Volume 8 Waging Peace Issue 2
Project Type: Volume 8 | Issue 2 | Waging Peace
Contents V8N2
The BeZine
Volume 8 June 15, 2021 Issue 2
Waging Peace
through finding common ground
Cover art: Still Life with Goldfish and Lotus
Kat Patton
Digital Image
Introduction
The theme for the summer issue of 2021 is Waging Peace through Common Ground. To wage peace by common ground, we must develop empathy. We must learn to see each other, hear our words, and feel our emotions. This is the work of us as individuals. And we have to then find the links that would allow us to work together on common ground for the common good. And among the pressing common goods that need working, next to and intertwined with social justice and climate change, is peace.
In the past weeks war broke out again here in Israel. While the leaders of Israel and Hammas may demonstrate little empathy for the other side, the people do feel empathy—especially for the children killed, for the children hiding in shelters in fear on both sides. For children missing childhood. Ameen al-Bayed, a Palestinian, and Ester Karen Aida, an Israeli Jew, contribute essays that demonstrate and call for empathy. Both do work in Non-Violent Communication. Other contributors address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well. And still other contributors address a range of topics related to waging peace—from mental well-being to social justice to the environment and more—and the need for common ground.
Finding common ground does not mean agreeing with objectionable, unethical, or criminal ideas and behavior. For me, it means using empathy to understand another person or group of people where possible, and recognizing what beliefs, experiences, and goals we have in common (among other possible commonalities). Before the the war here in Israel a group of political party leaders with seemingly little common ground began forming a coalition, which they completed after the ceasefire. This week a new government was sworn in to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, after 12 years.
For the first time an Israeli-Arab party has joined an Israel government, with a cabinet ministerial post as part of the deal. A far-right religious party leader will have the first term as prime minister in a power-sharing agreement and a centrist party leader the second. The party has left-wing Meretz and centrist-left Labor parties, a strong secularist party and the far-right religious party. This is also the most diverse cabinet in history. Besides unseating Netanyahu, which they succeeded in doing, what could they have in common?
Bret Stephens, a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and now a columnist for The New York Times, suggests today (15 June) that they have formed a truly democratic coalition built on creating a functioning government that will work together to run the state. They have chosen a pragmatic solution to assure that the government of Israel can move on from a divisive politics headed by Netanyahu to a pragmatic politics. Each party had to let go of platform planks and ideological values while negotiating core issues of the most immediate concern. This is finding common ground.
The government hasn’t been sworn in for even 48 hours as I write this. Its experiment may not work. Possibly, though, this historic government will help a divisive, “blood sport,” politics move into a more inclusive and practical politics that can compromise in the areas we don’t have in common while focusing on moving forward on those areas in most need—our urgent common ground:
May peace prevail on earth.
—Michael Dickel, Editor
Some changes
With the first issue of our eighth volume (year), you may have noticed some changes. Most of the changes are tweaks here and there to the visible look of the pages. One very visible change is the Table of Contents below. Using a technical, behind-the-scenes tool of WordPress, the entries in our ToC are now automatically generated. As we learn to use the tool better, we will refine the formatting.
Also new since last issue, there is a button at the top of the ToC for browsing the whole issue. If you click on that, you will arrive at the “Cover.” As you scroll down, you will see this Intro and ToC again. However, keep on scrolling and you will be able to see all of the pages of the journal. Just keep scrolling to keep reading.
And, in case you want to come back to the ToC, you will find a button to do just that at the bottom of each content page—it is a small version of Kat Patton’s wonderful cover art.
During this year we will continue to work on the look, feel, and design of The BeZine. This is how we are working to sustain the Zine, in hopes that this will make a better experience for you, our readers.
Table of Contents
BeATTITUDES
Poetry
Essays
The BeZine
Be Inspired…Be Creative…Be Peace…Be
Spiritual Practice
- Beguine Again, a community of Like-Minded People
- The Bardo Group Beguines, Page
- The BeZine 100TPC, Group – Featuring Best Practices
- The BeZine Arts and Humanities, Group – not just for poetry
Submissions
Top of ToC
Art: The Duality of Zen, Kat Patton ©2020
BeATTITUDES
We Will Always Need A Bridge …
Since this iconic song was written and introduced to the world by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel on their album of the same name, which received the award of Album of the Year in 1971, I cannot think of any point during the fifty years that followed, when it wasn’t making an important contribution to our feelings of wellbeing and solace. Goodness me, what a life this song has had and what service it has done!
My own chorus, the Sheffield based Hallmark of Harmony have, like many musical ensembles, endured this last year of lockdown doing ‘virtual’ rehearsals and occasional recorded performances. Last month, as if tentatively to begin celebrating the gradual lifting of our confinement, we produced our fourth on line project and there was no other song we could choose to represent what we all need in these times than this one. Something that we all need sometimes to get us across troubled waters. We first performed this song nearly three years ago at our 40th anniversary concert at the Sheffield Octagon Theatre with guest quartet, international champions, Instant Classic, who flew across the Atlantic for the weekend of the show to perform it with us. They generously reprised their part for this our, hopefully final virtual offering to the World and of course our very own Tim Briggs consummately provides the solo …
For the sake of humanity, may there always be a bridge for us to cross over and, for goodness sake, let there be peace in this troubled world of ours.
Text ©2021 John Anstie
Performance ©2021 Hallmark of Harmony
All rights reserved
John Anstie
June 2021
Haiku — Bob Aron
Untitled
Favorite fish market is again closed.
I can exercise alone in the courtyard.
最喜欢的鱼市场再次关闭。
我可以在院子里一个人运动。
.שוק הדגים האהוב שוב נסגר
.אני יכולה להתאמן לבד בחצר
©2021 Bob Aron
All rights reserved
Tri Poezi / Three Poems — Faruk Buzhala
The burden
Life with hands in pockets, half a pack of cigarettes in them! And with thought in chaos invented by my mind. Walked the road like a body abandoned by itself!
Bad Times
Rising earlier than usual Roosters peck the sunlight Dogs howl like the wolves Crows unsettle the sky. What kind of day is this The one I have to live in?!
Aeon
My promises All are gone, gone. The memories stay In an empty chair On the terrace of the old house!
©2021 Faruk Buzhala
All rights reserved
Taming Jehovah | 2 poems — Roger Hare
Taming Tiamat
If you know who first defined beauty then place it in a poem—plainspeak is too full of fear to be clearly heard.
Tiamat is a figure symbolic of the chaos of primordial creation in the Babylonian creation story.
Jehovah or Not
forgive us for the vowels and consonants we drop in search of shorter words to not trouble us too much, for the daily bread we scatter and our love of sundry illusions that only (and inevitably) shatter the fragile peace between us. Your stones have gathered a reputation for rolling of their own accord—the sand and grit and lime and slate and mud, the crystalline and pressed and baked and cooled are moved by their memories of when you roamed the Earth. Would you sediment in our oceans, accrue beneath our seas, harden as our bedrock so that we may have a better future?
©2021 Roger Hare
All rights reserved
Sonnets and More — Paweł Markiewicz
Unendingly picturesque
a pulchritudinous sonnet
I am through a superb window—looking. An angel of feeling awakes in me. The dreamy oak-trees stand alway leafless. The native auspicious cue is just large. My scenery—the enchanted verdure. The moony old barn of Ted my dear nuncle. I am looking at a proud throng of crows. They belong to the whiff of every times. The springtide looks so meek-beauteous-fair, first and foremost Morningstar—at night. I daydream springwards window-view withal of a dreamy Ovidian summer gale. Homelike herbage that seems to bewitch all. My cats want to enchant the fantasy. Dreamed subtle morn withal notably.
The spring awakening
The springtide wakes up not only in dreams. The snowdrops blooming in the moony garths. One listens to propitious paradise. The dearest graylag geese coming in flocks. I think of genus Primula from afar. The wild boar piglets were born in a grove. I feel springwards the warmness of a soul. Native dreameries are fulfilled galore. Springtide be primeval home of Naiads! I taste the verdure of some climes. You are dreamy like fairylike bouts. The friends of springy morn—are tender owls. I can praise, bewitch Ovidianly. Thus, I am able to enchant peaceably.
merest poet
You hound are a starry night over fog, fallen in love with the Epiphany. The moon may be mine! Told the moony dog. With you tender garden—is so dreamy. Bewitchment of stars, your ability. Your hunting is dearer observation. A moonlit night is your eternity. May the soft ghost be in adoration! Roses awoken in glory—starlet. You can taste, listen and feel them galore. Enchant the nectar like druidic glade! It was drunk from Ovidian amphorae. Be, you dog, a heart-shaped meek poet! Broken wings of loneliness are dead.
