Peace, Love(Flows), Happiness

I don’t know that I could be happier or even prouder. It was a crazy idea and an ambitious goal. To ask 1,500 for $10 to aid recovery work on Staten Island and to take some relief workers a party.

Lots of heads were shaken (that’s ridiculous!!), lots of sighs were heaved (here we go again!), but everyone set to work with a will. And we did it. Did 1,500 people contribute, nah, probably only a thousand. A thousand!!!! A thousand people gave a little so that displaced seniors in Staten Island can have a house with ramps and lifts and so that some still displaced people can get a bit of rent relief.

And now we’re off on Saturday to do some work and to take some relief workers a party. A great band. Great food from here and there… and 50+ volunteers. Get on that bus, folks, there’s a party going on. And you’re the reason.

Keep having those crazy ideas. This really is how Peace gets planted. Love will continue to flow. Joy and Happiness will abound! Let’s go. Gratitude overflowing. Happy Dancing. Pride in the achievement. YES!

Connected Peace Sabbath

Well I considered using “you can run, but you cannot hide” as my tag line for this, but i refrained (well sort of!).

I spent an hour yesterday on skype with a friend across the country. Got to see her girls and her husband, got to feel the sweetness… it’s grand. And I’ve been grieving friends’ moving across the country, not being on hand to watch their little grow up, and I finally realized, Oh! right! Skype. They can check in when they’re making dinner and Miss Charming is running around the kitchen. Pretty fun!

So on this Sabbath day, stretch out your heart and call a friend, get in touch. The comment, oh, you can’t really talk on (insert whatever technology here), when it’s all you’ve got, you can make it not enough, or you can make it the world. Why would you choose not enough? A Peaceful heart is well worth it. I have a couple friends whose friendships have been developed via the internet and skype… and you know, they’re plenty good friendships! I think we haven’t realized what we can do with this little tool to make the world sweeter. I think we can make Peace via tiny little electrons. And we can certainly enrich our day, which is not a bad thing in and of itself.

A blessed, restful, Peaceful, connected Sabbath to you all…

Commencing Peace

There you go, graduates, off into a world we can’t imagine… but you will. I’m sure you have no idea both how much power you have and how little. Some things just are, and other things are waiting, begging to be changed.

The news, (and it’s always bad), says that we’ve taught you to be entitled, and yet, I have such a strong sense of your willingness to change things. You garden, you recycle, you form social benefit corps. You marry, or will, you parent, or will. You travel and meet new people. You make a difference. I’m proud of you. And I’ll keep cheering you on.

Pay no attention to those people who tell you you can’t have or can’t be. Go do what you were born to do. Off you go now. Have some good fun!

oh, p.s. that Peace thing? Peace really does begin with a girl or a boy, or a young adult, or an elder. It’s every bit as complicated as generations try to tell you and yet, not complicated at all. Try… for everyone’s sake… but mostly your own!

Cleaning Up for Peace

Resignation is so seductive. I’m not talking about the “take this job and shove it” kinda resignation, i’m talking about the slow, seeping ebb of our willingness to act on our convictions, the inertia that keeps us bound in our everyday patterns, while things slowly get worse. What’s the use?… what’s the point? we wonder…

Oh, come now! The use is we live on this world that deserves so much better than we give it. The point is we’re not being kind to those who come after.

Kindness. We often sneer at it for being saccharine. OK, I often sneer at it. And yet, kindness is a welcome respite in a tough world. When your store clerk really looks at you, you appreciate it, your day eases. His or her day eases when you take the time to appreciate, not just their work, but them.

And our precious Mother Earth — It’s time to go to work. Not just picking up trash and doing your recycling, although that’s always helpful. But find out what’s going on in your neighborhood that threatens the Earth’s well-being and start working against it. Start cleaning up your little patch of the river or forest or city. Start! or Continue! those are important words.

Our well-being and that of the generations after us depend upon our work. Who are we to leave it to the next generation? We participated in the slow slide, time to turn the tide! Yes, it’s hard work. But that just makes it all the more rewarding.

Graduate Peace?

Our graduates are coming out into a tough world. There aren’t lots of jobs available. And there are many things wrong with the world. We’ve certainly given them unrealistic expectations that their lives would be better than ours — a notion the boomers proved to be true in their early work lives perhaps but are perhaps struggling with today.

It’s a great time for leadership. And I’m not sure it’s going to be ours. Because we haven’t led. I realized two things in writing this. 1) well, that was depressing, despite my faith in them and 2) the next poem had better be to their elders, we’d better Peace-up, and start looking for our own solutions.

But graduates? Count those blessings, Review your shortcomings. Do that self-reflection dance. Stay present. Stay connected to your friends with great ideas and the will and ingenuity to implement them.

