January 2: Swords Will Be Turned Into Plowshares
♫ Music:
Day 31 - Tuesday, January 2
Title: SWORDS WILL BE TURNED INTO PLOWSHARES
Scripture: Isaiah 2:4–5 (NKJV)
He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come and let us walk In the light of the Lord.
Poetry & Poet:
“Making Peace”
by Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS
Peace is central to the experience of Advent and Christmas. We create stillness in our lives, nestling down with our families, quietly focused on the image of the Christ child cradled in protective silence by his own parents, Mary and Joseph. According to the Gospel of Luke, after the birth of Christ, humble shepherds in the fields were met with a message of “peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2.14 KJV). What does it mean to have good will towards others, and how is this connected to actively loving others? How can such love, defined by philosopher Thomas Aquinas as willing the good of the other, make peace? Why is peace something we need to intentionally make or build?
Before we can take up the tools of constructive building, such as a shovel, we need to lay down our destructive arms. Such an intentional exchange of death for life, destruction for construction, tearing down for building up, is evoked by Pedro Reye’s powerful artwork Palas por Pistolas (Guns for Shovels). The allusion to the biblical prophet Isaiah’s image of swords beat into plowshares is clear. Guns and swords can take life; plowshares and shovels can cultivate ground to grow life-sustaining food. When I was a young undergraduate at the University of Alberta, in Western Canada, I bought a bumper sticker declaring the message “Farms, not Arms!” As an Albertan with Ukrainian farming roots, and as a lover of peace, I found the message empowering, and happily stuck the bumper sticker onto my 1982 Toyota Tercel, to the amusement of my friends, some of whom teased me for this earnest declaration.
I do not think the earthy adult Catholic convert with Jewish Russian roots, Denise Levertov, would have mocked the call for “Farms, not Arms!” In her poem “Making Peace” she suggests peace is “like a poem” because it must be “imagined before it is made” through a process of “mutual aid”. Only when we drop our weapons of brutal self-defense and start actively willing and working towards the good of the other will peace begin to appear. Levertov suggests there is a rhythm to such peacemaking, akin to the rhythm of a poem. Perhaps this rhythm is also like the uplifting rhythm of the African American spiritual “Study War no More”. Perhaps it is akin to the rhythm of Hebraic parallelism, found in the poetry of the Psalms and in the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah 2.4 contains parallel images of transformation in the phrases “swords into plowshares” and “spears into pruning hooks”. Perhaps the rhythm of active peacemaking is akin to the productive labour of digging furrows for seeds in the ground or pruning branches off a pear tree to increase its health and growth.
We are living through times of escalating violence – in places such as Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza – and we must not stop intentionally, actively, rhythmically working for peace
Prayer
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Amen.
––– (Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi)
Dr. Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette
Vice-President Academic and Professor of Literature
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College
Barry’s Bay, Ontario, Canada
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Art:
Palas por Pistolas (Guns for Shovels)
Pedro Reyes
2008
Shovels made from guns
Pedro Reyes is a contemporary Mexican artist whose work often focuses on sociopolitical issues. This compelling artwork entitled Palas por Pistolas by Reyes is a sociopolitical critique of contemporary gun culture in which the artist worked with local authorities in Culiacán, Mexico, to melt down confiscated guns into shovels—intended to be used in planting trees in cities around the world.
About the Artist:
Pedro Reyes (b. 1972) is a Mexican artist who has won international attention for large-scale projects that address current social and political issues. Through a varied practice utilizing sculpture, performance, video, and activism, Reyes explores the power of individual and collective organization to incite change through communication, creativity, happiness, and humor. Issues of community and compassion are also addressed. Reyes lives and works in Mexico City. He studied architecture at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City.
https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/pedro-reyes
About the Music:
“Study War No More” from the album Study War No More
Lyrics:
Going to lay down my sword and shield,
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside;
Going to lay down my sword and shield,
Down by the riverside,
Going to study war no more.
Chorus:
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
Ain't goingt' study war no more,
Ain't goingt' study war no more.
Ain't goingt' study war no more,
Ain't goingt' study war no more,
Ain't goingt' study war no more.
