Giovanni Lanfranco. “The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes”
Thursday
Nancy LeTourneau of The Washington Monthly yesterday used a David Whyte poem to good effect in articulating a vision of America that can send our hearts soaring. Whyte concludes his poem with the assertion that “one good word is bread for a thousand,” and LeTourneau then quotes a President Obama speech that gives us a pretty good candidate for that one good word.
First of all, here’s the poem:
Loaves and Fishes
By David Whyte
This is not
the age of information.
This is not
the age of information.
Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.
This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.
People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.
Among other things, Whyte’s poem is a plea for poetry, which cuts through the media’s barrage of language with carefully selected words. As I tell my students, poetry counters word inflation.
LeTourneau lets us know which word she would choose by citing three important speeches delivered by the president. He uses it liberally in the first two and then singles it out in his inspirational Selma speech:
Because Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.
Jesus turned the five loaves and two fishes into enough to feed a multitude of 5000+, with twelve baskets left over. We the people, famished for a more perfect union, can perform our own miracles if we truly honor the “we.”
