Occupy the Heart

Yesterday I got a card in the mail, an actual handwritten letter. It was from a friend here in town, a retired man--in fact, the man who hired my father for the job he kept until his own retirement. I have been honored, since moving back to Normal, to meet and get to know this man I'd heard about when a child.

In his note, he quoted the closing lines of one of my poems:

Let us care for each other.
Let us care for this earth.

I was touched in so many ways.  So today, as the Occupy Wall Street movement and its extensions continue across our country, and as some of the protesters are answered with violence and scorn, I ask us to occupy the heart. To care for each other.

To remember the past and the good and noble changes that have come from nonviolent protest here in the United States and all over our world.

Let's don't screw this up.