Elegy
Lunar time feeling—coll, blackish dreams stealing—light of the moonlets. Caressing dreamery—lies even, blink-sea, weird fell down. The poignant dire deceased became drab comet—sphere have picked warmness. Several she-wolves made terrestrial grave-stones killed the fay? Endlessly nostalgic being—the grief-pang. Hades was followed. Heavenly moony lure become noir. Dream-ethics flies off! However your worm bawls after all. Death-men blubbing so withal. Just the grim Reapers, cold-blooded praise wind-breeze of gone time. The tearful- invincible Goblinlets stars-thieves coming right galore. Sensing the moonylike demise cool-blue song will be free.
The Sonnet of Dreams
Heavenly sailorling spy out the wan light-sheen of star. Baffling unearthly time: weird having just thieved by elves. One of pale mornings longs for some meek fulfillment of night. Moony and nostalgic chums – comets are upon the skies. Lonely dreamery—lying just blink-sea, weird above. Endless nostalgia is being of pang. Hades is fay. Heavenly moony lure, beings seem dark, Ethics fly off! Poignant decease has become drab black, comet has picked rain. The glow, which is deathless, at length in the sadness full bane. Grim Reaper loves more than You dream—a bit lights of the worms. Marvel of starlit night: I have found a little of my name. Starry night—dreamy glow are only in the tender souls. Sensing the moonlet, demise of cool-blue song will be free. Your worm bawls after all certainly. Death blubbing like me.
alway – archaic: always
bout – dance
cue – archaic: mood
garth – archaic: garden
nuncle – archaic: uncle
pulchritudinous – beautiful
©2021 Paweł Markiewicz
All rights reserved
Art: Peace, Kat Patton ©2021
Poetry
Musings & Thoughts — Sandhya Anand
Musings Of A Mental Asylum
I stand tall but not proud Since people look at me with awe Those who cross my gates Considered insane Silence has no say here Only the dead can stay Long in silence But tell me Who might need the dead more Than the newly built coffins? I am not a coffin, but a cocoon from which new butterflies Find strength to fly out. I long for their groans, growls Cries and talks Full of life and thoughts Many here live, but considered dead Even by their kith and kin I never care for they are mine My walls ever longing for their voices Even the soft creepy whispers Can bounce on my walls To ease their solitary fears A heartbroken teenager with love more Precious than life Whose act of bravery Brought him to me Romeo can give up His life to applause Only on a man-built stage Not the ones set by God An employee who finds it Monotonous to follow Routine Who despised patterns Of no meaning Perhaps it might have been better Had the sane men Stayed the same in life Without changes Just like those patterns. An old man in grey hairs Just gave up on by his heirs With shattered memories Try to build the jigsaw of the past Beautiful moments when His heirs were young Only to pain him again That they were his kids once. Even little cute kids Come nowadays Who refused to wear glasses And constantly stare at iPad lessons They asked what, why, when And paused for an answer While in a rat race Curiosity never took them to Mars But for an occasional visit to me There once was a man Who liked to see and talk to men But none had time nor ears He claimed he saw God And heard Him talk Once within my comfort zone He could talk to real men And slowly God left him Tell me one moment Of civil war that broke out From an asylum ever. Real wars start (In)sane world out my walls Empathy, sympathy, compassion and care Takes humanity out on a tour Men who progressed Owned them in the past Now Reduced to caretakers alone It is still better for me to be an asylum For Far more insane are those who stay out
Thoughts
Thoughts like soldiers marching Over my neurons Thoughts of fear, worry and what not else Dancing inside my head Telling me to die off I try to laugh away and smile on To live, if not for me For those bugging thoughts Need a head to be alive If I just give up, They'd be wandering Down the streets To find a new abode, like soldiers marching Over my neurons Thoughts of fear, worry and what not else Dancing inside my head Telling me to die off I try to laugh away and smile on To live, if not for me For those bugging thoughts Need a head to be alive If I just give up, They'd be wandering Down the streets To find a new abode.
