"Waging Peace" #16
Featuring Suheir Hammad and Tokai University Takanawadai Senior High School Wind Orchestra
Welcome to “Waging Peace”
Remember, you’re the co-creator of this dive. Do as much or as little as you’d like, when you’d like, how you’d like, with the materials I provide. Just keep gentle faith with yourself.
Set your intention
Take a moment to name the primary intention you have for this month-long deep dive and/or this particular session. Take a quiet moment to center yourself in that intention.
Receive the music
Try to refrain from judging the music as “good” or “bad” or forming an “I like it” or “I don’t like it” opinion. For a few minutes, cultivate curiosity and openness. If resistance arises in you, be curious about that too.
Read the poem
I invite you to read this poem twice—aloud, at least once. You may also listen to the poet’s performance of the poem, perhaps with your eyes closed.
Note: “What I Will” is the first poem of two on this video.
WHAT I WILL Suheir Hammad I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched. I will not dance to your drummed up war. I will not pop spin break for you. I will not hate for you or even hate you. I will not kill for you. Especially I will not die for you. I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you nor dance to bombs because everyone else is dancing. Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right not collateral or casual. I will not forget where I come from. I will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved near and our chanting will be dancing. Our humming will be drumming. I will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath. (transcript found at this link)
Contemplate/Create
Use any of these questions however you wish—e.g., as openings for meditation or prayer, as prompts for journaling or poetry-writing, as sparks for drawing or painting, as catalysts for change-making . . . You may also ignore my questions altogether to go off in other directions!
Reflect/write/create in response to both these stems:
“I will not dance.’
“I will dance.”
“I will craft my own drum,” writes the poet. Metaphorically speaking, what would your drum look like, sound like? How would you craft it? How would you play it and use it?
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These materials are for educational purposes only. Not for sale or reproduction.
Join me and a SPECIAL MYSTERY GUEST
for a closing Zoom on February 1!
6:00-7:00PM Central (7:00 ET, 5:00 MT, 4:00 PT)
Let’s close “Waging Peace” with a time of voluntary sharing. (It’s fine just to listen!) Come and reflect with other Rafters on this Deep Dive.
Registration is required for this celebration.
(Note: Minimum of five people must have registered for the Refuge by midnight, January 31, in order for this Zoom to take place. Thanks!)
The Procession has rhythm.
This poem has rhythm.
This poet has rhythm.
Rhythm is energy.
I was energized by all of them.
I found this poet so interesting that I had to look her up.
Here is a bit from an interview that
reveals who she is and how she crafts her own drum:
“If a day comes that I am not writing, if writing is not fulfilling what I need, then I could dance that energy, sing that energy, make a beautiful flower arrangement because that’s really what the creating energy is. The creating energy is what makes us all divine... not equal to God but part of God. The word for me has been the most incredible medium for that, but I would hope that if I ever felt like I needed to do something else I could.”
(This interview appeared in Al Jadid Magazine,
Vol. 3, No. 20, Summer 1997.
Copyright © 1997 AL JADID MAGAZINE)
❤️❤️
I almost could not sit still reading this poem. I imagined a drum beating as my heartbeats to the pulse of life moving flowing in an unending way. I will not hate for you or even hate you. This line forcefully touched me as if saying, do you hear the meaning???? Awakening to the dead stuff taught to me and that I have lived as truth causes me to be tempted to hate and feel terrible anger. How to feed righteous anger to bring justice into my life and world. What can happen after the seeing and the naming????? These words push me to release the anger at systems without soul. I won't forget where I came from, the safe secure nurturing womb before I was marked by others. So it isn't just the drum I need to create, it is the dance of life. I think of Thomas Merton and his cosmic dance piece. This whole dive today is so riveting and evocative. Again I want to dance gravity code while beating my heart made drum.