The Answer for the World

What is the answer for the world?

Where do we go from here?

How can we bring peace to this troubled world?

When will we stop this violence?

All these questions make me wonder,

And I am not quite sure where to go.

I want to find the answers,

But only questions come.

Love comes to mind, and it feels so right,

And yet, its not as easy as it is said.

Why can't we stand on the shoulders of Love

And enclose ourselves with a blanket of Caring?

If we could only stand firm

And share our love with the world,

Then maybe peace could come from deep down;

But violence seems to stop us.

Oh! Violence, why are you so deeply rooted?

You hurt so many of us,

And we find it all around us,

And it seems to choke us.

So we must find a way to reach out

And bring forth the love we have,

So that we can take each day

And say, "LOVE is the answer!"

                             © Hilda Ward, 2012

Blankets and care being provided to people rescued when their boat
capsized in Baltimore's Inner Harbor
U.S. Navy photo by Machinery Repairman 2nd Class Jerry Neblett. ~Wikimedia 

Word into Light

I was taught as a child that

Every book was as sacred as Bibles.

There would be no writing in them,

No tearing or bending of pages.

There would only be the reverence of reading,

Of epiphanies waiting for seekers between the lines,

Of new chapters opening in the face of closed doors.

There would only be the reward of seeing libraries as temples,

As spaces where chapter and verse minister to every unknowing,

Of seeing bookshelves as sanctuary where God begins as word 

and transforms into the light.

 

© Camisha Jones, 2012

Book of Kells, 8th Century; from Wikimedia Commons
Now in Trinity College Library, Dublin