My job is making windows where there were once walls.*
Michel Foucault

The songs of prayer lodge in our mouths.
Let us sing through the snow.
At the dinner table.
On the rooftop where we dance.
May these sounds heal our ears
and those distant ears that hear.**
Hawksley Workman

Back in 1696,
A windows tax was introduced in Britain as a fairer way
of raising taxes from the richer in society –
Bigger house, more windows;
The problem was that the urban poor were likely to
live in tenement buildings which were counted as one property
rather than many.

The rich got around the tax by bricking up
some of their windows –
Evidence of this is very visible today;
The tenement landlords also bricked up
some of their windows, or built with fewer windows –
You can see what this would me mean for the poor.

The world needs more people who can turn
walls into windows:
There are already too many who turn
windows into walls.

Please don’t give up on that magic
you make happen for others.

*Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World;
**The Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer: 27th day of the month.