©2021 Sandhya
All rights reserved
Lyrical – John Anstie
What do you do when a hopeful dream begins to fray and leaves you wanting more than all the things that thrill heart-warming, precious moments that may not overspill beyond the passing of another, special day. So drink to life as if it has a happy end share it even if it were not yours to share and then, if you don’t have enough of it to spare of fortune’s favours to reach out to a special friend ... Sing riffle, ruffle, shuffle, muffle and divide bobble, bubble, babble, rabble, don’t be terse ripple, topple, tipple and tumble into verse ... a place where harmony and dissonance collide. The air now full of music, of tales that soon unfold the gasping tortured spirits, grasping at their last soul raking and heart breaking tales of one life past and stories that would otherwise ... remain untold. Then how do we narrate the things that burst the soul these uncontainable urges, are they all for you or are they all for me, or both? So what’s to do ... let’s dance together, do all the things that make us whole.
©2021 John Anstie
All rights reserved
Passing, Stillness … Renewal – John Anstie
Who prefers the spring
likens winter to the dark
autumn to passing
Kicking leaves and brash
a winter walk in the woods
cleansing the spirit
Listening to birds
heralds of summer spawning
life’s diversity
©2021 John Anstie
All rights reserved
Fervor — Howard Richard Debs
How to make sense of it? I will try. But this we know at least 45 dead, children too all trampled, crushed suffocated in a stampede in a narrow corridor on Mount Meron where 100,000 Haredi Jews, those who tremble at the word of God, came to commemorate at his supposed tomb the assumed anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai mystic of the 2nd century of whom it is told that his criticism of Roman rule marked him for execution, and forced him to hide in a cavern for thirteen years surviving on only dates and carob fruit and that finally one day seeing a bird flying free from a net set by a hunter Shimon took the bird’s escape as an omen that God would not forsake him and he too made his escape. The great sage died it is said On the 33rd day of the counting Of the Omer, that time between The holiday of Passover and The Feast of Weeks, a harvest festival, when according to tradition Moses brought down from Mount Sinai the Word of God to The Children of Israel, and this 33rd day is called Lag B’Omer a day to rejoice, as all petitions shall be answered as it is believed on that very day of his death bar Yochai revealed the secrets of the mystical Kabbalah, bringing light into the world for which the fervent set bonfires, dancing, singing chanting ecstatically through the night remembering the words he uttered that anyone who sees Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is certain that he will be in the World to Come.
Afterword
It is difficult to understand another’s passion for their beliefs which leads them to do that which appears so foreign to so many. We need to focus on that which binds us as humans. We need to reconsider viewing others solely as to their difference. This poem attempts to view the matter with an appreciation for the depth of belief which leads to such a strong commitment to act in a certain way, even to the point of discounting potential untoward consequences.
News source.
©2021 Howard Richard Debs
All rights reserved
Spring Later Time — Judy DeCroce
Almost Spring
I heard tomorrow and felt today.
—William Staff
Willows breathe
the slow release of winter
quietly speaking to each other.
Time, stillness,
movement high—
soundless.
Today tastes ever-smooth
as restless birds glide
taming waves of wind.
Tomorrow is coming…
or is already around.
For Later—For Later
old friends—before and after comings–partings words leave as if nothing has happened most of my life ago calm, flowing, feeding and feeling with some grace in the changes towards these I move and falter bending much—yielding less a surprise in knowing that yes, elsewhere is waiting echoing the days far away sometimes I look up with questions into this tall world with anchors tethered to the next
It’s Time
“…who, in their eagerness to embrace spring, have mistaken hope for a promise—Pat Janus The old pond restores again and geese vee in return. Just now, as a promising breeze lifts, the naked woods begin to green. And, I too go on as twilight lengthens lit and listening.
