Winter Peace — At Last

It started, at long last, with ice on the river. Finally. Winter was showing up. Put on all those warm clothes; it’s mitten season! Hurrah!

And then, last night, snow. Beautiful, beautiful snow.

What I love about snow, more than anything is the quiet. The world stills. it’s wonderful.

Shhhhh. It’s snowing. The Peace of a silenced world.

Yes. I know I am privileged to have warm shelter and adequate food. We’re not frightened by threats of heavy winds and blackouts in the cold. My feet are steady and so far there’s no ice. My prayers are that people be safe…

But here where I live, it is quiet.

I was a bit grumpy when, snuggled in my bed, I heard the snow blower. They’re so loud!

But then I looked out the window and he was cleaning my walks. Um hard to complain too much… Now all I have to do is keep up with the sweeping.

And the muffling snow continues… Naps! Books! Cooking! Shoveling! Delight! and oh, right… finish that sermon!

My wish for you is that there is beauty in the Winter that surrounds you. And that you are safe and warm. May you find Delight. May you find Peace.

Snow! Snow! Snow! Snow! Snow!

(yayayayayayayay!)

Peace of Farming

I live in rural PA. And yet, by and large, I know nothing about farming. I’m a city girl.

Having Dagny, a large animal vet, take pictures this year was a deliberate attempt to move closer to the land and culture I inhabit. Looking at this cute faced little guy, I have to find out about hutches for calves and illnesses calves are prey to and how that’s best avoided.

I both eat meat and dairy. I work to be deliberate and conscious about that. I know others make different choices. It helps when Dag tells me which farms to buy from because they take the best care of their animals.

Wise folk say know the people who farm our food. I like that. I also like knowing the vet who cares for the animals. And I love the pics she sends me.

I love the call to consciousness. What we do has impact. How we live makes a difference. We must make Peace where we live.

The Peace of Being Who You Are

The eagle in this picture is so glorious in his existence.

Animals are who they are. That’s all they know how to be. That’s all they know who to be. And they know it’s enough. So they sit and preen in the sunlight. Not for us. Just because it feels wonderful.

Too many of us spend too much of our lives trying to be someone we’re not. Eagles don’t have that complication. Find food. Eat. Share with your mate and your children. Nest. Protect your mate. Sit on a branch in the sunshine.

Our lives may be more complicated than that, but they’re often not as complicated as we make them.

Sometimes, it’s just about being beautiful and allowing others to enjoy… Sometimes we might turn our head in a different direction to find our Peace. Because the world needs our beauty as much as it needs our brains. It needs our Love as much as our strategy.

Peace. What if we could make it simpler?

Looking through the Windows of Peace

The photo is so beautiful. Here we are there it is. Do we move through to the bounty? Or live where we are. The wheat is young, just now making its presence known… but it is growth and a reminder of what to come.

Here we are on the other side, the side of the dormant vines.

It’s so easy to see them as dead — but it’s Winter, they’re sleeping. They’re readying themselves for the next big show. It’s not easy work. It’s so easy to assume they’re lying around doing nothing; that only the green stuff works.

Because of this, we often don’t give ourselves enough rest and enough time for preparation. We don’t honor the cycle. Or is it that we think it doesn’t apply to us?

Peace is on both sides of the window. The winter wheat has been engineered. Sometimes it helps to remember that, even as we bask in its beauty.

Peace. And thank goodness for windows and the reminders they bring of where we are and what lies ahead.

Peace in the Dead of Winter.

It’s been cold, cold, cold… There’s something pretty wonderful about that.

I have the clothes. I make sure I’ve got lotion on my face and hands. And off you go, invigorated.

Shockingly, here we are at the 19th of January, what meteorologists call the Dead of Winter and this is only the second time we’ve had bitter cold. The light is slowly changing, by the end of the month we’ll have almost enough light to wake a ground hog!

