A letter to friends and participants of the Mastery Foundation living in Israel.
24 July 2006
Dear Friends,
For days I have been wanting to send some message to you on behalf of all of your friends at the Mastery Foundation. Of course, every time we hear the news, we think of you and hope you are safe.
But because we also know you as your commitment to creating new possibilities for the future, we hope for much more than that.
What can we, so far away and so captured by our own feelings of helplessness, say to you that will have any meaning or relevance? Nothing, probably.
Searching for something to say anyway, I picked up a book with poems for each day of the year. The first poem I saw, which happened to be the poem for today, was written by Nazim Hikmet, a Turkish poet I had never read.
I have since learned he spent many years in prison because of his political views, and his work was banned during most of his lifetime. The philosopher Sartre said this poet was someone who conceived of a human being as something to be created.
In 1950, Nazim Hikmet and Pablo Neruda shared the Nobel Peace Prize. How fitting, since Neruda said once that poetry is an act of peace.
So with these two poems, we wish you peace, and hope to see you again soon.
Ann Overton
Executive Director
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I'm inside the advancing light, My eyes can't get enough of the trees — A sunny road runs through the mulberries, I can't smell the medicines — It's like this: Nazim Hikmet |
Give me for my life, Pablo Neruda |