©2021 Judy DeCroce
All rights reserved
B-Side Shoulders | 2 poems — Roger Hare
Shoulder-to-Shoulder
Shall we learn the lessons of chlorophyll? How it holds the hands of fire and water, combines their incompatible tempers for a weight of photosynthesis heavy enough to turn the Earth? Will we engage the sensibility of those who can compose a tune? Set alongside each other notes of different strength and tone that for the sake of the stave will work together and not apart? Adversarial breaths that ventilate around a task in common demonstrate they dissipate their rage better side-by-side than face-to-face.
The B Side
Brutality and bias both begin with the letter b, like banner, bigot, baton, bled, bleed, bleeding red on the pavement again, bent by beliefs of the unbending. Hear the blue blues butterfly-heartache of those names stained without cause, bone-weary with building bridges brought to nothing over rivers every bit as bright as any other body. Allow their breeze to fill your sails, to carry us together to the other side; a place we cannot reach a- part.
Adaptation of a poem that first appeared in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ anthology published 2020 by Civic Leicester.
©2021 Roger Hare
All rights reserved
Holding Onto My Last Breath — Joseph Hesch
I’m told there will come a time when all will be revealed, that moment just before you leave where the Universe gives it up to your virgin consciousness and you go, ahhhhh…. And as great as that sounds, you’ll note that your expression of finally acquiring that enlightenment comes in an exhalation, more than likely your last. I know that doesn’t sound fair, but once you discover what all this back-breaking, toil and trouble life was for, let alone about, what else is there but to sound a short A? Unless it’s a long ohhhhhh. I suppose that’s why I intend to hold my breath like a five-year-old who won’t eat his Brussels sprouts on that day when the Universe comes a’knocking with my serving of The Way, as the Buddhists might intone. They call it nirvāṇa, which is Sanskrit for “blowing out.” That’s kind of what I’ve been saying, only with an ahhhhh rather than an ohmmm. Another translation is “liberation,” which sounds so much better, because I’d rather be freed from this troubled coil, than blown out again like a rotten basketball team, or permanently, like a candle. Ohm, shanti, shanti, shanti, y’all. (Just in case.)
For those of us who don’t know Sanskrit, and I only know enough to get through a beginner’s yoga practice video, “Shanti” means “Peace.” So, I bid you all peace because we sure as hell need it. And so do I. So do I.
©2021 Joseph Hesch
All rights reserved
I Know She’s Out There … Somewhere — Joseph Hesch
Sometimes I wonder if I ever actually felt her warmth, sensed her, breathed her in. I look back and question any place in my life where I stood in her presence, held her, or she held me. I wonder if she was nothing more than a dream I had, when I still had dreams, an ideal that kept me on a path to be the nice polite boy and good strong man, since that was the way they said one took to win her favor. But I never did experience her love and, like most sore losers, I have doubts now she even exists. Perhaps, in this, my last dream, if I stopped searching so hard, one day Peace will find me.
©2021 Joseph Hesch
All rights reserved
flint stallion — Chinedu Jonathan
flint knife
you have sworn to cut us asunder and scoop out a nation flowing with milk and honey circumcise the hearts of our sons they are no longer led by drunks they are now old enough to withstand costly battles to drag their father’s ghost by it’s collar men who willfully wasted away in this wilderness let your love fall like rain from the heavens let your harvest bring forth tender vine roll away their shame of enslavement scrape from the bosom of their rot tyranny that will accompany withered desire become again manna, appearing from dew, upon the roofs of our palette.
wilderness stallion
i once came across an unusual apparition whose hair strands were made of chrome it was filled to its brim measure with mangroves of dishevel thistle and torn and definitely weighed a hefty tonne she painfully crawled towards me shedding profuse tears from the corner of her brow high-jacked with the broadest of resilient candor i couldn't believe my whole eyes her laughter in its midst had an effervescent effect on my entire life's perspective i raised her up till her lifeless feet dangled lazily it infused more seriousness to the texture in her tone she gave me a gentle peck on my right cheek and whispered into my left english speaking ears "Life is whatever you decide of it…" i tried to comprehend..but it was too late i never even had the chance to say goodbye she had already permeated inside every iota of me leaving her monstrous baggage astride the foot of the Cross…
©2017–2021 Chinedu Jonathan
All rights reserved
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