Margaret's Ramp Box with the week's poem on Thursday, September 8, 2005. To walk up that ramp is to enter a place of shelter, learning and hope.

I'm beginning to be more aware of the themes that emerge in my life. Some overarch the events and daily routines of months and years, others suddenly attract my attention and then recede. Today I can see that this awareness leads me—from time to time—to my own high ground. A place where the long view brings comfort rather than hopelessness, and I am not alone. For a few weeks now, one theme is violence. Violence, courage and grace.

When I got home there was a job waiting for me. Reel World film festival organizers wanted a poster for their current free film series. My last job before the trip was for their Cuban Film Festival. The group wants "to bring alternative perspectives on U.S. national and foreign policy to our community, with the conviction that our democracy is dependent on an informed public." In June, we worked together to create a color poster and a black and white brochure, featuring photographs taken in Cuba by one of their members. Restaurants in town were joining by serving Cuban food during the festival. I was excited and stimulated by the work and the idea of the event—which occured weeks after we left.

This new series will be The Unknown History of Active Nonviolence: How Unarmed People Power has been used in countries around the world to topple tyrants, resist oppression, and struggle for freedom and justice. So that I could begin to visualize the poster before we met to discuss it, Randy left some information outside my door one day. I looked with interest at the list of films, then began to flip through some pages clipped together—copies of photos with text—from the book, A Force More Powerful. I could see beyond the poor quality of the copies to the drama of each photograph. Tens of thousands of people in a square in Prague; thousands of Filipinos surrounding government tanks; mothers of "the disappeared" in Argentina, wearing as headscarves the diapers of their missing children—embroidered with their names; Burmese monks and citizens marching against their repressive government; thousands of Mongolians at a pro-democracy rally; a parade of civil rights demonstrators in Nashville. Those thousands of individuals all over the world made a personal decision to overcome their fear and confronted tyranny. Without committing violence. The pictures were a powerful testimony that there is hope.

I know that some of the events—in these pictures, in this book, in this history—were spontaneous. Others were planned. People were taught the strategies and behaviors of non-violence. The moments of triumph came over time, and at a high cost. Taking part in nonviolent action does not insure that one will remain unviolated, or even survive. And there's the matter of making peace inside ourselves, then going into the world as a locus from which it radiates.

Today the green leaves on the plants and trees by the road glittered in the sunlight, like they did as we traveled in Alaska and across Canada—in the days before this hurricane violently changed our country. I was cold this morning, and warm in the afternoon. All in all, the days have been gentle here. But we are all touched by that storm. By those living pictures we've seen, sharp and clear, of thousands and thousands of our sisters and brothers thrown together by circumstance with a narrowed agenda: survival.

Violence, courage and grace. We who have not yet relinquished our role of witness since last week's hurricane have lived through a week of contrasts—the stench of living with bodies on this damaged earth, and the sweetness of hearts opened by love and compassion. We see the ones who have lost everything. I am among those who sit at desk or table, stand at the kitchen counter, the water running, hearing the hum and clatter of clothes drying, or the toilet flushing—only to look around and imagine all of it gone.

Loss is a constant risk for those of us on this earthly pilgrimage, sometimes to be suffered alone, sometimes in staggering numbers. Sometimes we choose to lay our lives on the line with faith that life can be better for us all. Sometimes we triumph. Sometimes there is no choice but to stand and walk or swim, reeling in shock, toward safety.

This storm has allowed the toxic sewage of the spirit to surface, adding yet another layer of shock and terror. It has caused unspeakable pain. And it has begotten love, generosity, gratitude and compassion, which can rise as quickly and spread further than the waters that drowned a city, and equal the strong winds of destruction. Unarmed People Power.

"Think of all the hearts, beating in the world, at the same time."