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Peace of the Pieces

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And Pieces of Peace…

I have been thinking a bit about the fact that we’re already looking at the last days of January. Aside from the normal, how the heck did that happen… in terms of looking at the year as a building process, it’s almost time to move on from the dream phase of the year. That means we need to begin to assemble our dreams, lay out the word fragments, the pictures, the blank spots, the allies on a board. Can you yet name your dream for the coming year… are you ready to commit to bringing Peace into your life… and into others’?

I’m not always a vision board kinda girl, but they are helpful for some people. Because part of my goal this year is to see the pattern in what i do (which is not my Peace dream — although it might bring me some!!), I am going to start laying things out.

It doesn’t matter if you have a complete picture… pieces will continue to emerge over the coming year, but it is good to have a name and an (even a fuzzy) outline.

I started to write this this morning and then I got sidetracked by our snow day. And that? is the nature of peace… it is piecemeal… work here, play here… that way lies Peace. So may you assemble the pieces of Peace you are gathering… and my you revel in the pieces of Peace you are granted. (if it’s not raining, go sledding!) Balance the work of Peace with the play of peace!

Peace and Magic Making

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I’ve been living, as the poem below says, in Mercedes Lackey’s Valedmar, filled with Mages and Companions. It’s been lovely. I was tired and depleted, and it’s been a grand vacation. When you can’t lie on a beach, go to the library!

I don’t read sci-fi in general, rather I read a very small segment of the genre, women’s fantasy, often sword and sorcery fantasy. (and THAT’s about the most I’ve ever admitted in public!) I read it for three reasons, first because it completely interrupts the real world. It helps me stop thinking. When you live in this brain, stopping thinking is an occasional blessed relief — maybe even a rite of holy obligation! Second, I like the that the heros and heroines are always striving for a better world. In my world, I find inertia and stagnation often drags me down, tempts me to ignore my calling to do the same, seduces me to work around my values and beliefs. Heroines on paper? Nevah! Third? I’m beginning to think that authors’ use of magic is really about their longing for to create Peace, which is, I believe, the biggest magic we have available to us in this world.

In this series, I was really struck by the the author’s description of the aftermath of the working of great magic, the disruption it causes in the world. She was envisioning storms arising from a working of great evil, in increasingly larger ripples. But isn’t that how things are? One little action, and sooner or later, ripples begin to spread. With evil-doing, the ripples are two-fold: greater acts of violence and increased indifference them. But isn’t it the same with acts of Peace. One person acts and another is encouraged. One person acts, exposing the ugly root and another sees and acts for the good.  We have choices about the ripples we want to put into the world. Indifference or action? Violence or Peace? Willful Blindness or Vision and open hearts?

It’s January, almost February. Here we are, gathering the shards together to begin building our own Dream for Peace, however great or small. Those dreams as we implement them will cause ripples. When people see us act for good, they are empowered to do the same.

Peace of Mentors and Friends

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My mother was a particularly good role model when it came to mentors. She was a pretty good mentor as well, but she taught me the importance of mentors. She also taught me that mentors came in many different packages and were not necessarily older than you.

She was a painter. She put that on hold when she was raising children, and the second I went off to college, so did she. For 25 years, she took art courses, studio and art in the dark. She sculpted, she drew, she painted. She scandalized her hometown “girls” by taking life drawing courses. She learned from profs. She learned from students. She took advice and gave it back.

That’s a big key with mentorship, I think. Our best mentors not only help us to see our path and keep walking on it, they ask us, even demand, that we inform their journey. “Grow up! Stand strong! Be a player in this game of life!” they exhort us. They urge us not only to lead by example but also by kindness and by teaching.

I have been so lucky. I have sat at the feet of and carried the bags of great mentors. We’ve laughed ourselves silly together. And I feel the continued pressure to “get up offa that thang” and do my work. Part of my work is mine and mine alone. And part of my work is showing the way. I am very grateful… and I hope mindful.

