Posts

Housekeeping for Peace, llvl

Reply

Sometimes you have to clear up the clutter around you so that life runs as smoothly as possible. Even when you’re working on important work, someone has to manage the every day stuff. And it should probably be you.

It’s easier to get back to the “real work” when the work of your life is caught up. I’m off to a conference this week. Just a few days, but things needed to get done. And I’m one of those sloppy people who can’t bear to come home to a sloppy house. And you know, snow… In this weather, if you’re driving other people through the Poconos, best to have those snow tires on. And the car cleaned out. And yes, the holidays are coming…

Peace needs a steady platform. Whatever you do, you need one too. Even better you deserve one, so give yourself the gift of attention. Providing yourself what you need is sacred work as well.

LLVL48Dec2

Stretching Holiday Peace, llvl

Reply

Since I was an exchange student 45 years ago and discovered that Sweden celebrated Second Day Christmas, I’ve been greedy about holidays.

Since I’ve married, I’ve had Second Day lots of things because we always get together with his family on the day after the holiday… 2nd day hurrah! Leftovers and Family, what a blessing.

This week I got a third crack at Thanksgiving. No leftovers were involved, but there was a meet up at a local restaurant on a hill overlooking the river. It was grand. Nancy, our historian, had brought along name tags from earlier Turkey Days from everyone who wasn’t there. Those who couldn’t make it and those we fondly imagine eating together at the Thanksgiving buffet up in the sky.

We take whatever opportunities we have these days… because they are few and we are fewer than we were.

Gather your families… time passes and Peace looks different a few years down the road… Giving thanks for what I have and for who I had in my life. Trying to stay present in this miraculous moment.

LLVL48Dec1

Sometimes Sabbath Peace is enough, llvl

Reply

Whether it’s a little boy laughing and flirting in a cafe or a grandmother with a lapful of love in sleepers reading her two boys a story, there are just times that the innocence fills your heart. And you know, the force for Peace is powerful.

But those two little boys in my friend’s lap face a far more uncertain world than the little in the cafe because they’re black and he is not.

That has to stop. We have to change that. We do. Because loving, giggly, happy boys deserve a chance… And the world deserves to know what gifts of wonder those little boys can become.

Sweet Sabbath Peace be with us. Wish me luck I’m preaching a difficult sermon on this today… For those celebrating the sacred season of Advent, I wish you Hope.

LLVL48Nov30

Enough Peace, llvl

Reply

My sister-in-law’s email tag is that if you’re lucky enough to live by the river, you’re lucky enough.

Yesterday was a lovely living example of that. We sat in this lovely room with windows, eating leftovers and being family. Blended family, the best, right? all of us together. with turkey. and cranberry. and pie.

Yay!

Even when there’s work to do, you have to savor the Peace that’s there. We were lucky enough. We were very lucky.

Hurrah for Peace.

LLVL48Nov29

Seeing Our Way to Peace, llvl

Reply

Woke up this morning with Ferguson on my heart, and this simple phrase going through my brain, these people are fighting for their lives. They are fighting to be seen as people by a world that finds it inconvenient that they exist.

“Here they stand, they can do no other…” and why should they?

I guess the bigger question is do we stand with them? Are we on their side or in their way? Are we on the side of right or are we impeding Justice?

And let’s not get confused by the looting question. Remember “We are Penn State?” yeah, violence and looting. Over football. Not over a child not only killed but left lying in the street as if he were trash.

Unless we see this for what it is, unless we see our unwillingness to embrace people as beloved not other, until we look at people at see only human, Peace cannot come and we’ll be the reason. Preaching here, gotta spend today redoing my sermon, don’t I?

What is Peace today? Struggling to decide whether gratitude today is just one more namby pamby sentiment… or whether it’s simply irrelevant to this conversation… yet still that was yesterday — but I may not let my thankfulness impede my vision, instead it must drive it. And maybe I must be grateful for a faith and an understanding that makes me uncomfortable and sorrowful… what is my work here? What is yours?

LLVL48Nov28

Tempered Gratitude and Peace, llvl

Reply

It is good that there is a day in our lives when we say thank you. It’d be grand if we did this more frequently. And as so many of us say, there’s family, there are friends, there’s food (and some would add there’s football) what’s not to like about this holiday? I’m really looking forward to time with my nephew and his wife, visits to friends and a whole weekend that continues the celebration. Big bonus: I get to spend much of the weekend with my husband, which is not what we always get. I’m a happy and a lucky woman. While there are faces I miss at the table, I have family and friends I love and who love me in return. I have a job I have waited and prepared a lifetime to do, and I have you and a place to say what I think and feel and believe. Huge thanksgiving. Joy that races between quiet and explosive!

However, some people don’t have those luxuries. Even if they have food, they may not have family. Some are missing both comfort and sustenance. Somehow this day feels like another reminder of their loneliness. When we can, we should help here.

This year, I think it’s incumbent upon us to remember that the gratitude that is tied up in so many of our minds with a thankfulness for this country must be balanced by the realization how many people are excluded from the American Dream. And more than excluded, threatened. There’s been a lot of writing lately about how this current uproar in Ferguson is less about Blacks’ demanding visibility than it is about white outrage (again with the outrage) that society is changing and, in fact, there must be, even will be, parity. Black lives do matter. And so our gratitude must be tempered with awareness. And our gratitude must be the fuel for making a difference.

Our hearts must be both sorrowful and grateful. We’re plenty complex enough to hold that tension. Today let us feast. Tomorrow let us eat leftovers and consider how we might help. Celebration and action, longtime friends of Peace.

LLVL48Nov27

Justice Before Peace, llvl

Reply

Let us pray by standing firm for justice and right relationship.

The story being sold is that those people are rioting (and only they riot and loot, forget the, um, enthusiastic response to sports events, etc…)… somehow it’s not about another black child; it’s not about black lives mattering. And how much looting is there, any how? I’m sure we’re happy to focus on thuggery, but how many people are standing their protesting peacefully? How many are decrying the violence on both sides and how little are we seeing that? Change will come through an uprising, if it comes, because we have seen how little change comes through waiting.

Armchair police “know” exactly what happened, so much better than people of color know, people who have witnessed again and again, people whose lives don’t matter. People of color continue to be squeezed out of this American life. They continue to make less, be incarcerated more, fare more poorly… Our President, a man of color, has had more death threats against him than any other president, and even his staff can’t seem to care enough to be on guard. Those of us who love people of color, who love justice, who long for peace must stand, speak, write, witness. Not only was this child killed his body and his memory were desecrated when they let him lie on that pavement for hours.

We must also pray, because when my dear friend Faye, a prayer warrior of no uncommon strength, confesses that she can no longer pray, that she is that dispirited and down-hearted, I can’t float along on my carefree ignorance and willful amnesia any longer. I must be active and informed… bob marley told us, i keep forgetting, no justice, no peace…

“We who believe in Freedom cannot rest” (Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon)… Peace will wait on Justice. We should weep. We should pray. We should bear witness. We should act for Justice and for Peace.