PA Marriage Peace, llvl

I live in Pennsylvania. I find it quite beautiful. There are many things about it that make me very happy. Here I am, living la vida local in a village full of nice people.

And, yet, all the jokes about how backward we are often sting with truth. Tuesday some of that changed. Not so much because people went out of their way to change it, but because the Federal Court said, “no, this is hateful. We’re better than this.” Thank you. And certainly, there are people who are still unhappy, who feel that their rights have been taken away because someone else has gained theirs. Oh, no, they say, I don’t want to see people (usually men) doing x, y and z. that’s nasty. (OK, I started 4 sentences, couldn’t get anywhere but ranty in the x-rated category.)

There’s still work to be done. HB & SB 300 which would prohibit discrimination in housing and workplace has yet to be passed. But there are even signs that that will pass (go right ahead here’s move on‘s version and here’s change.org‘s, sign either!)

But as a woman on of whose online monikers is the wedding priestess, let me just say i’m really happy. It’s ‘way past time for people’s relationships to be recognized by their communities, by the state and, I believe, by their faith traditions. Not all faith traditions agree with me… ok. But our beloved separation of church and state allows your tradition to believe as it does while not allowing it to abrogate anyone’s rights.

So I am grateful for this much needed striking down of a hateful law. I’m proud to officiate at weddings and proud that my tradition encourages that. I believe we will be better for that. You don’t make Peace by excluding folk. You do make Peace with Love. Let’s hear it for Love! Wanna get married? Call me.

Sometimes Peace is Silent, llvl

Peace isn’t always a loud and boisterous thing. And sometimes it moves glacially. For those of us who are let’s go now! kinda people, the measured progress can be tedious.

Other times, it feels pretty wonderful. Part of my lesson as spring comes around this year is about the depth of my grieving. On the one hand, my sister’s absence is becoming somewhat normalized — if normalized is what you mean when you begin to stop reaching for the phone to call her. On the other it’s an endless ache.

I’m beginning to realize that much of this winter I was just numb with the grief. I’m now unpacking it a bit and letting both the numbness and the grief recede. But part of the work of grieving is remembering. So this year as the flowers put on their Spring Show, I’ve been remembering Deb’s pride in her red bud tree. She received a sapling from a friend. It took a while to find a home where it was happy. (it did NOT like being close to the holly!) But eventually it did. It shot up. It flourished and come Spring, it showed Deb and the rest of us how happy it was to be alive.

Except for this year. This year it didn’t bloom. This year, the sapling my sister’s neighbor got from this tree didn’t bloom. Is it odd to find that soothing — to believe it a cosmic recognition that at least my life has tilted on its axis? It was a bitter winter, these two trees may simply not have survived… and I hope they did. But I confess I find Peace in the somewhat silly notion that the trees are mourning too.

Purple Peace-Seeing, llvl

This is Beauty in the local life, that’s for sure — all this glorious purple… I’m counting purple blessings as fast as I can!

Let’s all be one-eyed, one horned flying Purple Peace-Makers… (so could not resist!)

And I admit, I’ve been considering whether I might not start working to see if i can’t develop some, i don’t know, 89th sense that allows me to see the color of a word. What the heck, I learned to parallel park, I can do anything! Possibilities abound!

I’m also trying to train myself to see the Abundance as well as the deprivation as a call to Peace. There is so much that we must share, rather than there is so much that we must have it all to ourselves. To fill up and overflow… into Peace-Making. From Peace-Seeing into Peace-Making… Are you with me?

Everyday Peace Challenges

Peace isn’t something you pull out the cash for and buy in one fell swoop. It’s something you put a down-payment on and you pay as you go, every day, every day. Some things will change. Some things you just have to work around. Some things you have to work darned hard at. And so it goes.

This was a tough weekend. I’d put this work off for the whole winter. After going through an immense amount of stuff to fit Deb’s stuff into my life, I reached an end to what I could deal with and still remain sane. It was a lot. There were only about 6 boxes out on the winterized porch. I’ll deal with them in the Spring I said. That was after I’d started to look at the pictures from Deb’s family’s life. I couldn’t see the happy ones. I couldn’t bear the missing members, more and more and more and more of them. Later. It was what I could do. No shame there.

