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The dark around us, come,
Let us meet here together,
Members one of another,
Here in our holy room,
Here on our little floor,
Here in the daylit sky,
Rejoicing mind and eye,
Rejoining known and knower,
Light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,
Such order as we know,
One household, high and low,
And all the earth shall sing.
- Wendell Berry
// Photograph taken on the North [...]
You Own Nothing
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the [...]
A Moral Imagination
In the art of building peace, there comes a tension. John Lederach’s beautiful book, “The Moral Imagination,” captures this tension perfectly. He talks about the messiness of innovation which is peacemaking. He writes about the “wellspring,” – the source that gives way to peacemaking, which is not found in either rigorous academic theory nor advanced [...]
What is liberty? Lot 46
I walked onto Lot 46, an area of land on the corners of Rhode Island and 7th Ave NW and saw my community’s pain, met my community’s strength. Lot 46 was dedicated to low income housing several years ago but Mayor Fenty has not fulfilled his promise to turn this land into housing affordable for [...]
It’s my birthday
Today is my birthday. I reflect. I recommit to the creating of, the laboring towards, peace. This moment was from my birthday last year, July 19, 2009, in Kiwanja, DR Congo. A small community ravaged by violence and massacre in the previous months. This group of children are child soldiers. Some have not yet chosen [...]
Collecting Water
Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence including war. These women gather rare clean water.
// Photograph taken outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
A Refugee Soccer Game
The children played, despite their pain. These children were newly arrived refugees, fleeing the war in eastern Congo, safe within the shelter of Uganda’s peaceful borders. Some had lost parents, some had lost each other. But as the sun set, they decided to play. This choice is hope.
// Photograph taken in Nyakabande Refugee Camp, near [...]
Nyiragongo
Nyiragongo rises up from the earth and into the clouds.
// Photograph taken on the road out of Goma towards Rutshuru, eastern DRC.
Rose’s Journey
A short film I co-directed and produced shot on location in Uganda, July 2009.
The story of Rose Nanyonga Clarke and her journey to becoming a child and health advocate in Uganda.
Remembering Ayiti
What does it mean to forget? What does it mean to remember?
We have been asked to be among the ones who do not let time or space erase memory. When the earthquake happened, we all thought to ourselves, “dear God, I will never forget what I have seen.” And now – three months later, [...]
I want to learn
When will Haiti’s children get to go back to school and learn? The earthquake not only took their schools, but it robbed them of the gift of learning.
// Photograph taken near Leogane three months before the earthquake, Haiti.
Restore
Haiti will be restored.
I believe.
// Photograph taken from a hill near Delma 75, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
What is good for the world?
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that [...]
Though the spring is late and cold
“Though we invite, this healing comes
in answer to another voice than ours;
a strength not ours returns
out of death beginning in our work.
Though the spring is late and cold,
though uproar of greed
and malice shudders the sky,
pond, stream, and treetop raise
their ancient songs;
the robin molds her mud nest
with her breast; the air
is bright with breath
of bloom, wise [...]
The Ribbons in Her Hair
Impossible, Impossible
that all this could fall.
I see you standing there,
blue ribbons in your hair.
Then the ground fell away,
nothing’s allowed to stay.
Silence, dust settles,
evening glow casts gold.
A beat, and the chorus rises,
layers of screaming,
all’s trapped inside it’s fold.
Underneath, she waits,
pinned under weight of stone.
Face fixed in breathless calm,
in darkness she breathes alone.
Will they find me? Will [...]
Ayiti, beloved
Ayiti.
A thousand stones have turned to ash and weep on the soil of the unknown. Beloved, beloved, where are you? Buried beneath brick and metal, hurled to the earth, face wet with red, checks stained with fear. There is no order to this madness. An open chasm of humanity turned horrible, became beautiful. This makes [...]
On My Knees
“I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. [...]
She Sees
She met through exploration. Hand upon hand. Her fingers reached out and tenderly ran up and down the length of my arm. She found my bracelet and began turning her fingers over the top, around and around. Her other hand touched my face and lightly brushed every feature. Her touch was layered with love and [...]
