{"id":516,"date":"2014-04-24T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=516"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:50:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:50:26","slug":"april-24-making-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/04\/24\/april-24-making-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"April 24 – Making Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday April 24, 2014 Easter Thursday<\/p>\n

\u201cI massaged (Utash\u2019s) neck, and got his circulation going.\u201d
\nDeborah Hughes<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked out the window and saw that the boy had been hit, so I threw on my coat and ran out there,\u201d said Hughes, who is retired from the St. James Nursing Center in Detroit. Hughes also made sure to pack her .38 caliber pistol. \u201cYou have to carry a gun around here,\u201d she said. \u201cThis neighborhood is terrible. I don\u2019t walk around without my gun. \u201cI saw the boy all by himself, crying,\u201d Hughes said. \u201cHis father was in the store. He came out, and I told him, \u2018I\u2019m a nurse; don\u2019t touch him. Let him lay there.\u2019 The baby was crying so hard, and I talked to him and tried to calm him down.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout that time, I saw (Utash) get out of his truck; he came running up saying, \u2018Oh, my God, tell me he\u2019s all right. Please tell me he\u2019s all right.\u2019 He was hysterical.\u201d The crowd that had gathered suddenly attacked Utash, Hughes said. \u201cHe was screaming, and they were beating him, and kicking him,\u201d she said. \u201cI said \u2018Please don\u2019t hit him anymore,\u2019 and they backed up. Everybody cleared the way and gave me room to work on him. Nobody cussed me; they didn\u2019t attack me. They just let me do what I needed to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI massaged (Utash\u2019s) neck, and got his circulation going. He woke up and started swinging and kicking. By this time, the EMS came, and me and the EMS driver tied him down and put him in the ambulance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughes shrugged off claims that she\u2019s a hero. \u201cYou just have to do the right thing,\u201d she said. {Detroit News April 8, 2014}<\/p>\n

In this urban moment, the lives of Steven Utash, some angry young men, and a retired nurse who live on that street intersected. Two weeks later their intersection unfolds as larger than themselves; their moment has become a moment asking for the attention of the city and its metropolitan area. UDM, by our research and teacher-student conversations is about the business of paying attention to the human condition, and understanding events from a range of perspectives. The poet Denise Levertov offers one in her hard-edged poem, \u201cMaking Peace.\u201d It helps to read a poem out loud. And more than once.<\/p>\n

Weather.com<\/a> says more clouds than sun today, April showers (that bring the flowers that bloom in May) much of Friday, peeks at the sun later in the day.<\/p>\n

Blessings on us employees and on our students during finals week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John st sj<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Making Peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

But peace, like a poem
\nis not there ahead of itself,
\ncan’t be imagined before it is made,
\ncan’t 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–facets
\nof the forming chrystal.<\/p>\n

Denise Levertov “Breathing the Water\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI massaged (Utash\u2019s) neck, and got his circulation going.\u201d
\nDeborah Hughes<\/p>\n

\"04.24\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday April 24, 2014 Easter Thursday \u201cI massaged (Utash\u2019s) neck, and got his circulation going.\u201d Deborah Hughes \u201cI looked out the window and saw that the boy had been hit, so I threw on my coat and ran out there,\u201d … 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\/516"}],"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=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}