What a coincidence. I published the following post exactly one year ago. It is absolutely fitting given that this morning I woke up to learn that this beautiful young girl is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Her hijab glows persimmon. Her voice, soft yet firm as the fruit.
Her years young, her spirit rich, a caged bird sings and her name a song.
A collective breath heard across the heart of nations as she answers, “If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education. I would tell him how important education is and that I would even want education for your children as well. That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”
Peace, her song. The voice of the silenced, a generation of women raped, slaved, burned, flogged. Brutality stifles hope.
A young teen, the songbird girl determines to have her hope song heard. Taliban determine her dead, a gunshot to her head as she rides the school bus home.
“They thought that the bullet would silence us, but they failed,” her peace message grows stronger with each threat to her life.
Her attack leaves her crooked smiled and warrior spirited and a weapon in her mouth.
Peace.
When a young Pakistan girl breathes peace to all, souls tilt heavy toward her like flowers to the sun.
We crave to be soothed, salve to violence and murder. Balm to broken and beaten. Life to empty. Peace we all crave.
A deer pants for water, and a soul for Shalom.
When the time comes to award peace prizes we root for the songbird girl whose innocence is a melody of peace.
Because we don’t want war and machine guns and chemical blasts to be the answer. What we really yearn for is rest for our soul.
As the songbird girl inspires peace without borders, I find hope in the One who has been singing this song all along.