Peace of Having Gotten Somewhere

When asked how his music is different now, after all years of playing; he said he could now add to his notes all the color of emotion and expression.

What lovely insight. You do your work, you practice the scales and the pieces. You put discipline into your craft and gradually or maybe suddenly you realize that you and the music (or insert your art here) are playmates, free to explore and to be explored. Free to enjoy. Free to be enjoyed.

She talked more about the instrument and the way she’s gradually made this flute her flute. A new flute, different, bolder, more capable than any tool she’s ever played. She gets to bring her color to this new tool as well as to the music… and the music pours from her gift.

Do your work. Over and over again. Climb the steps and then swish down the sliding board — And then climb the steps again.

Their joy in playing was palpable. We can have that joy in our lives if we just do the work. And while that’s not a simple thing, it is an every day thing.

What joy these two brought their audience of friends who have listened for years. What joy they will bring those who listen for the first time. What joy they have in what they do. At this changing point in their career as musicians, what bigger Peace could they ask than to keep on doing what they love. What sweeter Peace can they offer? It’s a new Moon in their lives as well as for us. May it be filled with beauty.

Not So Perfect A Peace

And we’ll take it.

The perfection of something is the perspective we bring to it.

Yesterday was a day with a lot of wonderful facets. The weather, the scenery, the friends, the family. And if I’m counting, my religious community. I like us. A lot. It was all that a sabbath can be. I even got to read.

So the day was just grand. And it carried the sweet emotional residue of the day before.

The day was made more precious by the reminder of what had been lost in Selena’s life.

So, when we see sweetness, we have to notice it, and then embrace it. And then sit down with a piece of apple pie and a glass of cider to celebrate.

Peace is where we find it. And when we see it, then we can begin to help others find the Peace that allows them to breathe in the sweetness…

Peace on the Cusp

Today the Old Moon ends and the New Moon rises. Bye and large the harvest is finished. In Canada, tomorrow will be thanksgiving, which is much more in sync with the actual harvest.

Here in Pennsylvania, the leaves are taking their own sweet time to make decisions about changing. There are just the slightest hints of color starting. However, I just looked at the thermometer and for the first time i saw that the temps had dipped into the 30s.

No, Ann, really, time to dismantle the porch that gets no light (and by light I mean warmth) this year.

But I stood outside a barn yesterday (it was a wedding, relax, I wasn’t being rugged!) and looked down across the empty field toward the river. The late afternoon light was all Autumn, and everything was golden in the light. The air was clean.

The world had moved on even though many of us still clung to last season’s warmth. The Beauty on the cusp of changing Moon and changing season was lavish. Open your hands and hearts and let go. And what the heck, take the Sabbath to revel in it, why don’t you?

Notice the Beauty, my friends. We can’t move on to Peace, if we’re holding on to the joys and privileges of last season.

Peace at the Edges

and in the middle… It’s where we look for it… or it’s where we look that we must place it. or where we live that we must make it… Peace can be made everywhere.

It’s really up to us.

But it’s urgent, I believe that. Needed by people and by planet.

Peace.

My heart is with our daughter and granddaughter as they let go of a man they loved. Ed Lund, we are grateful for your life and our presence in it. Today, your East Coast Family will sit by a fire and remember both that we loved you and that we love one another.

Fraught Family Visits

Dear Bartender and Priestess:

My husband’s sister and brother-in-law stay at our house occasionally for overnights, in order to visit my mother-in-law. How can I best put this? They are annoying house guests. Continue reading →

Peace Out of Time

It was just a sweet little caress in the grand scheme of things. But there it was, a beautiful little violet in grass that has not yet browned up for the winter.

All around it, the cooler weather is causing the trees to begin to burnish. There’s not been a freeze yet, but we’re all anticipating. All my gardener friends are busy putting their gardens to bed.

But in the meantime, one bold, and yes, foolhardy, violet is dancing in the grass.

“Look at ME!” she cries. And we do. Silly, we think, don’t you know you’ll be gone, soon.

And yet we look. and admire.

There is perhaps something to foolhardy declarations of Beauty and Possibility. After all Peace is not going to be won by our doing the same old thing. That as we have been told so many times, simply leads to insanity.

So Peace. Peace of the beautiful what is. and Peace of the wild, outrageous Violet. Peace. We’ll take whatever leads us in that direction!

New World New Peace

It’s one of those stupid things I’ll never understand. How is it that people decide that the most important thing in their religion is determining when the world will end.

In Christianity, it demands blowing right past the central tenets of the Jesus message to concentrate instead on the end times. I can be as perplexed as I want. I don’t think enlightenment on this topic is coming.

But a reboot? I’ll take that. We’re a tech savvy world, right. What if World 827.3 included the violence fix? The ignorance fix? The hatred fix?

What if we acted as if making this world better were possible?

I just finished reading two books on racism and white privilege with my church. What if we were to do something that began, even began, to make a difference.

If we began today, it would mean we embraced a new world — a world made new — by hope, by love, by justice, by Peace — by us. What do you think? Peace, anyone?

Shaping Peace

As I read stories about people dropping stones onto cars below, I wonder what’s happening in the macro sense. I feel like my grandmother, bewildered by a nasty, changing world, maybe it’s not different. Maybe I’m just seeing things more clearly. But it feels different.

And yet I remember my father taking boy scouts hiking. A rock was kicked off a path, and fell onto the top of a car driving below. I don’t believe it was aimed for the car. I know they were lucky it landed on the roof and I know they rushed down to make amends and to offer (I don’t remember what happened, i was very young) to pay for the damages.

Accidents happen, especially when people are horsing around. But no one around here doesn’t know the dangers of such things because we’ve known what happened to Sharon Budd when a rock landed on her head. Four boys dropped a big rock onto the Budd’s car. It struck Sharon in her head. Over a year later, she struggles with pain and memory and operation after operation. She will always struggle; her life has been altered. The boys (young men?) are going to jail.

What tempts them?

Is it naive to think we’re not connected enough? That we’re not seen enough? I know, there are always kids who weren’t, but are there too many? Families are not gathered, few belong to churches. Few are scouting, few are connected.

And if we’re not connected, the world is happening to us, we’re not happening to the world. We’re not creating Peace.

Guns. Rocks. No Peace. What do we do? It’s on us… I wish I had a clue about where to begin.

Peace, Not Guns

How have we become so fearful?

How can it be that more pre-schoolers are killed by guns in a year than police in line of duty. One is an inherently dangerous job. One should be dangerous only because we fall reaching for our goals.

This is America. This is our legacy.

We’re doing things that make this so and we don’t seem so very interested in stopping it.

And I confess, I don’t know what to do but keep talking about it. What to do but keep asking for hearts to change. You cannot convince me that an assault weapon is good for anything other than killing a lot of people.

You don’t eat deer or any other animal peppered by a lot of shot. They’re ghastly instruments of war that you can buy so so easily. I live in PA, in a rural county where many people eat because they hunt. No one’s asking that to go away. But these people pride themselves on a clean kill and good marks(wo)menship. My sister in law won the fish and game honoree of the year this year. She’s proud. and good for her! I’m proud of her.

But assault weapons? Weapons of terrorism?

And who gets killed? Children. Women. People of Color. Seeing any correlations here?

We don’t need guns. We need gun laws. We need rational gun owners of rational guns. We need Peace. We need to make Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace.

The Peace of this Moment

We need to pay attention. Oh, we will, we assure ourselves when something happens…

And then life gets back to normal and we slowly become oblivious to the individual little moments that make life astonishing.

But life is fickle, fleeting. I was about to write momentous and then thought about what that meant… moment-ous… each moment.

And if we don’t pay very close attention we miss the moments that make life magic. We don’t make time to capture life with all those we love. We don’t notice the wonder of Mother Earth. or whatever.

We have to treasure what we have… because this moment is all that we know we have. Next year’s musings have been taking shape in my mind as Everyday Peace, watchword noticing…

It feels all the more pointed now when Ed Lund is gone from Selena and Grace’s life. He was an incredible gift. Always so present. He’ll be sorely missed. Ed, we loved you.

Peace be with those who loved him. Peace be with us all.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Posts