Ovi Magazine Issue #24: Nationalism - Published: 2013-01-31

Article
David Sparenberg
Turn your Guns into
Medicine Bundles
David Sparenberg is a world
citizen, environmental &
peace advocate & activist,
actor, poet-playwright, storyteller,
teacher and author.
This is what I have to say. Do not reply
on thinking. Thinking is a labyrinth.
Do not reply on belief. Belief alone
but rarely saves in face of clear and
present danger. Even less when
danger is everywhere.
Turn your guns into medicine bundles. Animals
do not need for you to hunt them. And the wild ruins
are in need of healing. Turn your greed into global
banqueting. Quench thirst; satisfy hunger. Stop rape
and stop killing; bring closure and an end to war.
Abolish, once again, the criminal disgrace of slavery,
wherein, in our troubled time, whole generations of
women and children suffer exploitation, debasement,
brutal treatment, and inhuman life.
This ground here—this is sacred ground.
Everywhere there is the longing for liberation.
This Earth here is a living holiness. Do not keep
freedom and the democratization of creation denied
by bloodshed.
Live in reverence, respect and honoring. No
more continue to turn this habitation of the beauty
way into a waste place and sewer of death. No more
continue to be as we have been too long. Reach, as
if in regression, into a future beyond all memories
except for the memory of origin.
This is all I can say now. My words are wounds
and nails. Yet my words are akin to little runnels of
light; they are similar to hands reaching out. If you
are listening, those who hear will be heard. If you
are looking, those who see will be seen. If you are
calling out, your voices are collected on petals of the
cosmic rose and your names are spoken on flutters
of twilight.
And if you feel, as one feels who is touched, you
have already the feeling of grace and know that
sanity is possible. And that even in the late, or final,
hour, you, in your courage, in your soul of roses,
will embody one awaited miracle.
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