Peace Away from Home, llvl

I’m very happy settled into my life here in this beautiful little Valley. Things go up and down, but they keep going. I have good friends here, and now, two more! Hurrah.

But I have lived the life of a nomad and liked it. And after a while, when I’ve spent a long stretch of time at home, I long for the road. A friend says to me, oh, I hate to travel alone. Really? I love it. it wasn’t always true, but it is now. Particularly when I’m traveling to loved ones.

Knowing that I have my feet firmly planted makes it easy for my heart to roam. Knowing that my work, my life and my love are here, that this is where I work for Peace on a daily basis makes it easy to slip away to other places I have known and loved.

And oh, what love and fun awaits in those other places I’ve lived… Because there is home, home and Peace go with me. Peripatetic Peace. What fun.

Hands Across Peace, llvl

We hear lots about the time suck of social media. And, it must be admitted, for a person who’s not particularly fond of cats, I’ve watched an awful lot of “cute kitty videos.”

I try very hard to post positive things and to stay out of the drama. I’m not always successful.

But I love that this tool allows us to reach across space and sometimes time and connect. This month, my brother’s childhood bestie is retiring from 41 years of ministry. Well, this version. He’s starting something else soon. And i get to watch. Watching him helps me remember my parents and his. Creek swimming creeps into my mind. Church Picnics. ah. It’s an odd but effective way of being present, even in a small way. I’ll take it.

Today a new/old friend is moving into my little village. We went to grade school together and then on to different schools and lives, which intersected only occasionally. But one FB friend, added as my high school class began to get connected, connected me. She lived in Oakland, I was going to be there, and there we were, one long lunch later, new friends with history.

I keep faith with a friend from college, with whom I wouldn’t if it had to be telephones and letters, but Faye keeps me thinking and helps keep me constant in a prayerful look at our world. She lives her her faith out differently than I do, and I trust and rely on her observation and counsel. We’re sisters in the struggle and companions on the journey. I’m better for her and for all these friends.

There are times that that zigzag between one world and the next is the odd wonder of cyber-worlds that intersect what passes for our real world in our little vida local. That can, if you choose, be about drama, but it can also be about Peace. So Welcome, Karen, and good job and good luck, Blair. In my sister’s past, when she was in first grade and did well, her teacher offered her the hand of good fellowship. I offer it to you. I take heart and encouragement from the work you do. Blessings, and Blessed be. Peace be upon us all.

Peace: Fantasy and Reality, llvl

The picture Deb took this week has really rocked me. I look at it and see another possibility… another world. It stirs a childhood fantasy to life that there was/is another possibility for life just beyond the cupboard door (or the station wall, or, or, or…)

Now it may be that I live in that fantasy… look at the projects I invest in, Love Flows, Peace… all ridiculous pipe dreams, but are they. They’re pipe dreams we choose to invest in. If we live la vida local and really choose to make a peaceful difference where we live, if we promote Justice, which I talk about all to infrequently, but which is the heart of Peace, then we can start Peace in our little corner of the world and let it spread. And what really, if we decided to make this the Valley with No Hungry Children? What if we just changed our world? We can do that. If each of us takes a neighbor’s hand, life can be different.

And, for me, it’s that fantasy that reminds me. I believe the role of fantasy is not so much to take us away from the real but to remind us what could also be true. I’m particular about what I read… I’m not giving into despair and cynicism. I like my read to be a good one, but I’m not interested in people’s pulling things apart because there are plot malfunctions. I’m longing for the dream. Let us dream dreams. Let us see visions. And then, let’s make this a much sweeter world…

Peace World, llvl

I never think of the sky’s having straight lines. It’s all puffs and spirals. But here’s proof, jagged lines bisecting the sky and the river. Two pieces of a puzzle joined together in living color. The divine bow, the sweet cut. Is it fanciful to believe that Peace fits into our daily life so sweetly? Maybe. Childish to look and see such possibility? Perhaps it’s only child-like.

But when I look at this picture, I see Hope and Encouragement. And I will embrace them wherever I see them.

And I’ll even rejoice to be reminded that I can dream of stepping into the Wardrobe or through the train wall. J. K. Rowling not only taught children to believe, she reminded us to dream.

So dream of Peace and consider stepping into it. Deb Slade, thank you for all you do!

Peace River Puzzle, llvl

When you live in this Valley, the River’s part of every story. And every story, no matter how universal, is local. We have to live where we are, make Peace where we are.

