Peace for Everyone

My painting above my fireplace mantle, by Donna Watson

AMAZING PEACE: A CHRISTMAS POEM

by Maya Angelou

---It is the Glad Season.

Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.

Flood waters recede into memory.

Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us

As we make our way to higher ground.--- MA

Flat lay and photo image by Donna Watson

In the corner of my great room, arranged and photo by Donna Watson

In a world full of destruction one must hold fast to whatever fragments of love are left,

for sometimes a mosaic can be more beautiful than an unbroken pattern. -- Dawn Powell

Flat lay and photo by Donna Watson

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time. -- Maya Angelou

In front of my fireplace mantle, hand painted and photo by Donna Watson

--- All I want for Christmas is Peace

All I want is war to cease

In the homes and on the street

Peace on earth and joy to greet --- Kenneth Snow

A Father Christmas, hand made by me, Donna Watson

Flat lay arranged and photo by Donna Watson

---Underneath my Christmas tree

Christmas morn I hope to see

Headlines blaring PEACE ON EARTH!

For men of naught and men of worth -- KS

Father Christmas (Rabbit) hand made by me, Donna Watson

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

--- I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.-- 

Wendell Berry

Flat lay and photo arranged by Donna Watson

Wish and believe for PEACE to shine...

Flat lay arranged and photo by Donna Watson

I wish you and yours and everyone a peaceful wonderful new 

year!

Hiroshima Remembered

Beginnings: Small collage 8"x8"

Every year, on August 6th, tears fall at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima where the victims of the world's first atomic-bomb attack, unleashed upon the Japanese city during World War II, are remembered. The United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. An estimated 70,000 people died instantly. It is estimated that 140,000 died on that day and in the months that followed.

Shuudoushi monk at the Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto, Japan.

On each anniversary thousands of people, of dozens of nationalities, gather to remember the dead and pray for peace. Called the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony and held each August 6, choirs sing, bells toll and a minute of silence is observed at 8:15am, the time the bomb fell.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Cenotaph stands across from the Atomic Bomb Dome. The epitath reads: Rest in Peace, for the error shall not be repeated.

Doves for Peace are released at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

"The light that is hard won offers the greatest illumination. A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding in the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth." -- John O"Donohue, from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace "The Lost Voice"

Hiroshima Bomb Dome: This is one of the few buildings that remained standing after the atomic bombing. It stands as a tribute to the courage and resilience of the Japanese people.

Monks praying for peace.

Candles and paper lanterns float on the Motoyasu River in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, in memory of the victims.

--- Now looking through the slanting light

of the early morning window

toward the mountain presence

of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

--- David Whyte

A Blanket of Peace

Since my last post I have been to Hawaii to visit my family. When I returned, winter had come to my zen gardens. We actually had a white Thanksgiving. Yes, snow and ice is beautiful to look at, and very cold and icy if you have to go out and especially drive on snowy, icy roads. But when it is snowing, there does seem to be a quiet silence all around, like the snow is muffling the sounds and a purity is covering everything.


The following art works are by artists who work mostly in wood cut and print making. You can find more of their works at the Ren Brown Collection here. You can also find more of these artists and their works at The Tolman Collection, Tokyo here.

Rei Morimura, relief print/woodblock

Solitude is a way of waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt.
-- Peggy Pond Church

Kawase Hasui, woodblock

Werner Bischof, photograph

I await the birth hour of a new clarity.
--- Rilke

Joshua Rome, woodcut

"And remember that the light is within
if it is anywhere
and you must paint from the inside
Start with purity
and pure white"
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Saito Kiyoshi, woodblock

Miyamoto Shufu, wood block

"The pure white of gesso
the pure white of cadmium white
the pure white of flake white
the pure virgin canvas
the pure life we all begin with..."
---Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Joel Stewart, aqua tint

Lucy Arai, mixed media/collage/sumi ink

Come away from the din.
Come away to the quiet fields
Over which the great sky stretches
and where, between us and the stars
there, in the stillness
let us listen to the voice
that is spreading within us.
--- Jerome K. Jerome

Peace for everyone everywhere.

Peace and Goodwill

Photograph by Werner Bischof, Courtyard of the Meiji Temple,
Tokyo, Japan, 1951

My Christmas card, 2009

"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks
wrote so many years ago: to tame the
savageness of man and make gentle the life
of this world." --ROBERT F. KENNEDY
speaking in Indianapolis, April 4, 1968 after the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Christmas tree, 9 feet tall

Be the change that you want to see in the world. ----Mohandas Gandhi

Father Christmas, Handmade by me, 24" tall

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. ---Mohandas Gandhi

December snow, 2008

Another Father Christmas, handmade, 24" tall

Say that I was

a drum major

Say that I was

a drum major for justice

Say that I was
a drum major for peace
Say that I was
a drum major for
righteousness
-----Martin Luther King, Jr.