By : Julia Ward Howe ~ 1870

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

"Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

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This is the proclamation Julia Ward Howe wrote in 1870, which explains, in her own impassioned words, the goals of the original holiday. I know our mother would have loved this, yet I do not think she knew of it.  ~~ dori

Mom loved the poetry of Mary Oliver, especially the "Red Bird" book. Here are two of her favorites, the bolded section in the second poem, I read at her memorial service.

RED BIRD

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

those dun-colored darlings, so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know He has many children, not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason--perhaps becasue the winter is so long

And the sky so black-blue, or perhaps because the heart narrows

as often as it opens--I am grateful that red bird comes all winter

firing up the landscape, as nothing else can do.

Red Bird Explains Himself

"Yes I was the brillance floating over the snow

and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was only the first trick

I had hold of among my other mythologies,

for I also knew obedience; bringing sticks to the nest,

food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don't stop there, stay with me: LISTEN.

If  I was the song that entered your heart

then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,

and thus wilderness bloomed there, with all its followers:

gardeners, lovers, people who weep for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the music of the body.

Do you understand? for truly the body needs a song, a spirit, a soul.

And no less, to make this work, the soul has need of a body,

And I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable

beauty of heaven,

where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,

and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart."