Celebrating ….
In a world where rockets are landing, their lethal voice muffled by the sour scream of air-raid sirens;
in this world where loved ones – a lover, a beautiful daughter, a wise father, a jocular aunt – are missing, covered by rubble and rocks;
in this world where food comes only when rare aid trucks come through;
in this world where the flimsy plastic of a bottle carries life-saving water;
in this freezing world, where, even wrapped in rescuers’ blankets, the minus ten-degree nights are passed shivering awake;
in this world where the task of restoring home and family seems herculean;
in this world, there is hope, still hope.
Celebrating the love shown by neighbours and strangers when worlds fall to dust.
Celebrating the strength and care of first responders whose own homes are in peril too.
Celebrating the hope of a world without violence, a world of peace, a world where billions now spent on rockets and fighter jets are spent on food security, on clean water, on sturdier houses.
In a world where famine lacerates the stomachs of the poor;
In a world where babies languish dying for want of mother’s milk or formula;
In a world where potentates, indifferent to their fellow citizens’ lives, dwell in indecent luxury;
In a world where food crops fail when crops for First World profits have ravaged the earth;
In a world where exhausted men and children, desperate to eat, burrow into dark and unsafe tunnels for minerals for Westerners’ phones;
In this world where you watch your loved ones slowly shrink then obscenely swell with malnutrition before they die;
In this world, there is hope, still hope.
Celebrating the hope of a world where our food, even now abundant, is shared equitably;
Celebrating the hope of a world where all people enjoy the dignity of providing rightly for their families;
Celebrating the hope of a world where all women, men and children can find joy in feasting and laughter;
Celebrating the hope of a world where humans delight in caring for this beautiful world of waterfalls, and butterflies, and stupendous Uluru.
In a world where rampaging floods overwhelm towns and farms;
In a world where animals bleat and drown in the unrelenting watery flow;
In a world where loved ones, like my Great-Granny Bridgeman, are swept away from their kin for ever;
In a world where livelihoods go under in the spreading floods;
In a world where life-giving water goes rogue and kills;
In this world where people try in vain to stay afloat;
In this world, there is hope, still hope.
Celebrating the hope of a world where nature and humanity are in harmony;
Celebrating the hope of a world where the kindness of neighbours is life-saving and life-giving;
Celebrating the hope of a world where the development of cities and towns is driven by concern for each other and the environment;
Celebrating the rainbow which shines its seven-fold spectrum in hope for a more lovely and loving world.
Mind Journeys 