Sweet Sexy Spring Peace

Yes it snowed. It’s March. It’ll snow in April too. it’s cold and chilly. But remember: Spring’s about the light!

All the the things the Pink Moon promises are happening. The earth is thawing, trees are changing colors if not bursting into leaf, the birds are singing, singing, singing.

And the flowers don’t care about this silly snow. they’re still heeding the siren song of the Sun.

Weather is what it is. I believe it’s time to work on the environment. There are awful, human caused changes happening. But somethings are what they are. The average temperature in March where I live is 39˚. having a skiff of snow on the ground — pretty darned normal.

And come April, says the woman who keeps asking us to live in the present, I’m going to hope for cool weather, because when it stays cool the violets continue to rampage! But even then the average temp is only 50˚… for the month…

But while we’re complaining and shivering, the birds and bees are going right along with what they need to do.

And that’s a wonderful thing. Let’s make Peace with what is, shall we? Spring is a slow unfolding. And it’s absolutely beautiful.

Hush for Pink Moon Peace!

Can you hear the birds? Oh, that’s the sound of a changed season.

And if you sit really quietly, I think you can hear the earth creak into Spring.

It’s exactly that being present to signs of Hope and the willingness to be part of the Possibilities that makes Peace something that can happen.

It takes us all. It’s not enough if i listen or you do. It’s not enough if you sing or I do. We have to do this together. Let’s sing Peace into existence along with the natural world!

Fanciful? yes. Possible? who knows?

Peace. Spring. Ideas whose time has come.

Pink Moon Peace Harmony

We’re in the budding of the year and the budding of the Moon.

It’s a wonderful time to consider how you’ll make your voice heard in Peace.

What do you have to contribute and how does that blend with what others are contributing? Peace is after all a joint effort of finding our strengths and finding the balance.

it’s tentative and beginnings are, i’m sure, cacophonous. But as we tune our voices, find where they’re most true, a fuller Peace begins to emerge — a Peace that uses the best of us.

Peace requires the best of us. So we should practice.

The Light of Pink Moon Peace

The flowers are what have named the Pink Moon. But it’s the changing light that calls those flowers into their resurgence.

That magical changing, day by day, of the Earth. Here comes the Sun!

I find I grow indignant on the Earth’s behalf that people are disdainful of the sweet miracle. It’s not warm enough, they complain.

Why yes, it is exactly warm enough. March in Pennsylvania is still quite chilly. But that doesn’t stop the flowers’ creeping out of the ground or the buds’ considering whether they’re ready to begin the cycle again.

Pay attention! This beauty is so fleeting. This is the Moon named for the flowers. And these delicate beauties flourish and linger in the cool… Don’t wish them away.

Come to think of it, there is no day in this life that we can afford to wish away. These are the days we have. Let’s enjoy them to the fullest. Peace is right where we are. Peace is when we are as well. Let us be present to each and every moment of Peace.

Peace of Work Well Done

Ha! I just realized that rather than saying, as that ridiculous ruling does, that institutions are people too, that I wrote a musing saying that people are institutions!

But people change lives in the process of going about their daily work. Someone who serves your coffee with a smile changes your day.

So can we talk about why we can’t raise that minimum wage?

I love that this woman brightened mornings for so long, but did she want to — or did she have to because you don’t build up a great retirement on $2 an hour. Tips in central PA are probably not lavish for breakfast.

I know. Can’t I just clap for this woman’s wonderful service? She did such hard work for such a long time.

You know, once you start working on the web, it’s sometimes hard to pull things out.

I love that people do wonderful jobs. I’d just like if they’d be well and truly compensated for it. I’d like if our elders got some options. and if the people who make our lives sweeter got some acknowledgement in both cash and compliments. I’d like it if it weren’t often women in these situations…

And… all of that doesn’t change that she changed the world for many of us, who went in to get our breakfast served with a smile…

Floating Harbingers of Pink Moon Peace

It must be the change in light that nudges the birds into wakefulness… or maybe it’s the absence of a certain kind of food that alerts them. Pssst. get going. Time to be on the move.

Whatever it is, it causes great swathes of them to rise up and return to their summer homes far up North. I believe that I’ve heard, but could find no corroboration this morning, that these gulls are headed to the Great Lakes. The swans and the snow geese have their own destinations.

But yesterday, they’d reached a cornfield along their journey where they could roost and rest and a stretch of the river where they could calmly, time and again, rise and fall and simply float down the stream.

