[Oe List ...] poem

[carolcrow]

This was used as a responsive reading in our worship service at our 
Unitarian Universalist church on Mother's Day. Quite profound, to say 
the least.  Where might the women gather to counsel?  How, 
strategically, do we move?  I am literally nauseated as I learn more 
about our treatment of other human beings in Iraq.  I am heart-sick 
that our image has become so very tarnished that the world no longer 
sees the US representing compassion and honor.

In Community,
Carol


On May 21, 2004, at 7:28 AM, Charles or Doris Hahn wrote:

> The more things change, the more they are the same.
> Doris Hahn
>
> Arise, then, women of this Day!
> Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism
> be that of water or of fears!
> Say firmly:  "We will not have great questions decided
> by irrelevant agencies,
> Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with
> carnage, for caresses and applause.
> Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all
> that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy
> and patience.
> We women of one country will be too tender of those of
> another country to allow our sons to be trained to
> injure theirs."
>> From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up
> with our own.
> It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
> The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
> Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate
> possession.
> As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at
> the summons of war, let women now leave all that may
> be left of home for a great and earnest day of
> counsel.
> Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and
> commemorate the dead.
> Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as
> the means whereby the great human family can live in
> peace,
> And each bearing after her own time the sacred
> impress, not of Ceasar, but of God.
> -Julia Ward Howe, 1870
>
> Distributed by Atlanta WAND, the local chapter of
> Women'a Action for New Directions, a national
> organization which seeks to channel womens voices into
> a powerful movement for change
>
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