But this chilly rainy weekend, the lure of preparing the porch for the return of the sun, outweighed my reluctance to confront the past. And so I sat and sorted. I learned a lot. I learned nothing at all. I remembered, with great searing clarity the turn of a head, the shape of a mouth, what their hair felt like in my fingers. I remembered some other things that weren’t so pretty. I remembered again that they were dead.

What I didn’t know now, I would never find out.

Not a lot more to say about that, is there?

But I know that that’s not all there is — or not everything isn’t anymore, or something. More of them will be like the death of a family — simply things that are. Others will be things that we will shape…

In the midst of my grieving, there is a sweet little porch. There’s more stuff to move, and more to sort through, but I can see what it wants to be again. Last year, I didn’t sit on the porch at all. I didn’t open it until September. I wasn’t here. And I couldn’t bring myself to care. But Summer comes again. And this year, by and large, those boxes and their contents are in the trash, in the recycling or in the cellar. If you’re the one who has to go through my house when I’m aged, I’ll label them. Don’t open them, just pitch them right out. Nothing to see here, just move along, that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone…

And some things will be things we encounter, things we are called to act upon. They may be big things, they may be little… but… much of the work we see is ours to do. Not all of it, but a good deal of it. We’re the ones to pick the fast food trash up from the alley. We’re the one who has to stop to see if someone needs our attention. We’re the ones who need to speak up (to the best of our ability) when we see something happening.

We make Peace. With what was and is no more. With what may become and needs our dreams. With what is and demands our attention and our care. It’s why we’re here. Everyday Peace, done every day.

Changing Spring Sabbath Peace

Things are what they are, I suppose. Things change as they do. Sometimes as with wardrobes and flowerbeds, we’re the change agents. Sometimes we’re the acted upon. Sometimes we’re just the observers.

All of those things require decisions on our part. Do we choose to pull out the Spring clothes now? Are we willing to be sidelined by history and simply maneuvered? When does what we see require us to act? These are all good questions.

But some days, they’re good questions for another day, and today is for celebrating what is and enjoying the changes as they develop. The lilacs are in bloom and there are still, still!, some violets on lawns. Pretty heavenly.

Today, in my household, I’m hauling off yard sale donations and reclaiming space, fighting fracking with music, (how great is that?) and eating with a friend. Sweet Sabbath Peace in a Changing Spring. Next year will be different delight. But that’s for next year. Today this is what we have, let’s enjoy it.

I hope there’s space for delight in your day as well! Enjoy!

Spring Parade Peace, llvl

Whether its from the attic to the bedroom, or from one bedroom to the next or even just front of the closet to back, the parade of clothes from Spring to Summer has a special place. (And i like it the other way, as well, but now is the time of Spring!)

Don’t know that there’s lots of important things to be said about it, but the change of mindset that’s needed… slowly moves us to a different place. Sorting out, seeing what you thought last year. Seeing what favorite thing really needs to be retired. Seeing what really never flattered… and releasing it so it can make someone really happy.

Even the flowers were being changed. I walked by this wonderful stand of tulips, who were going off to some other garden group in another town, making way for “gorgeous geraniums.” And oh, we hate to see them go, but the almost 3 inches of rain gave them a thrashing, so some other beauty is now coming to please. Nature! Having her way with us!

Don’t forget to cull, it’s always a good idea. And yard sales are waiting for your bounty. Our church yard sale is about 20% of our budget. (That’s some yard sale!) Let me know if you want to drop things off! We pay our rent, people get good deals… what’s not to like?

Enjoy Spring!

Rainy Day Peace

My corner (or perhaps my center) of PA has been a little dry. We’re three inches short for the year. Which is odd, since March and April are often very wet months (April showers and all that.) Between the dry spell here and some conversations about the California drought — and very scary fires — Water and its lack have been on my mind. All of which is balanced, in a horrible kind of way, with the heavy storms the MidWest has been having.