If you don’t have these people in your life, you start looking around. Because you? are worth it. And because your dream of Peace is just a small fragment of the Peace mosaic… but without it, Peace is not complete. Mentors need to mentor, it’s their gift. And if you’re working your gifts, you’re the best sort of student to come along in their life, because they can point to your work with pride and say “I encouraged that wonderful person and his/her wonderful work!”

January’s Peaceful Values

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It’s interesting to me that if we really want to find the push to do the work that’s important to us, we need most to keep looking within. The question that is our biggest motivator is or should be, “What do I believe?” It’s easy, easy, easy to say, I believe in Love, I believe in Peace. But what we believe in is what we act on. So if we’re not acting from love, a couple things could be happening.

We could be frightened, frightened to take out our precious, precious values and expose them to a scornful world. But then we waste them. Our values are there to act on. And if people dismiss us because our beliefs are too corny or naive, ok. We then need new associates. We have a much better chance of making Peace work if we ally ourselves with like-minded, like-hearted, and like-souled people.

Some of us may like the notion of ourselves as a sort of Joan of Arc, ready to take out our beliefs only when the perfect cause comes along. But every cause is perfect and every cause is flawed. Act now, get in practice. Then should the big cause come along, you’ll be well practiced in the art of dreaming your ideals into being.

And some of us haven’t done the work to develop our ideals to the point that they direct our lives. We may say we believe in X, that grand and glorious X, but in fact it never touches our lives because we’re afraid to really believe that x will make a difference. We like the way it sounds. We hang with people who also say that. For whatever reason, we haven’t taken our spoken values into our hearts.

That means that something else is operating. So, better, far better to dig down and see what’s really going on. I’ve been reading a lot of empty my mind books lately. It’s been wonderful to uncouple from life a bit. But in my little sci-fi fantasy world, magic is afoot. And in this series the author talks about magic being imposed from the outside… If I think about it, the commercial brainwashing we undergo (every time we open a magazine, sit on a bus, watch a tv, open our computer) does a very good job of diverting us from what is deep and meaningful.

Our hearts are true… we just need to get there! So… what drives you?

January Peace Obstacles

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Have you noticed that we still tend to be surprised by obstacles? Why is that? I’m not pointing any fingers here, mind you…

Whatever your dream is about, it’s going to change the way the world works if you pursue it. That will happen, if for no other reason, because people will sometimes resent your pursuing your dreams. If you can, they can, and all this time they’ve been pointing to the obstacles as reasons for not moving forward.

But our dreams are not for or about other people, even if in the long term they benefit others. We dream about what’s important to us, what raises our passion. We say no to the obstacles because our passions are vital to our well-being. We say no because realizing our dreams is being faithful, even grateful, for the gifts we’re given.

Obstacles are real. Many times we’ll find out that the cause of those obstacles was our own failure to plan. But other times, we’re just going to have to figure out how to go around and keep going. If Peace were easy and straightforward, we’d be living in the midst of it. It’s hard. But we’re gifted. And the world is waiting.

So gather your advisers about and figure out how to move forward. You don’t have advisers? ah, now that’s a problem. We all need a Board of Directors. We need someone to see what we can’t see. No reason to go flat on our faces if there’s a friend around to point out a rock in the road!

Our obstacles will probably be our faithful instructors and our worthy opponents. Let’s learn the lessons and keep working on Graduating the Dream!

The January Peace of Possibility

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The ceremonialist in me (HA! Word Press doesn’t even think that’s a word!) thrilled to yesterday’s pageantry in the capital. Yes I understand the dangers of mob mentality. Yes, I understand that not everyone likes this President. Yes, I understand that there were things that weren’t perfect. And still it was wonderful.

