The Corridor
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. - Mohandas K. Gandhi
Colman McCarthy (born March 24, 1938), an American journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist, an anarchist and long-time peace activist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. From 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post. His topics ranged from politics, religion, health, and sports to education, poverty, and peacemaking. Washingtonian magazine called him "the liberal conscience of The Washington Post." Smithsonian magazine said he is "a man of profound spiritual awareness." He has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, The Progressive, The Atlantic, and Reader's Digest. Since 1999, he has written biweekly columns for National Catholic Reporter.
Since 1982, he has been teaching courses on nonviolence and the literature of peace. In the fall semester of 2006, he taught at seven schools: Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, The Washington Center for Internships, Wilson High School, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and School Without Walls.
Nearing The End
There is a scratching
at my door and light beneath
slices my back wall
as I lie with eyes
tight shut against all the glare
of your call to me
with colors beyond
my understanding of light.
I am so ready.
February 26, 2010 12:44 PM
The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
I am saving that McCarthy quote. I've never heard of him, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have been able to tell you who he is either. One of my purposes here is self education. I like going out on the internet after some new thing. It's so easy to find something. I don't have to agree with everyone who gets a say here in the quotes I share. I am a little journalistic in this process, you know. I get to editorialize in the comments and sometimes in the posts but quite often everything but the poems are someone else's stuff, most often quoted from Wiki, where I got all the info on McCarthy.
ReplyDeleteimportant man. important work.
ReplyDeletei just wrote somewhere that responsibility must begin with the self, this is in terms of peace or anything.
and yet i wonder at this, christopher, this truth in my life, that the more people i am involved with the harder it is to maintain peace and goodwill. why the conflict with the ego? in other words, i am good if i am alone in a forest. i am mostly good if i am with one or two others. if i enter a room, my energy against his and her energy, it is so much more difficult to control. i lose control of myself. i know i have to take resposibility for this and yet i am not sure how to maintain my goodness. it is that much harder.
how do i stay a part of the world then, when i am best alone?
xo
erin