Sadly Seeking Peace, llvl

It always seems unthinkable when a child dies. All that promise suddenly disappearing from life. The laughter, the scents, the quirky mind, the strengths and the foibles — all gone in an instant.

A million whys, a thousand: well how did it happens can’t change the sad reality — can’t help us escape which is really what we’re wanting.

I’ve been thinking about child death a lot recently: the news reeks with it. I’m too familiar with this — too many dead children in my life. Too many dead children in the world that has become immured to the sight and forgotten the individual horror in these mass killings…

And then a chance encounter in the back yard with my senior high neighbor whose friend had just died with that agonizing burden of a friend, recently seen, now gone. Asking the hows and the whys but really, just wanting his friend back.

As a minister, I need to call those in my community whose hearts are breaking, the parents, the kids — oh the kids. Making dates to enfold and love. Standing steady for those who have collapsed in grief… Thinking gratefully that I have been so filled up from this summer that I can stand firmly in love for them. This is their tragedy not mine…

But inside, as a sister, oh, I missed my sister as I recall receiving my father’s call about my nephew and making the call about my niece. Sweet and Holy One, can I really have had to tell my sister and her husband their only remaining child was dead? And we were the ones who always called each other when bad news broke.

Please, my dears, say nothing other than oh, I’m so sorry, Oh, your poor hearts, O your blessed child. Release the I don’t know how you bear its because they have no choice… They don’t know how they bear it either. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Call your family together, gather with your neighbors, immerse yourselves in Love, because Life is so damned precious and so damned fleeting. Peace eludes us in these moments. Hope is too far away. Only Love can keep our hearts beating in one common humanity of grief and eventually acceptance and then the far off healing of a grievous scar. Let us tend to one another and let us weep… Each child in each vida local, precious and needed. Each parent’s loving heart…

Peace Is Not the Color of Blood, llvl

Yesterday in this blog, I wrote, in dying color, thinking back to an old ad for some film process… and it pierced my heart.

I allowed myself to go on retreat. We all need that. Whatever we do. As a person of faith and action, I’ve needed some time to fill up, to be at rest, to be in prayer. It was amazing. But, when we’re done, we come home, back to the world.

Coming back to this world right now has been shocking. Someone said there are 47 different wars going on right now. I don’t know if that counts Fergeson, MO. The level of violence is gruesome and grisley and overwhelming.

I’m not sure what the best response for me is at the moment. But I’m thinking. I’m reading. I’m praying (hard). I’m talking with my counselors… I’m searching, in what I hope is not just a Pollyanna way for Hope… looking for ways that I might contribute to Peace in whatever fashion I may. One fashion will be feeding children, that’s for sure.

But I’m also mourning. And at the same time, my courage and conscience are firming. All children are our children. I believe there is another way or rather other ways. I know so many who are finding small ways forward. I hope we all are. Forward into Peace.

Fracturings of Peace, llvl

So. I made a zombie reference and used an adjective as a noun in order to make a really bad pun. Quelle horreur. Can I use my lack of sleep, jet lag and incomprehensible overlooking my need for caffeine? nah, probably not. As my buddy, Lenore, says, it is what it is.

There is so much that is terrible in the world. It may not be any more than is often terrible in this world and simply that we now live in a facebook reality where everything is not only heard but seen, in dying color.

I’m unable to shake clear to sort the laundry and people are being slaughtered — in my country and in others. Oppressed, in my country and in others. Derided…

And there are pieces of Peace to be tenderly put back together. Some days, we can’t do more than know that… and realize that the tomorrows are for getting back to work.

Hazy Peace, llvl

Wow… woke up in my bed, in my home, in my hometown. Well, my body did. My brain is still in transit… Jet lag… the wonderful gift that gives reality a chance to settle in.

