Overnight I had an email from the President of the ANAO Group, Justice Allyson Duncan, a retired American Circuit Court Judge. We were supposed to have our regional meeting in Washington DC soon — it was cancelled. Allyson said: “As I was going through my emails I came across the one to you in early March cancelling the meeting in the greater Washington area. I noted that at that time, there were “scattered cases” in the US. A month later there are more than 360,000 confirmed cases and more than 10,000 deaths.”
It is indeed a fast and grim time for many. Allyson also said there is a poem that has gone viral in the US. It was written by a retired Irish-American school teacher in Wisconsin named Kitty O’Meara who has been dubbed “the poet laureate of the pandemic”. It’s called “And the people stayed home.” I found it comforting and hope you will as well.
Gerard Winter, JANZ president.
And the people stayed home.
And read books, and listened,
and rested, and exercised,
and made art, and played games,
and learned new ways of being,
and were still.
And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images,
and created new ways to live
and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.