Going to lay down the bombs and guns
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside;
Going to lay down the bombs and guns,
Down by the riverside,
Going to study war no more. [Chorus]
Going to join hands the whole world ‘round
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside;
Going to join hands the whole world ‘round
Down by the riverside,
Going to study war no more.
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
I ain't goingt' study war no more,
"Down by the Riverside" (also known as "Ain't Gonna Study War No More" and "Gonna Lay Down My Burden") is an African American spiritual. Its roots date back to before the American Civil War, though it was first published in 1918 in Plantation Melodies: A Collection of Modern, Popular and Old-time Negro-Songs of the Southland, Chicago, the Rodeheaver Company. The song was first recorded by the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet in 1920, and there were at least fourteen Black gospel recordings of it before World War II. Because of its pacifistic imagery, the song has also been used as an anti-war protest song, especially during the Vietnam War. The song is also included in collections of socialist and labor songs. The song suggests baptism in water, using the metaphor of crossing the River Jordan to enter the Promised Land in the Old Testament. The refrain of "ain't gonna study war no more" is a reference to a quotation found in the book of Isaiah 2:4 (KJV)––"nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_by_the_Riverside
About the Composer:
African American Spiritual
A spiritual is a type of religious folk song that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. The songs proliferated in the last few decades of the eighteenth century leading up to the abolishment of legalized slavery in the 1860s. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant forms of American folk song. The term "spiritual" is derived from the King James Bible translation of Ephesians 5:19: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." The form has its roots in the informal gatherings of African slaves in "praise houses'' and outdoor meetings called "camp meetings" in the eighteenth century. The African population in the American colonies had initially been introduced to Christianity in the seventeenth century. Uptake of the religion was relatively slow at first, but the slave population was fascinated by biblical stories containing parallels to their own lives and they created spirituals that retold narratives about biblical figures like Daniel and Moses. As Africanized Christianity took hold of the slave population, spirituals served as a way to express the community's new faith, as well as its sorrows and hopes. Spirituals are typically sung in a call-and-response form, with a leader improvising a line of text and a chorus of singers providing a solid refrain in unison. Many spirituals, known as "sorrow songs," are intense, slow, and melancholic. Songs like "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" describe the slaves' struggles and identification with the suffering of Jesus Christ. Other spirituals are more joyful. Known as "jubilees" or "camp meeting songs," they are fast, rhythmic, and often syncopated.
https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197495/
About the Performers:
Sweet Honey in the Rock is a performance ensemble rooted in African American history and culture and remains among the most vibrant, versatile, and ever-relevant musical collectives in music today. As both a performance ensemble and as an ambassadorial African American organization, they are founded on the triumvirate missions of empowerment, education, and entertainment. The ensemble educates, entertains, and empowers its audience and community through the dynamic vehicles of a cappella singing and American Sign Language interpretation for the deaf and hard of hearing. Sweet Honey’s audience and community come from diverse backgrounds and cultures throughout the United States and around the world, and include people of all ages, economic/educational/social backgrounds, political persuasions, religious affiliations, and differing abilities. Recently, Sweet Honey in the Rock was invited by the South African Embassy to be a featured performer at the National Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela.
https://sweethoneyintherock.org/about
About the Poetry and Poet:
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was educated entirely at home and claimed to have decided to become a writer at the age of five. When she was twelve, she sent some of her poetry to T. S. Eliot, who responded by encouraging her to continue writing. At age seventeen, she had her first poem published in Poetry Quarterly. Her poems of the 1950s won her widespread recognition and her book With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959) established her as one of the great American poets. Levertov went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry, and was also the author of four books of prose. Levertov’s conversion to Christianity in 1984 was the impetus for her religious poetry. In 1997, she brought together thirty-eight poems from seven of her earlier volumes in The Stream & the Sapphire, a collection intended, as Levertov explains in the foreword to the collection, to "trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith, a movement incorporating much doubt and questioning as well as affirmation."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise-levertov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Levertov
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette
Vice-President Academic and Professor of Literature
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College
Barry’s Bay, Ontario, Canada
Natasha Duquette is vice-president academic and professor of literature at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College. She currently serves as the editor-in-chief for The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women’s Writing and is the author of 30-Day Journey with Jane Austen (2020). She lives with her husband Frederick Duquette in the small village of Killaloe, Ontario, Canada.