In Peace, Breathing Matters

For the past four years of my musings, i’ve danced with one picture a week or a month. It’s been a wonderful adventure. It’s different this year to have a picture come in every day. It’s different in both challenging and wonderful ways.

Even six weeks in, most people have a thought about why they took a photo. When you add that to whatever it inspires in me plus whatever’s working in the world at that moment and it makes writing the poem more challenging.

So Scott sent this beautiful picture and said, I don’t know, Breath of God? Dawn of Creation? And there out of my mind came not only the old hymn but the newer benediction: When I breathe in Love, I breath out Peace. When I breathe in Peace, I breathe out Love…

And new metaphors emerge to challenge and deepen my own understanding. This is why I call these musings, you know… what am I thinking about what I believe and what am I believing about what I observe? What supports me? What challenges me? What moves me?

Breath of Peace. Big B. Big P. For me the capitalized beginning indicates words that are sacred in our mouths. Not just powerful — hate never gets a cap. But Breath. ah… let’s pay attention to its coming in and its going out. Let’s stand in the way of it when the World exhales. Let’s breathe in Peace. and please, breathe on me Breath of Peace. You my beloved. You, the World. You, the Divine. You… Peace. Breathe. Peace breathes. I breathe Peace.

Happy Year of the Monkey Peace

You know me — opportunity to celebrate? Count me in.

Another new year? A fresh chance to to begin again in Love? Why wouldn’t we take that?

And then, as I so often ask, festal foods? Oh, yeah. Of course I’ll come to your house.

I confess, my celebration of festal foods doesn’t do the artistry of these gnocci justice. They’re so beautiful, and another gift of slow food from Terri and George. Wonderful things happened when those two met, I’ll tell you, on all sorts of levels. Dinner was certainly an important one.

Welcome to the Year of the Monkey. The Monkey is a clever, curious guy with a magnetic personality. He’s intelligent, adaptable, flexible and eloquent. Occasionally that wit and curiosity can lead him astray, but his heart is huge. Animal activists are hoping to use this year of the Monkey to speak to destroyed habitats and illegal trade in these little guys for pets and for more nefarious activities. It wouldn’t hurt any of us to pay some attention to this…

We are one with the natural world, whether we acknowledge it or not. It’s better to acknowledge it. Better to as Robert Isaacs Eller says, “forgive ourselves and each other, and begin again with love.” So go ahead, explore the world. Be a bit adventurous.

And don’t forget the festal foods. We think of this as Chinese New Year — it’s celebrated in many countries by billions of people as the Spring Festival. It’s a lunar holiday, beginning on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice. This year, for the very first time, in acknowledgement of New York’s large Asian population, schools are closed in observance. More people in the world travel for this holiday than for any other holiday in the world. People go home to be with their families.

Peace, my friends. Peace of the Monkey Year, be with you. Call your families. Tell them you love them.

Wild Sabbath Peace

Yep, this weekend has been flurries of fun mixed with serious moments…

It’s been a long time since I did anything that spectacularly, well, anything…

Taking off your clothes, putting aside good sense, and hopping into the cold water.

But Faye had always wanted to… and i had always wanted to see if I could… So we did and I could.

It’s important to have friends who dare you to deeper things.

Yesterday we hopped in the river. Today we’ll hop in the pulpit. That will be equally fun, very safe, but in its own way equally daring. In between we sat on the couch or at the table and laughed and talked seriously…

And then I’m hopping in my bed for a nap. Poor Faye has to hop in her car and drive for five hours.

I’ve got thinking to do about how our women’s college — Wilson — shaped my life. Today i’m just mulling about how that early connection holds fast in so many ways… and how good and rewarding that is.

Peace… through wackiness. We’ll laugh to that!

Peace of Sunset at the Farm

One of the reasons I like snow is that it lets the sun paint it colors.

It is so beautiful to have those golden colors reflecting off the snow. It’s so easy to imagine coming home to this Peaceful and Beautiful place…

Beauty — just one of the reasons I don’t want to rush past winter… And the cold is another one.

Today the cold brings my little town our ice festival. Hurrah. There were lots of pictures from last night of friends sitting in ice chairs and having their pictures taken besides ice sculptures. The Ice Fest has arrived. We’ll have to walk down to see folk plunge into the river this afternoon… (crazy people, i tell you, not me!)

Both the picture and this festival are reasons for me not to rush past winter. Every day, there’s something beautiful. Every day in your life, there’s something beautiful. We should welcome and celebrate that.

Peace needs every day to be complete — just as it needs every person!

Father: Dead or Alive?