I am so grateful for the journey that leads away from and eventually back to home. Grateful for the perspective on the life you have and a life you had part in…

This morning my foggy brain can’t quite focus, but can’t get over the joy of seeing/touching my life here… even while my heart aches for the missing of those friendships. I’ve stood at that airport too many time gasping at the shock of saying goodbye.

But nothing like 7 hours of limbo in an airport to focus your longing for home!

I’ll make sense tomorrow… Today, I am just grateful for the richness of my life and a little bit sad for the missing of people I love… This intercontinental travel thing… it’s clear we haven’t perfected the beaming ourselves to wherever we want to go… our hearts take longer to re-assimilate than our bodies do… never mind our minds!

Living la vida local, the privilege and the longing. Loving the Peace of there and using that Love and that Peace to fuel the Peace of here… as the time lag allows!

Heartbreaking Peace, llvl

For 45 years, I’ve traveled to Sweden. And for 44 years, I’ve had to open my hands and let go at the airport. Often it was because I was leaving. Sometimes it was because people had come to visit and they were leaving me. I know when I left 44 years ago, I had never cried so hard in all my life. For months.

Maybe I knew even then that that particular dream, however lovely, wasn’t mine.

But mostly it’s because Love is such a sticky thing, it binds you. And deep and true friendship doesn’t happen every day…

A young woman asked me the other day, “don’t you miss Sweden when you leave? Don’t you miss Lorraine?” Oh, I do, I replied, but I love my home, my friends, my work, my family. My life is unbelievably sweet…

And yet… one of the sweetest parts of my heart lives across the ocean from me. I see these beloved friends far more often than most people see old friends, because it’s a priority for me… I need those doses of both love and difference.

But oh, the airport. A place of joy, because journey’s are exciting. And a place of deep sadness as you open your heart and hands and let go the Peace and Love that live here…

I have a whole flight to anticipate the Peace and Love at home and gradually allow this Peace to enrich the memories I already carry in my heart. Farväll…vi ses…

Homebody Peace, llvl

I always say I love to travel. And I do… after a fashion. I’m more adventurous with someone I love… but otherwise, I’ve realized that I travel to places I feel at home.

There are some places I’d love to see, but I keep thinking… oh, I could use that time and money to see people I love.

I think I like traveling to places where I know where the teacups are kept and I don’t have to say “Mother, may I?” to put the kettle on…

Sometimes it’s hard to settle all these lovely pictures of home into their puzzle but for me it’s worth the struggle. These places add to who I am, they inform me and my world view and they let me loll about in Love, sweet Love…

I’ve needed Sweden and my sense of home here in Kristinehamn after Deb’s death. In particular, Lorraine is home to me… she’s known me so long, so consistently. I hadn’t cried with her since my mom died, since Deb died. In her presence it was safe to look at how big the loss has been because in her presence my heart is filled.

Home, where who I am makes a difference… because Home is the easiest place to make a difference.

Thanks, my Swedish Friends, for the cups of tea and chats about things that matter and things that amuse. Hello, my Central PA friends, I’m coming home. Home to where we care about what happens to kids with no weekend foods. Home where we can imagine being the Valley with No Hungry Children. Home to where the blues and Jazz run Susquehanna cool and refreshing. Home where my love lives. Home where my friendships are also deep and true… Home where I know where lots of you keep your teacups…

Peace at the Grave, llvl

My Swedish sisters like to tell the stories about Deb’s funeral, which they attended, and John Johnson’s funeral, about which they’ve only heard (and gaped in astonishment!). No one dances in the aisles or blows ashes up in watermelons in Sweden… it’s a shame, really. Because lives are pretty wonderful things and should be celebrated.

But they get the courtesies right. They bring a flower to the funeral and take it forward to place it on the coffin and say thank you and goodbye to their dear friend.

And when people are dead, they visit the graves.

