As World War II was winding down, people started to come to terms with all the real pain and emotional damage that had been done. Frank Scott (1899-1985), a Canadian poet and political activist, wrote a poem, “Villanelle for Our Time,” which contains these lines:
From bitter searching of the heart
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start
[We] shall know commonwealth again
As our country turns a new page this week, we are entering a time in which we can bring the resources of faith, ethics and community to stir our imaginations once again. This is a time for what theologian, Walter Brueggemann, calls “prophetic imagination.” In poetry, song, reflection and ritual we will awaken our own prophetic imagination so that we can “rise to play a greater part.