Dear Bartender and Priestess,

I am concerned about my 80 year old father. He’s a widower, and the last of his siblings. When he was younger he was a force to be reckoned with—one of those strong, confident Mad Men sort of businessmen—but he’s been retired for a while, and has lost touch with a lot of his old contacts thanks to time or their passing. He doesn’t go out much, and so he doesn’t really take care of himself. He never shaves, he has crazy-man hair, his clothes don’t fit and he’s got dirt caked under his fingernails. I feel like he’s just not concerned about his appearance any more. Continue reading →

Solitary Peace

Solitary bovine Peace?

Cows are such herd animals. But occasionally, even they have the need to wander away.

We should trust our own need… and use it not to brood, but to plot.

Sometimes the wandering away requires a burst of courage. Sometimes we just follow the path in front of our hearts.

Peace is such a curious thing. We need to figure out how we’re best able to participate in it, and then get on with it! Sometimes it requires close work with like-hearted folks. Sometimes Peace becomes a solitary endeavor. Maybe for all of us, it’s always both… but it’s always Peace!

Bacon Peace

When I thought about the challenges of writing this year, it was more about the challenge of finding the right words — i hadn’t really thought about the challenge of the pics themselves.

I am a meat eater and a fan of bacon. I find it a lovely, lovely thing. And I know that a lot of people who follow me are not meat eaters and so they look at this pic and say “really?” And I understand that. If we’re going to eat meat at all, we eat too much of it and many of us eat it without regard to its raising. That’s a problem.

And a pic like this doesn’t allow wiggle room. I’m a pretty good wiggler.

And yet, here we are — Bacon. a whole grill full of it! A chef is getting ready for a day at work.

And so we make our Peace with the joy and the discomfort. Thanks for the challenge, Heather! Every day, Peace.

Dormant Dreams of Peace

We rise and fall with the seasons… but when we’re focused and involved, even during the off seasons, our project is only dormant, not dead. It’s important to give fields and dreams a time to lie fallow, and so necessary to put them back to work. Fields of dreams — it’s important that we have them.

And/but… it’s so easy to let go. Our dreams have seasons, but unless we truly renounce them, we need not to just let them molder. It’s a choice… to believe we’re worthy of our Peace dreams and they are worthy of our investment.

Pete, my friend who took today’s photo, sends me provocative choices as she decides what fields to send. And so does everyone in the group. 5 weeks into the project, there have been one or two curves each week. It’s a lovely challenge; I feel so privileged. Who gets to do this? lucky, lucky me!

The Peace of Winter Beauty

This process I’m engaged in, the daily writing and this year the daily reacting to images, is fascinating. I’ve had people say I don’t know how you decide what to write every day.

Some days I make a conscious decision. But often the picture really does say what about this… or the person taking the picture suggests it.

But I was surprised by my reaction to the icicles. I love icicles. as a child i loved those winters when there were lots and you would knock one down and suck on it like a lollipop. (yeah, can you say asbestos shingles, anyone?)

But there i was, looking at them, and then i thought about its being my anniversary today and then Rumi’s poem was in my head and i was writing the poem. Icicles and marriage. Icicles and peace…

It’s a good question to ask myself, do I dare to Peace in my Love? When I say it’s so important in other parts of life? Do any of us dare?

I find it especially poignant when I look at a world that is in such desperate need of Peace and Love. So can I start at home? Do I?

Peace. Icicles. Yep. “Stand together, but not too near together.”

Slow Food Is Sweet Peace

You need to understand from the start, that I am an admirer of slow food not a preparer of it! Although cooking more is on my agenda this year, I’m starting with cooking breakfast or soup in the crockpot. Let’s not rush into things! Nonetheless, soup is good food. Both the making of it and the eating it brings me Peace. Oh, and health. let’s not forget health.

I am neither a patient nor a precise person. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have friends who are! And whether I’m dining with them or simply delighting in their stories of good food made the old fashioned way, it makes me happy!

Some people will say they cook this way because they can’t afford to eat out, but that misses the point of cooking that way because they love cooking and eating what they cook. Whereas cooking for me is a white-knuckle affair, for them it’s an exhale into life.

I resent the time it takes; they revel. I have a friend who as her mom was dying, when her sister relieved her for a bit, came home took a shower, and then baked. A cake and cookies. It soothed her and gave her strength the way that writing does me. Familiar rituals bring order to our lives and good things to our families. Her sisters ate cookies and comfort as they gathered throughout the week. It was a bit of family/familiar comfort as their mom slowly departed her life.

That reveling is Peace. That healing is Peace. I can appreciate it without participating.It’s exactly like Peace-making. We all contribute differently. But we all benefit from the fruits of such labor — even if only visually.

Keep rolling that pasta, George! Pasta and Peace. I think it could be a thing.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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