All my Swedish Moms are dead now. I’ve had three who really took me under their arm and one who was always generous and welcoming. Each time I arrived in a town where one of those mothers was buried, there was always an excursion to visit the grave. This is the first time I’d ever been able to visit any of these graves, except for Lorraine’s Mom…

But off we went. And it felt wonderful to be able to say Goodbye and Thank you and tenderly touch the flowers placed on the grave.

Death. It’s just one part of the journey. But the grief of losing gives way to the joy of having had, and then it’s important to tell the stories and dance and laugh. Because just like Love, and Laughter and Peace, Death is… Life is not as sweet without it.

Peace’s Slow Goodbye, llvl

Goodbye. Such a hard word. Such a hard thing.

And at the end of such a long and luxurious trip, you’re tempted to sneak off, to end it before the end — as if that wouldn’t hurt as well, as if it’s a good thing to mask your feelings.

I’ve always felt the pull of the quick exit, although I’m pretty good at not actually giving into that seductive pull.

Life is short. Pleasures are fleeting. And to give up any piece of it is to cheat yourself and to cheat life. You can’t count your blessings if you just blow by them!

So, off we go to Gothenburg, and three fun-filled days with dear dear friends… My job is to be present to every last drop of sweetness… Every last moment of Peace. Because this particular Peace will have to last me a good long while… I want to cram in every bit… Because as soon as we get home, there’s the Peace of home that will want attention. Peace be with us all…

Pretty Peaceful Swimming, llvl

Nope, we’re going in. Lorraine’s Law. And friends go along if doesn’t mean jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Even at 62, there you go along. It’ll be a while before I have the chance again.

um, whee? Clambering across algae covered boulders and stones, please, no slip-sliding awy… trying to get out to where you’re at least knee deep, so you can turn around, squat until you’re immersed and push off. oh, ok, whee! indeed, whEE!

It’s not as if it’s ever a real hardship to swim and giggle in the water, and by now I’m almost adept at the whole changing under the towel thing… this was NOT a day to push the “I’ll just sit here in my wet bathing suit and dry off thing”… brrrrrrrrr. barely 60 degrees, but we did it! And then there was ficka: tea or coffee, your choice and for each of us, a baked good of choice. I ALWAYS choose cinnamon roll, unless of course there’s something with almond paste… (no almond paste today, they’re moldy… bah!)

But it was a rewarding, wonderful moment of Peace, sitting under the Picasso sculpture on the shores of the lake… goodbye, lovely lake. goodbye, lovely swim. goodbye, lovely i’ll do it if you do it Peace… goodbye, lovely sacred prayer of Life…

It’s summer and we were swimming and that’s the way it is.

Lasting Peace, llvl

I do tend to wax eloquent about Sweden. It’s beautiful. And when you’re visiting, it’s easy to see what works and not what doesn’t. There’s loads to write about what doesn’t… And I will eventually, when I get home and I’m doing more than just hanging out in the beauty.

But oh, the Beauty. And as I’ve said, it’s not just the beauty but the fact that people take time to enjoy it. So here’s this beautiful little chapel with all sorts of odd instruments and old church altar implements turned museums. So many of the churches here have lots more people visiting the beautiful antiquities than they do people worshiping.

Being happy in your friends’ company also tends to make the lens softer. So there we were, riding out to visit some of their past, some of which i share, on a day when the sun was dancing in and out of the clouds. We’d have a quick shower and then it would pour in the shining sun, and then it was just a simple breezy sunlit day again. Summer in Sweden. The hay fields were newly mown and there were these huge round bales waiting to be wrapped in plastic for the winter. It’s damp here, so the trees are green and gardens are fertile. The houses are dark red or gold with sparkling windows trimmed in white.

Really, it’s sort of storybookish. And that’s ok with me. It’s a Peace that claims the land and then fills us. Any different than the Peace we’re flooded with when you drive to Penn State along those farm-filled Valleys? Not at all. It’s simply a different landscape. This one has claimed a piece of my heart. And isn’t that grand. The Peace will be here long after I leave, this time and forever.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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