Everwhere Peace, Every Vida Local

When you’re an activist, and this year I’ve come to terms with that part of myself… it’s hard to leave. What if something wonderful happens and I miss it. (and it did, two wonderful things!) What if something horrible happens and I’m needed. (because no one else in the world is capable, let alone the fabulous people I work with.)

But it was time and family beckoned… and ok, let’s be frank… so did the warmth. And it is a wonderful thing indeed to be here. Miss my beloved, will bring him next time. Slept until 10:00 did that, like, oh, never!

And it is fun to visit and get into someone’s life. And these are cousins we didn’t know well as they were growing up, because our parents hadn’t done a good job of making the generations friends.

But here we are friends now, so we all work at visiting. And given their florida location, i admit, it’s no hardship.

But yesterday, when we walked in, this is what greeted me… which for some reason i can’t get to face the right direction… grrrrrrrrr. but she’s just as cute from the side view…

so, i was happy, happy, happy. and doesn’t it just show you. wherever you go… there you are!

Whatever Happens, Sabbath Peace

Well, we’re either getting the biggest snow ever or nothing. They’re predicting a trace to 20 inches.

It’ll be what it is. In the meantime. You and I had better get on with our lives. if it’s a big snow, it’s Sunday shoveling, snow angels, hot chocolate and the NY Times by the fire… or something. It’s going to be wonderful, whatever it is. Or will be if you decide to let it.

Peace. Sabbath. Snow. (nevermind the date) Or No Snow. If it’s snow, it will be Peace and Quiet, the beautiful muffling quiet of snow…

I can’t be bothered worrying about what’s going to happen. Because it’s going to happen whether or not I worry about it. So I wish you a Joyous and Peaceful Sabbath — a mid week break before resuming whatever passes for normal life.

Hold My Hand for Peace, llvl

I was walking down the street in NY holding a friend’s hand. We walked by a bunch of young men, just finished playing ball at a local church. Next thing I know, an egg is whizzing past my adam’s apple. One tiny bit to the sice, with the force of that egg, I might have been dead. It was thrown that hard.

Because we were holding hands. I was in relationship with this woman. But I’m a mostly hetersexual woman and operate from that privilege. It’s ok for me to hold my partner’s hand. It makes me confident. It perhaps also made me foolhardy. I continued to hold her hand, to insist on my right to do so… but depending where we were, it may have been a stupid thing.

These were young kids in a group. They were frightening… groups are always frightening. But I kept thinking… what if I’d been hit. They’d have scattered, and V. would have been able to identify them. We lived next door to that church. Their lives would have been ruined, because someone told them that queers were an ok target.

Nothing happened to me. I was just sobered. But I have friends who have been beaten and left for dead in a city. Just for “walking” gay. You read stories about women and men who are assaulted. You hear stories about people whose lives are just dogged by ugliness for looking like they look or for loving whom they love.

How are we allies to our GLBTQ friends? We say we are. Do we “tolerate” their relationship? Do we accept it? Do we celebrate it?

How do we make life easier in the world for them? How do we take some of the risk-taking on us? How do we create a safer world?

I’m wondering if part of it isn’t leaning in… becoming more intimate with our dinner partners. Becoming more demonstrative with one another.

We can also be aware and speak up. When we see something hateful happen… step in. It’s not always a good idea to confront, but it’s always a good idea to comfort and to stand by.

But if the downtown of a small village suddenly broke out into hand-holding and intimate conversation… how could that be anything but good?

Creating a Peaceful Vida Local

It’s important to stop and take stock now and again about where we are and remember the places and experiences that got us here. At some point, we left those places and experiences behind. Sometimes we left with regret, simply because there was somewhere else we felt called to be.

Sometimes we left with urgency, needing to leave a toxic environment.

Sometimes we left because we were finished.

In the last two the leaving often brings with it sadness and confusion. Why are things over? What do I want?

There are plenty of times after leaving that we must huddle and heal. Throwing ourselves out there too quickly can convince you that you want to sit on the couch forever. But after a while we need to get up. And then sometimes we must wander in the wilderness until we find our new home. We’re not necessarily well-equipped to figure out what a new home needs to look like, especially when we’re grieving our old one. so there’s often stumbling involved. We need to find the shift in ourselves from “not this!” to “what I’m looking for…” If we’re hurting, in the beginning we may just be looking for community. And that’s fine. And the fact is we may try on a couple communities in the search, which can be painful for both the searchers and the communities that aren’t “just right.” It’s not an easy journey, just a worthwhile one. And we need to bless that journey of discovery.

But then, it’s best if we find and create a new nesting place, a new vida local. While I believe that you have to work to change communities, you can’t be working to change communities that have no interest in your desires. Ah, it’s a challenge.

In the long run, however, I believe we need communities and communities need new blood and new possibilities. Wherever we go, we need to create our new community. I am firmly convinced that it is our job to bend the arc of the world toward Peace toward Justice and toward Inclusive Community. So l invite us all, at the point where our grieving begins to move us back toward life, to find our new communities and to step up to Peacemaking. The rewards are enormous and help that broken heart to heal.

Peace Has No Place for Hate & Fear

We’ve seen it before: The ugly need to keep life the same and one’s power intact that drives fear and hatred’s need to double down.

But even if it’s simply hatred’s death throes, it’s ugly and it hurts people. And we’ve never acknowledged the wounds done by the last times a dinosaur had to die. Racism is still — or perhaps again — a modus operandi, both conscious and unconscious for many. Women’s lives are still constricted, still being constricted by men’s fears and their own. And now the Other is the GLBT folk.

It’s time to take the dinosaurs off life support. It’s time to acknowledge that the world has changed. Charles Blow detailed today in his op-ed piece in the NY Times the numbers of youth who are walking away from the churches of their youth and posited that they would walk away from the Republican Party . My hope is that when they walk, they don’t just sit down in disgust (or at least not for long) and walk to somewhere else.

