reflection

The members of our peace delegations come from all over the United States and from all walks of life. Collected here are the voices of the participants in our upcoming Iran delegation - in poetry, prose, and first-person stories. Please spend some time reading them. We look forward to more reflections after they arrive in Iran on Wednesday. (State department-willing!)

I gave this talk last Saturday at the Leadership Forum at Silver Bay.

It is a bit presumptuous to arrive on Saturday morning to offer reflections on the life of a community that has been intimately engaged with this year’s work for three days already. I am grateful for this privilege and the access that a 25 year history with the Forum affords me. I would like to open with a poem by Mary Oliver.*

Some of you know that I am currently in the middle of a radiation regimen for prostate cancer, sharing the fate of an estimated one third of my fellow males in our lifetime. No great consequence; not something one would willingly choose, but hardly worthy of the frame of fate; but how much of our lives do we live, willingly chosen? Few of us are so brave and free. But few of us would label this life as fated either. For there are choices we made and those we did not make. Letting go of the choices we didn’t make is part of growing up (growing old?). Letting go.

No summer is complete without a stretch of rainy days. The earth is thirsty and the sun is bored; a quiet day allows us to focus our attention and energy of open-ended tasks.

This week two extended conference calls within the peace community surfaced an equally sober mood. There is a rather rooted despair at the moment among those seeking to see a way to make a difference in the world. One would have thought that the announced departure of Karl Rove would have lifted spirits. Or the slow but steady migration of opinion in the direction of ending the occupation of Iraq and withdrawing troops. But the more broadly felt impression is that nothing makes a difference with the current administration. And that few Americans really want to be reminded of the challenging mess we have created.