I promised myself, watching, that this summer when the water and the air warms, that I would do the human version of this. I would gather my friends together and we would put our innertubes in the water and float merrily down the stream. The gulls remind me of the importance of quiet communion on the water. Fun and Friendship.

Thanks, river gulls for this glimpse of Peace. The Pink Moon brings so many wonders… Do you think the gulls whisper of the sweet memories made on Sundays on the Susquehana? Delight ahead! Let us all remember!

Needed: Pink Moon Sabbath Peace

The world needs a Peace that’s pregnant with possibilities. It needs a Peace that holds that Life is sacred and stops for a moment just to be present to it.

This weekend, which is the weekend of the first Sabbaths in the Pink Moon is just such a weekend to contemplate that Peace. Spring is, snow notwithstanding, burgeoning. This is a moment in time where everything seems possible.

Maybe we need to take a pause, relax and refresh ourselves… and as the song says: start all over again.

Right now, we’re watching one jihadist who grew from a basketball-loving kid — but there are thousands of them. The fault is not just in them, it is in a world that fosters that need for structured hate.

In moments when I feel most hopeless when I see what’s going on “over there,” I have to remember that some of that started here. I can’t do much about over there. I can do something, no matter how small about over here. Because today it’s Minneapolis, tomorrow it could be the Susquehanna Valley. Despair has made itself at home in a lot of people. And lest we point fingers at one religious group, let us remember our white supremacy groups of which my home state has so many. It’s the same hate, it just dresses differently.

We then, are the answer, the antidote, we and the inspiration of this beautiful spreading Spring and a new Moon of Possibilities. Let us pray… and then let us get to work!

Pink Peace Lunacy

We hear and we hear and we hear about things that are wrong with this world. And there are many things. Isn’t it time that we begin to create the things that are right with this world? Isn’t it time we be what is right with this world?

I’m still grappling with this notion of sacred honor… trying to understand what it means to me… thinking that perhaps it needs to mean something so that things change. I believe that we’re the change. And that people in parts of the world where change is much harder than here need to know that we believe that they’re the change.

Although it’s certainly easier for me to consider what the change might be here far away from some of the awful violence people are experiencing.

But if Spring can turn a white world into pink beauty, if the Moon can go from nothing to bursting, if we can begin again, then Lunacy is not impossible — and neither is Peace. Let us be Lunatics of Love and Hope and Peace. Let’s start now!

First Addition to the Village: Daycare

One of the first challenges in taking custody of a 4-year-old was in finding daycare. Lots of folks were quick to offer up recommendations – church and other private daycare programs that seemed ideal on the surface but that had stringent behavioral criteria for the children they cared for. Rules like “no biting”, “no bad language”, “no hitting” were amongst the offenses that could result in being asked to leave the program. While I might have previously agreed that these offenses in a preschooler were suspension worthy, now that I had my own child who came preprogrammed with these as his default settings, I couldn’t take the gamble that he wouldn’t express his true colors all day long.

So then who in the community do we turn to that will provide daycare to our less than perfect young ones? It didn’t seem that it was going to be the places that took care of our neighbor’s or colleague’s kids! Luckily, we found out that there are some AMAZING caregivers in publically funded Child Development Centers and Headstart programs providing nurturance, guidance, positive behavioral support and care to kids! I also don’t think that I could have found a more saavy and seasoned behavior manager who also managed to love our son at his most unlovable moments than I found in our beloved “Miss Danielle”. We talked a lot with Miss Danielle over the year – trying to figure out what set off tantrums, how to soothe anger, how to build friendships, what rewards motivated good behavior – and when it was time to graduate from preschool, Miss Danielle had tears in her eyes as she presented our son with a signed book about a Little Engine that Could.

Sometimes members of our village aren’t where we expect them to be. Miss Danielle was not in the cushy private daycare that caters to the kids of professionals and receives fabulous ratings on all measures. But boy were our preschool days better because of her presence with us! Where are you looking for your village? Who do you really want in your community? Are you stuck because the box in which you search is too limiting? Perhaps it’s time to expand or abandon your box. Who knows, maybe your “Miss Danielle” is just on the outside of yours too…

Pink Moon Spring Peace

Or should that be Pink Moon Peace Springs? Whatever, it’s all here! The Pink Moon! Spring! In our area, it came in cloaked in lovely white snow. The Peace part is up to us.

It’s a wild and wonderful time as the weather dances back and forth. But we all know what direction it’s going! The phlox is going to win this. It’s her turn.

Peace? Is Peace going to carpet the world like the wild phlox?

Well, that Possibility is sort of up to us, isn’t it?

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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