When I think of the Peace River I also think of the song, “Peace (Love, Hope) is flowing like a river, flowing out of you and me, flowing out into the desert, setting all the captives free…”

So, I want always to be near that river. To tenderly hold it when I can contain it, to release it when it is so much bigger than I am. To float on it when I’m able. and to be part of it when it will allow me. Peace River. La Vida Local. A committed Life. Peace.

Halcyon Peace

Once in a while it happens, bountiful, perfect days. When you get them, stop whatever you’re doing and appreciate. Be present to all that’s wonderful. Celebrate even. It doesn’t happen but a few times a season. When they happen it’s time to count your blessings and make some memories.

Life is fleeting and so are summer afternoons at the pool. Heaven on earth… Peace, my friends. This day’s for you!

Filling Up with June Sabbath Peace

It’s a perfect June Day here. Sunny, clear, cool beginnings and endings to the day. ah… Picnic on the horizon… what more could you ask for? Gratitude for all the great dads? Got it…

And then these words by Thomas Merton showed up on my Face Book Feed: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”– “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”

Need I say more? Not really. To give it away, you have to take it in. You have to revel in what is… I get to revel in having had a great dad. Sam was a wonderful man, and I got to spend the last of his life making it more interesting and better, reversing the paradigm!

So make some memories, put your feet up, and put something on the grill. Play a game of something in a noisy group of friends and enjoy. Because the journey goes on from today. But there’s today for Peace right where you are. Enjoy the Sabbath. If you’ve got him, enjoy your dad — and celebrate them all.

Um er… exactly my point trying to encourage (first in myself)

Peace on the Move, llvl

Can never figure if it’s too many metaphors, or simply the confusing reality. Peace is not a stationary thing. And we shift in relation to it — we may be fearful, cautious, aware, joyous, confident, hopeful, isolated… and those shifts bring us closer or farther from our goal, closer or farther from our belief in its possibility/reality.

But in those moments where Peace and we are good neighbors, everything is available to us to keep us moving on the Peace Path…

Sometimes, it’s complicated as hell. Sometimes, it’s pretty damned straightforward. But Peace is all about plenty and abundance, I think. It’s about knowing we have enough to share with one another.

Ah, the sweetness of the sinking down and the rising up. The sweetness of breaking bread with our fellow sojourners… Peace.

Progressive Peace, llvl

Sometimes we have to write the same thing, over and over again, until we hear it.

Peace is a series of very small steps — and not all of them are forward facing. Sometimes you have to slither over to one side or another. But hey… doesn’t that make it dancing?

Along with quite a few others, I’ve been feeling burdened. At our local poetry reading last night, one of us read a poem about headlines, and the headlines of long ago were echoed almost precisely in the poem. That’s years of the electric slide.

But you don’t become a Peacemaker because it’s going to be easy. You dedicate your life to Peace knowing that it will not only be challenging, but also tedious. Tedious, it’s the worth. And not only is it tedious, I dither. (slide to the left, slide to the right.)

But as a mentor reminded me, it’s one foot in front of the other. I love this week’s picture with the open gate. It’s gorgeous here. It’s gorgeous there. But the journey waits. Might as well go now while the conditions are good! Because out there, people are such need of our work. War. Violence. Greed. We need to be a sacred oasis. A moveable feast of Peace. (and there’s my image for tomorrow!)

Here’s today’s poem (typo corrected from what i sent out! gah!)

Shadowed Peace

I grew up here. Although I’ve never handled a gun, they’re not foreign. Many of my school chums ate well through the winter because their families hunted. This is as true today as it ever was. And right now, our woods are overrun by deer, because enough are not taken for food. And there’s a long circular saga there.

But that sort of common sense dealing with firearms is far different than what’s happening in our country now. Oh, I know, Ann, not another blog on gun violence. But really, what else can I do? Why are people walking around with cannons? How far into unreasonable fear have we tipped?

I was about to do that stupid and inappropriate thing that says, I’ve lived in cities and I… I’m not the point. The point is that people are walking around in fear, teaching fear and convincing themselves that cannons are the answer. They’re not. Love is.

I fret that the American addiction to gun violence is staining our national soul. Here in the shadows the road to Peace can become imperceptible… can look ridiculous. But there are studies abounding that suggest that in cultures when suicide becomes accepted as a way to solve problems, that more people commit suicide — honor suicides that occur even when the problems are not that large, but are perceived to be that way. Don’t learn problem solving… kill yourself.

And the newest problem solving technique involves killing a lot of people and then suicide. Yes, I believe there have been a raft of these, increasing in numbers. Even if homicides are going down, this solution to personal problems seem to be increasing.

It’s a huge shadow to live in. I’m not sure how we change it… but I’m sure we must. The gate’s open for us to do something… We need to wake up to the problem. All of us.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In