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Susan Windle's Page
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- What country do you live in?
- USA
- Do you have a favorite quote to share?
- I want strong peace, and delight,
the wild good.
Muriel Rukeyser
- What is your interest in PeaceWork?
- I believe that the antidote to war and misery is joy, the felt joy of our interdependance. All the work I do, when I'm awake, whether it's writing, teaching, performing, collaborating with other artists, or leading worship services, leans into that joy.
- How long have you been involved in PeaceMaking?
- Somewhere in my early thirties, after a two year break from writing poetry, a break from my exclusive identity as poet, I came back to writing again, naturally and because it was essential for me to do so. When I returned to being a poet, it was with a vital sense of the importance of my work in community, a sense that people needed this work, the poems I was bringing forward, to heal and become stronger, more effective peacemakers. That was in the early 80's. I haven't stopped since.
- Are you currently involved in any non-profit or volunteer work?
- I am a teaching poet in Philadelphia city schools. I work to build enthusiasm for life through language and to reach across religious and cultural differences through poetry, often working with visual artists and musicians to magnify the joy of creating. Rostered with the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, I am affiliated with the Philadephia Arts and Education Partnership and the Arts and Spirituality Center.
I also work to build a mutli-racial, multi-cultural, theologically diverse religious community (I love paradox!) in the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Here I am a leader of Writing Cirlces and a frequent lay leader of worship, bringing poetry to help support and explore the regions of love in community.
- What is your Passion? Your Purpose?
- To bring a different kind of firepower into the world. To spread joy, to kindle the flames of love.
- How do any products or services you offer contribute to making the world more peaceful?
- The recordings I make with Voices of a Different Dream (poetry and a capella song) are soothing, empowering, elemental. The work reminds us continually of our connection to earth and one another and the expanded possibilities of putting our voices together in new and different ways.
The poem-prints I make with visual artists Alana Lea and Sara Steele invite us deeper into our own experience through the intricate play of eye and ear, and again they reveal a world expanded by the dance of two artists and art forms.
As for the poems themselves, in the various books, let me offer this from a woman who wrote me: "You have found the words for the feelings my heart felt, but could not quite name--for the beauty and terror, the deep love and the anguish of being alive in this world." (Linda Kerr). That's a pretty good place to build peace from.
- Do you have a SKYPE name?
- no
- What are your SKYPE privacy preferences? Do you want members to contact you when you're online?
- no
- Do you have a website?
- http://susanwindle.com/
post election love letter
Just wanted to post this that I wrote to my various e-lists this morning, waking to to the knowledge that we have changed the course of our nation:
Dear Ones,
Four years ago today, waking to the aftermath of a dispiriting, disheartening presidential election, facing four more years of lies and the politics of fear, I wrote this:
Moral Values
Don’t talk to me about anything but love.
Don’t give me religion if it doesn’t
shimmer in the waves between us
if it doesn’t light
the dungeons that divide
the powerful
from the dispossessed.
It isn’t love if it doesn’t show us
a way from the pit, give us a hill
to stand on, help us to see
the curve of the world.
Don’t give me a ship if it won’t
bring us all around safely
to the place
where our journey begins.
November, 2004
--Susan Windle
And so it begins. And so we begin. November 5, 2008. Our ship, well captained and fully crewed, has carried us here. I wake and open to the blessings and the challenges of these times.
With great love,
unfathomable joy, and gratitude
for all you have done to bring us to this place,
I am
Resoundingly
Yours,
Susan Windle
Dear Ones,
Four years ago today, waking to the aftermath of a dispiriting, disheartening presidential election, facing four more years of lies and the politics of fear, I wrote this:
Moral Values
Don’t talk to me about anything but love.
Don’t give me religion if it doesn’t
shimmer in the waves between us
if it doesn’t light
the dungeons that divide
the powerful
from the dispossessed.
It isn’t love if it doesn’t show us
a way from the pit, give us a hill
to stand on, help us to see
the curve of the world.
Don’t give me a ship if it won’t
bring us all around safely
to the place
where our journey begins.
November, 2004
--Susan Windle
And so it begins. And so we begin. November 5, 2008. Our ship, well captained and fully crewed, has carried us here. I wake and open to the blessings and the challenges of these times.
With great love,
unfathomable joy, and gratitude
for all you have done to bring us to this place,
I am
Resoundingly
Yours,
Susan Windle
© 2009 Created by Alana Lea on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
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Some months ago, the unknown word mahaivi resounded in my mind at night. I took down a poem about Love and Life. And I sketched a symbol of Life. The following morning I looked up the word. It was an old Polynesian word that means "to live and be alive". We are officially launching it on 1/1/9. Please visit www.mahaivi.net and help to spread it as a universal symbol of Peace, Love and Life.
Many thanks and kind regards,
Pedro
Thank you for your kind words.
Blessings this holiday,
Christine
So glad to meet you here!
Blessings,
Christine
Its great to see you here, I loved your poem.
Greetings from England.
Love and blessings
Dawn
All Love,
Alana
Deep peace, wild joy,
Susan