I loved having icons from my youth singing. And damn, James Taylor still has a voice. Everyone sang. I loved Richard Blanco’s poem, its presentation, and that he was who he was. I loved that Obama was hopeful and reminded us where we go demands that we remember where we came from. I will always treasure the line Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall, because these are important icons to me. And when all the leaders stopped after lunch and paid homage to MLK, Jr., and you could feel Obama pray, I was so moved. to re-member, to put the body back together.

But what I really loved was seeing people’s expressions of happiness and camraderie. I loved the palpable feeling that good things are possible. I hope that wherever we come from, whatever we believe, we can touch that possibility and then reach for our own. What we do matters. I believe that so much.

The Peace of a January Fool

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Are we willing to count the world well lost for Peace? Are we willing to embrace the absurd notion that society can be based in love and tolerance? People say it’s a foolish and simplistic notion that we can live in Peace. OK. It’s not that I’m unwilling to address the complex issues, but I am unwilling to allow the complexity to overwhelm the possibilities of Peace. Because Peace is what we are called to, or so I believe.

Far more is possible than we know. Let’s risk it. Joy is more present than we allow. Let’s live it. Let us be fools for Peace, risking being thought absurd to bring about change on earth, for the earth and all its peoples. As a notion, it’s perhaps a little grandiose… but it’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, and the beginning of a President and Vice President’s next four years. Whether you voted for them or not, I would hope you would join me in wishing them well, and in wishing that they dedicate themselves to their country’s well-being and a Peaceful, prosperous world. May that be so for all the world’s leaders.

My friend Blair Monie used this in his sermon yesterday morning. Here we are: more fools for Peace: “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way. Because I heard the voice saying: do something for others.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Peace of Spectacular Failure

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Failure is how we learn things. It’s how we grow. If we’re not willing to experiment, we never stretch our minds and our resources. Failure keeps us humble and it keeps us laughing. And goodness knows we need to be laughing. Whatever else I know about Peace, it’s not all earnestness. There’s a great deal of shared laughter.

We need to stretch our abilities. We need to dream big. This means we might fail in a rather spectacular way. Ok. So, laugh, reconsider, try again. Practice failing at things that don’t matter so that you’re used to missing the mark. But don’t practice by pulling the target so close that you can’t help but hit it. Push it back. Imagine differently, more generously.

If you take your work and your life seriously, you’re going to keep experimenting. It may seem counter-intuitive that taking your life seriously also means being willing to laugh uproariously at your failures… and then to learn from them.

So, my dears, Dream. Try. Win a little(or a lot). Fail a little(or a lot). Laugh. Reconsider. Try again. That way lies Peace. (and a lot of laughter, shared and otherwise!)

Peace of a Pacific Sunset

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It’s sort of a ridiculous assignment, to try and describe a sunset in ten lines. But ten lines are the rule. I made the rule. It’s an interesting task to try and tell a story in ten lines. Sometimes it works better than others. When I finished this poem, I thought wait! I didn’t mention that sometimes the air will seam to turn roseate before it fades to black and white. And there was certainly no time to mention that sometimes the dolphins dance in the waves or that the pelicans sail majestically by in freight train formation…

So what does a poem mean to a dream? I guess that both are always unfinished… or maybe just incomplete. Maybe it’s the good reminder that we are called to say what we see and that what we see isn’t in conflict. When we add one vision to another, we get a more complete, but never perfect vision. I see things differently than you so the overlap will never be precise.

As we begin to develop our dreams, there will be times when we realize there were pieces we didn’t include. Then we’ll have to decide, do we simply need to be aware of that? Do we need to find someone who is working on an allied dream? Or do we have enough to deal with in the dream we’ve created, imperfectly perfect as it is?

So, I guess I’ll just keep asking myself… What kind of peacemaker am I? How will that change this year? And how will I embrace the places where I miss the mark or simply don’t have the capabilities? And equally important, will I keep being open to the startling beauty of a sunset that is not like “mine” and allow it to stretch and modify my notion of beauty… and Peace.