Life will not work if we’re merely deconstructing. Reach out and reach up. Let’s be the change that the world is waiting for, to paraphrase Elie Wiesel, a man who stood in the midst of extreme ugliness, who has continued to call for people’s return — journey — to their highest self.

So, yes, sign those petitions. But do more. Get up. Look in the mirror, root out the ways you participate. Make friends across the boundaries. Live in the discomfort of your unattractive assumptions of privilege and change them for the world’s betterment and your own. It’s time. If we wait, people continue to be hurt. And while we’re screwing around thinking these things are not our problem (oh, they are, they are), there are a million worse things that are happening, and they’re our responsibility as well. Let us be the change. Let’s wake up and then step up. Let us say a loud and resounding NO to hatred. Then let us say yes to life and get on about the business of creating a Peace-filled world.

Peace Dawn in La Vida Local

It is that time of year when you get up just a bit earlier. The light calls. And it’s worth answering its call because it’s gorgeous if you can get yourself out of bed. But there’s more than Beauty waiting, there’s Possibility.

It’s time. Goodness knows I’ve put it off long enough this winter. I’ve been sad, I’ve been sleepy. I’ve been shoveling snow. And all those things are fine… they are what they are.

In addition, the project I’m working on has been too big to get my arms around until now… It’s still too big, but there are little moments of clarity. Little things are getting done (shout hallelujah!) that are making it possible to understand what it might be. The team is lining up and finding their feet… and we’re off tripping and figuring things out. (I’m not trying to tease, the minute I’ve got a website for this baby, you’ll hear from me!)

This is the time of year for figuring it out. It’s time (Ann, are you listening?) to set the alarm and get up and get going. Because the world needs just the brand of Peace you have to offer. Wake up, wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead. Sometimes waking up is the prayer you need to offer the world. Get up, get up, get up, get out of bed! You’ve got your work cut out for you! Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red! live, laugh, love and be happy! Joy is waiting for you. And Peace is made of Joy.

Rest. Peace. LLVL

I never realize how important it is to have time off until i finally take it. Too often my time off is doing “things.” Hanging with friends, shopping, getting those chores done — in-house and out. But sloth, slow and beautiful, it’s not often we allow ourselves that.

And it changes you. After a day of not moving it charges your batteries and gets you going. What could be more lovely than an entire day of being present to who and where you are. A day of prayer and quiet.

We must pay attention to the rhythms of our bodies and our mind. And every once in a while shut the systems down for a day for repairs. And then?

Back to work. Back to Peacemaking. There’s a world of choices for ways to use your talents… Hello, I must be going! Enjoy your day.

Sugar, Peace & La Vida Local

It’s sugar time here. Or was for a weekend. And won’t be again for a while, if, as is threatened, another Polar Vortex comes rushing through.

It’s the thing about living where you live. In New York City or the Bay Area, if I talked about sugaring, it was all a metaphor. It didn’t happen there.

But here, where I live, weather conditions change and people I know go out into the woods and stick a spigot in their trees and hang a bucket on it. And then they boil. One woman boils in her house. My buddy in MN boils over an open fire. He wrote this morning saying it’ll be the Equinox before they have the first syrup over ice cream… It’s hard work that relaxes, makes memories and deepens the sweetness of the syrup.

Another guy I know is talking about becoming a beekeeper. Lots of people I know garden and then make amazing meals from their take. Since I still tend to eat ingredients rather than a meal, (although whew! can this girl chop veggies for a salad!)

When you live close to the land, the land is part of the local life… whether you work the land or admire it from afar.

Sugaring, bringing a little slow Peace and Sweetness into everyone’s life.

Frozen Tears Need Peace Sabbath, llvl

It seems we need to find new ways of observing and respecting one another’s boundaries. Perhaps the pendulum has swung as far as it might in this one direction so that we can begin to establish new rules of engagement of the most personal nature.

A new civilization… one with awareness, one with respect, one with deliberately slow Sabbaths..

I believe always in our good intentions. But perhaps we need a little more formality than we’re used to?

It’s something to ruminate on, this chilly morning, ways to let the tears soften and flow and for us to hold our seat. I also wish those struggling with their challenges glimpses of normalcy in their lives, long moments to remember who they are apart from whatever threatens…

Sabbath Peace… and please be careful, I’ve heard it’s very icy this morning.

Music-Making, Magic-Making, Peace-Making, llvl

My brother in law accuses me of believing in magic. I’m not sure he’s wrong.I don’t know that I know exactly what it is, but…

I’ve read about it enough, done that thing I do when I don’t make a lot of judgements one way or the other… sorta like heaven. don’t know… does it matter… be here now.

But the other evening, listening to the Sibelius played by the quartet… particularly the 2nd movement of whatever piece we were listening to, I know I have the program somewhere, it was as if I could see the music pouring into the center of the circle caused by their seating arrangement.It danced and curled and flourished, forming to a mind’s eye, a mind slipped half out of consciousness, a beautiful paisley of music. Oh, thought I, oh.

Could we use it, i wondered? Could such dancing power be used to fuel the Peace Journey. How do you gather that music together and thrust it toward, pull it toward, Peace?

It’s not often you see such focused power. It may be the form that causes it. Four players, each bringing their skills and gifts to bear on Music, on instruments, on a composer, on a community. Four players, the four directions, four different voices and talents; four, a solid foundation for a castle of sound.

If those notes and those players’ passions could be fused into a huge and paisleyed sword of Peace, how much hatred could be eviscerated or perhaps simply transcended by that overwhelming Beauty?

I couldn’t help but wonder.

Sacred Village

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