ON BEING A PROPHET . . . REFLECTION FROM CELL 7
Published: Spring 1988 - Issue Number 3

Last year a mountain prison,

This year a county jail.

Time to learn again what silence means,

Time to birth creative energy.

 

The facts about the same -

$1.8 million a minute spent on world military expenditures,

40,000 children die every day of starvation, malnutrition,

medical complications,

A crisis - An opportunity.

 

In the silence, in the dark,

the prophet comes.

Not an individual but a movement.

A movement of social conscience, critical of the status-quo -

comes to imagine,

to create,

what could be, what should be.

Politically dangerous - because the blessings will be shared,

the prophet comes.

 

These prophets bring hope,

to a people who show little or no hope - as they become lost,

in the comfort of consumerism,

in the violence of militarism.

 

These bearers of justice - do not bring glad tidings to all equally.

These prophets bring compassion - interdependence among equals,

bring humility - living simply, in touch with the earth,

bring holiness - cosmic hospitality.

 

These prophets interfere, as they come

to heal,

to celebrate,

to co-create.

The prophets come.

Return to the Index of Synapse 40, Summer 1997