Sharing: Submitted on Facebook by: Bridget Dittrich

John Lee Hooker - The Healer (1989, CD) | Discogs
*It was proposed that history repeats itself.

Came across this poem written in 1869,
reprinted during 1919 Pandemic.

This is Timeless…. It was written in 1869 by Kathleen O’Mara:

And people stayed at home
And read books
And listened
And they rested
And did exercises
And made art and played
And learned new ways of being
And stopped and listened
More deeply

Someone meditated, someone prayed
Someone met their shadow
And people began to think differently
And people healed.

And in the absence of people who
Lived in ignorant ways
Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
The earth also began to heal

And when the danger ended and
People found themselves
They grieved for the dead
And made new choices
And dreamed of new visions
And created new ways of living
And completely healed the earth
Just as they were healed.

Reprinted during Spanish flu Pandemic, 1919

The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Why It Matters 100 Years Later | | Blogs | CDC

https://youtu.be/0aFKgi5D6eU?list=RD0aFKgi5D6eU

John Lee Hooker & Carlos Augusto Alves Santana – The Healer

“Hmm, have mercy
The blues , the blues is a healer
Blues, blues, is a healing healer
It healed, healed, healed
Heal!
Heal, heal, heal!
All over the world, all over the world
It’s a healer”

*Editors Note:

“And the people stayed home.” This is the opening line of an untitled poem that’s gone wildly viral. Social media posts shared now 10s of 1,000s of times by people moved by its words note that it’s “a poem written in 1869 by Kathleen O’Mara” that was “reprinted during 1919 Pandemic.” But like so many things that get passed around our digital, warp speed highways, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Truth is… this is not a case of history repeating itself in the most profound way (some of the language in the poem offers a clue of that improbability). The poem was written last month – in March 2020 – by a woman named Kitty O’Meara, a former teacher and chaplain from Wisconsin, in trying to process the worsening news surrounding the catastrophic spread of the coronavirus. Nevertheless, its sentiment and message are just as profound as if it had serendipitously reemerged from more than a century ago.”

PS – Oprah tracked down Kitty O’Meara for an interview. This is her story, which includes an added twist about her poem now gone viral… “Irene Vella, an Italian journalist, claims that O’Meara’s work is a translation of her own poem. O’Meara denies those claims. Vella’s poem, written in Italian, is also inspired by coronavirus, but is apparently different, per the translation.”

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash – taken March 17, 2020 in Hampton Beach, Hampton, NH, USA

https://womenyoushouldknow.net/fact-people-stayed-home-viral-poem-kitty-omeara-2020/

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