Tiny Ripples August 10, 2013 - August 31, 2013

Reading and Deliberating

Details

Do you know that there are people in AMERICA living in tents? Think about that the next time you look outside at a thunderstorm. These people don't know if they will eat today. I know a woman who has taken it upon herself to feed them. I want to help. This contest is to have your poem added to a book of poetry that will be sold to help this effort.

Robert F. Kennedy, speaking before college students of South Africa once said ...

"First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

So this is my little pebble thrown into the vast sea in the hope that it will send out one of those Tiny Ripples. If you are so moved ... submit your words so you can help. Poetry should be appropriately themed about helping others and social conscience. (More than 10 poems will be selected, but the contest only allows for showing ten.