But I might have looked at the weather before I wrote the poem. Here we were with a front about to stall over us. It rained so hard last night that I kept being awakened by the pummeling rain… I’m so unused to the sound.

But water. We really would do well to remember that it’s a sacred resource and must be treated with respect and reverence. We don’t need long showers to wake up, we don’t have to use a hose when a broom would do. We don’t need to plant flowers that don’t grow easily in our climate. It’s hard; it’s not what we’re used to — and the reverence is what our planet needs.

We all need to learn to share. It seems like we’ve forgotten this kindergarten staple. But your neighbor has pretty much the same needs that you do, and having more money doesn’t make you more deserving. How does the saying go — the rain falls on the just and the unjust? The universe doesn’t care, we’re all deserving of the bath and the blessing!

So, let’s think about water and how we use it. In many many parts of the world just access to Water is Peace.

Landscaping for Peace, llvl

Don’t you just hate it when you grab a metaphor and find out, oopsie, it doesn’t work. I thought I had it all lined up with the beautification, planting appropriately, zero-scaping metaphor… and then realized, not so fast.

Zero-scaping is great. Plant according to your regions environment. Use no more water than arrives.

But when you’re making space for everyone, neat little rows of one kind of flower aren’t what do it. You grow a village according to who lives there. That’s the messy wonderful piece of Peace. Peace has to make room for different cultures and traditions — even in little villages, because today’s villages are global ones. And the hodgepodge is every bit as beautiful as stands of tall tulips, particularly when community is involved. And you know me, fun food from different parts of the world is a big piece of my Peace Incentive!

And that’s another weird, wacky beautiful piece about Peace… there’s room for both homogeneity and diversity.

So, consider your landscaping… and make Peace available to everyone. And go smile at the tulips, they’re sure to go in the rain later today.

Glorious Spring Peace

OK: Downtown Lewisburg is beautiful. It’s just gorgeous. Whoever the master gardeners have been over time have done an amazing job. When all the flowering pears are out lining Market Street, it’s hard not to swoon. And there are lovely lawns and people who carefully tend their flowers. Luckily we live in a part of the world where when you stick bulbs and plants in the ground they do what they’re supposed to and flower and fruit. We’ve (usually) got the water to keep them satisfied, enough sun and good soil.

And Deb Slade knows how to show it to us. Thanks, Deb, this pic is just glorious and, folks, go see the flowers, before they don’t look like this!

Small towns, even ones as prosperous as this one, have things that don’t work and aren’t beautiful. Child hunger on the weekends is less in this town than in some of the neighboring towns, but that there’s any is atrocious. There’s unemployment and under-employment. Yesterday a picture flashed across FB, one of our children has gone missing. No story, just no boy/man/child.

We’re needed to be gardeners in our villages. We need the flowers in our ground to make us delirious with joy come Spring. we need good infrastructures so all our people are happy and healthy, well-fed and educated. There’s a lot of work to be done tending the gardens. But we’re community so we can do what’s needed, each one doing her or his part.

Enjoy the beauty of these proud tulips. May they give us courage for the work to be done.

Peace Tears, llvl

I don’t know why I’m so caught by the notion that our bodies know the difference between tears of joy and tears of onions. It’s not the first time I’ve noodled about this. But, see, our bodies really ARE our temples! We knew that, now they’re proving it. Different fats along with different minerals comprise the emotions leaking out of our eyes.

And then! Someone told me (someone who actually studied this sort of thing) that young men have some chemical in them that discourages them from crying that eventually goes away. Does it change their feelings? Is it so they aren’t saddened in the same way when we send them off to war — or does it mean that they just can’t get the emotions out when we ask them to do unspeakable things and bear unthinkable memories? (I tried to google this, but couldn’t figure out what to ask to get any information about anything other than babies. But this guy’s pretty meticulous about his research and his sources.)

What is the composition of the tears we release when we witness an act of Peace? Do we release the same chemicals or is everyone a completely different chemical stew suspended in life-giving water? Is there some connection between the tears we cry and the foods we should eat to be more Peaceful?

And in the long run… We should probably just commit more acts of Peace. And if we weep a bit, in joy of Peace, it’s not a bad thing…

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In