Yes I know it’s cold. This is what winter’s about. Pests and Germs are dying as we complain about the cold… But heat up yesterday’s soup and admire the beauty!

The cold, clear Peace of the Dead of Winter be with you.

Soup and Peace

There are days when only soup will do the job. For whatever reason you’re feeling less than your best self, a bowl of soup can help to make your world right again.

Especially on a frigid day like this, it’s a great thing to set a pot of soup simmering on your stove. Your house fills up with steamy goodness; the scent alone says you’re taking care of yourself… You empty the refrigerator and make something wonderful.

It’s good for so many reasons, not the least of which is it uses up the things in your cupboard and fills you up without demanding a lot of the Earth. My friend makes soup for his mom as she ages, because chewing is harder. She gets to have favorite flavors and the comfort of a family recipe. Soup nourishes and nurtures.

I don’t make enough soup. Partially that’s because i live alone and still haven’t learned to make soup for one person with only a little left over. Oh, put it in your freezer, people say. Really? I’ll never eat a gallon of soup. Still you find ways. You also find the places that keep soup in your life. Happily there are a couple restaurants now that focus on soup.

Sometimes, when there are things going on in people’s lives or your own, there is nothing sweeter than sitting down and sharing a bowl of warmth. Whether, spicy, hearty, delicate, it comforts and sustains.

Sometimes Peace really is that simple. Soup doesn’t answer all the questions in life, but it can give you a pause from the madness. Sweet comfort alone or shared. There can be Peace in that, if we’ll allow it!

Puddles of Peace on a Sabbath Morning

I’ve always loved these cloud configurations. When I was a child, they tried to convince me (and by they, I don’t mean my parents!), that a stern God kept watch on me from glorious clouds. It was sort of frightening.

But give me a few years, working on Peace, and I’m now able to see the Peace and the Possibility being poured out.

Today, on the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., with our world in a shambles, it’s a good day to consider whether we really want things to be different.

What world do you want to have? On whose behalf will you work — even sacrifice?

It’s a thought to mull over on a Sabbath isn’t it? Peace? What’s it worth to us? and Justice… for all. Let us Peace.

Peace Symbols — Resting in Peace

Many of us where symbols of our tradition on our persons. When we die they adorn our graves. In the past our graves have been kept separately… Religion from religion and sometime sect from sect.

In the town my brother in law grew up, The Catholics and the Protestants are on one side of the road. The Methodists and the Lutherans have driving paths between them…

Too often our symbols pronounce you’re not like me — which in some ways means you’re not of my heart, my flesh. But you are. Huh… so, Ann are you beginning to develop a theology about cemeteries? Are you beginning to think that we should lay down together, jumbled together in eternity as we are in life?

I know that that’s an anathema to some traditions. And I’m simply feeling my way forward — and really I care more how we jumble up in life. How i sit with you and know you as my friend? That is the work of life, isn’t it? and then together to be friends to the rest of the world and to Mother Earth?

May our symbols remind our hearts of the work we are called to do or even if we will the way we were called to live. May we live in Peace. and when it is all over, may we die into the Peace of our Mother Earth…

Oh, and the fairy crosses? found in Georgia and Virginia. Not surprisingly, they have legends surrounding them.

Five-Finger Fallout

Dear Bartender and Priestess,

My Uncle and I went to a pub the other night and had a great time. The beer and the food were great. We laughed a lot. I spent the night thinking, “yep, that’s my uncle.” Continue reading →

When the Peaceful Are Endangered

Odd, ungainly, gentle, gigantic, otherworldly, the manatees are known to be over 45 million years old. For 15 million years they have lingered in the waters of Florida.

Now, due to fishing entanglement, loss of habitat and boat collisions, they are endangered. They’re one more species being harried into extinction by our heedless living.

Another wonder of the world whose future rests in our hands.

May our hands be loving and kind. May we choose to be part of something bigger and ore ancient than we are and protect them. May we be Peace in their world and thus in our own.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Posts