While You Sleep

If you didn’t watch Ukraine: Answering The Call Sunday night on NBC, it’s not too late.

It’s streaming on Peacock, and you can also watch the hour-long program HERE. It’s a fast hour and gives you concrete ways to help the people of Ukraine.

I think we, in Radio, have an obligation to remind our listeners about the daily suffering in Ukraine because of Putin’s War, especially those of us who live in freedom and enjoy abundance.

I don’t think you need to bludgeon your listeners, or guilt them, but don’t ignore what’s happening either. Find opportunities, like this NBC Special, to give them ways they can help.

You will help them feel, which should be your goal every day.

One of the segments in the special features this poem read by Vera Farmiga, herself a Ukrainian, entitled “While You Sleep”:

while you sleep
Iryna Shuvalova

it’s easier for me when you sleep
because it seems to me that while you sleep
you can’t die

after all, asleep,
you’re already so close
to the other world
where there’s no shooting anymore

and also because while you sleep
I’m not asleep
and so in some sense
I’m standing guard

if not guarding you
(you’re so far away)
then this day
this light

six hours ahead
I carry this morning sun like a banner
that waves

over the land of the living
and the land of the dead

their border guards
have hung their rifles in the trees
and lie down lazily in the grass

these two countries
have not yet severed
diplomatic ties

*

The NBC special has beautiful songs by Brandi Carlile and Alicia Keys and re-plays Paul McCartney singing John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance” when he appeared in concert in Kyiv from 2008.

I think you’ll like it. I know it will move you, as it should.

Glory to Ukraine!