Can the Spanish word for lever really make all that difference?

Why would I want to lift someone up I don’t even know?

 

When God speaks to us,

Do we hear voices?

Yes, we hear the voice of another,

Speaking for Him,

Doing for Him,

Listening for Him,

Acting for Him.

 

I am living Palanca.

 

I am just a rock,

But with some character don’t you think?

Sitting here, on some terminal moraine in Massachusetts,

I watch the cars go by,

Mostly ignoring me,

Certainly not considering the millions of years that make up,

Well … me.

 

I’ve been crushed,

I’ve been moved,

I’ve been washed,

And overheated.

But mainly I have been ignored.

 

The lines of my life are there to read,

Just as a palm, or tree limb,

But more so.

I am indiscernible,

Which sort of makes me smile.

To myself of course.

 

Because rocks can’t communicate.

Which of course you already know.

 

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,

And every rocked fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft

From those who hunger and are not fed,

Those who are cold and are not clothed.

The world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers,

The genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children.”

 

President Eisenhower – 1953 speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors