Have a blest day.<\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post: \u201cMaking Peace\u201d Denise Levertov<\/strong><\/p>\n

A voice from the dark called out,
\n\u201cThe poets must give us
\nimagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
\nimagination of disaster. Peace, not only
\nthe absence of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

But peace, like a poem,
\nis not there ahead of itself,
\ncan\u2019t be imagined before it is made,
\ncan\u2019t be known except
\nin the words of its making,
\ngrammar of justice,
\nsyntax of mutual aid.<\/p>\n

A feeling towards it,
\ndimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
\nuntil we begin to utter its metaphors,
\nlearning them as we speak.<\/p>\n

A line of peace might appear
\nif we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
\nrevoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
\nquestioned our needs, allowed
\nlong pauses. . . .<\/p>\n

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
\non that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
\nan energy field more intense than war,
\nmight pulse then,
\nstanza by stanza into the world,
\neach act of living
\none of its words, each word
\na vibration of light\u2014facets
\nof the forming crystal.<\/p>\n

Denise Levetov (1987) Breathing the Water<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Kayla-Mueller\"<\/a>Kayla Mueller<\/strong>
\nAugust 14, 1988 \u2013 c. February 6, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, February 11 – \u201csurrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses\u201d Hebrews 12:1 Yesterday afternoon, judging from email traffic, readers on this list are thrilled that Detroit\u2019s North Side urban garden won the national M-Gro contest and will use … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}