And isn’t that the work of right now? What’s going in that garden to feed our family? What Peace seedlings are we planting and tending to feed a Peace-hungry world? There’s work to be done. And for too many kids there are choices to be made between doing nothing and doing good. We cannot let these shining stars become discouraged; and they’re of an age where they might want to realize that it will be dangerous for them.

So, an important part of their challenge is to stay involved and inspired in their lives despite a very challenging world. There’s very real danger in their becoming disaffected… we owe our children not to let that happen — and they owe it to themselves.

Cusps and Verges are very interesting places filled with wonder and possibility and fraught with danger…

Kid Peace

A chance encounter in an alley: generally when you hear those words, what comes after isn’t good. But here we were on a bright, but chilly May morning. I was parking the car, all the in-front-of-my-house spaces having been scooped by workers. She was coming down the alley behind her house on her way to school.

She waved and deigned to speak! As an adult who bounces in and out of the life of kids, I do try and give them some choice in the matter! Next thing I know, we’re walking to her bus stop as she explains the intricacies of Girls on the Run (yahoo) and what they’ve been doing.

As you can imagine, I’m all about anything that’s empowering the girls, so it was a fun conversation and she had a great understanding of what was happening. And then a quick segue to how she’d be spending her summer vacation, and I waved goodbye. She’s going to otter camp which might also be seal camp, how much did I want someone to send me?????

It’s important to look through eyes that view the world at a different level, now and again. And hooray for friends across the generations! Being present. Counting blessings. Watch words for Peace.

A Cool Peace

Those of us on the East Coast, or at least here in Central PA are a leetle tetchy about the weather. It’s downright chilly. 7am my computer told me it was 29˚. brrr. and a fair amount of grrrrring as well. (where is that warm jacket?)

Unusual? Well, we like to think so… but I certainly remember walking off to school on May mornings in a little cardigan only to get down town and see 32˚ on the bank’s digital display. Mommmmmmmm! What were you thinking? There’s a reason they tell us not to plant until after Mother’s Day, and then to keep a (get it?) weather eye out for any new seedlings.

This is life, just being unpredictable. This is us, Peacegardeners and Earthwalkers, having to roll with it. We can moan and groan, or we can celebrate that the storm that drove in the cold front eliminated two thirds of the rain deficit we were running. Weather isn’t really dependable, it just is what it is. And whether we’re gardening or making Peace, we need to work with it and around it. So, slip back into the fleece and figure out what you’re going to do when the sun warms things up later today.

Firecircle Peace

There’s something about sitting around a fire. The silence that descends is companionable. The stories that break out tend to point to life’s sweetness. Songs often find harmony. Laughter is often hearty but gentle. We don’t do this enough to give our hearts Peace; we don’t often consider it as a Peace-making tool… and yet people have gathered around a fire for years, drummed sang, told stories and kept soft silence. Maybe we need to get out there more and invite others to join us. Being present to one another. Making memories together. What’s not to love?

My nephew and wife have built a home with some land around it. Not far from the house is a big fire circle with plenty of room for lots of chairs around and a roaring fire within. Saturday night, the rain cleared and the weather was cool enough to make the fire enjoyable and not too warm to make a fire unbearable. And there we sat, enjoying the night. It was wonderful. And we didn’t even have s’mores!

Inside, someone’s cute baby was making the rounds, as wannabe grandparents reached out arms to cuddle and soothe. Scottlyn was perfectly willing to indulge us with smiles and coos… hunting for parents only when hungry and then moving back to the center of everyone’s attention when needs were assuaged.

More babies. More fires. More Peace and Joy in families and friends. That’ll keep that Peace spreading outward!

Peace Baby Sabbath

On Mother’s Day, let us remember how being a mother connects us to our children, and hopefully to other mothers. Julia Ward Howe wrote “let us be too tender of other mothers” to think for one moment it is all right to send our babies to kill the babies of others…

Mothers have a great deal of power, let us use it for good. I wish us all a happy Mother’s day and a blessed Sabbath. And may we see all the young ones as blessed babies of Peace.

One Peace

I saw a trailer the other day for a film that looks at the effects of the sight of Earth hanging in space on the astronauts and on us from their pictures. (Here’s the 20-minute clip) It was mesmerizing.

I’m going to have to watch it a bunch more times before I completely understand what’s starting to stir in my brain. But what I’m starting with is the oneness of it all, of us all. And that’s a pretty wonderful place to start. It was hard jockeying this into ten lines, but, that’s my daily job, and I’ve chosen these limitations this year. So here we are. Happy beautiful rainy Saturday. I haven’t decided which chores I’m going to lazily attempt!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Posts