Meeting Peace, Jauntily, LLVL

As I search, I am seen. So take that precious moment of self-reflection before you go. Love your mirror and let it love you.

But the search is delightful. Even when the truth and the Peace are disarming or dismaying.

Begin as you mean to go on, “they” always say. And “they” are not always wrong.

So grab your coat and grab your hat. No sense carrying your troubles, they’ll keep pace if they need to. But look for hope. And smile, smile, smile. You have a date with Peace. (and I seem to have show tunes stuck in my head. ah well, less fattening than sugar plums!)

Insistent Peace, LLVL

So, here’s the deal with this living la vida local, it’s not all sweetness and life.

Even in my beautiful little river valley, things are wrong. I may not be responsible for fixing everything, although I would judge that I’m responsible for fixing what I can and for thinking about fixing. (Because there’s certainly no Peace if people are hungry.) But I am responsible for calling out what I see — both the Beauty and the warts, the privilege and the lack of it. Here we are, in it.

I haven’t had a lot of writing assignments this week, although I haven’t written for the paper lately… sigh. so I’d written ahead a bit on my dailies, feeling pretty satisfied. But that lil angel had other ideas. I hope she’s going to show up occasionally… (notice she’s a she today? wonder how that will keep changing…)

This poem fell out of a lunch with the guy who’s been my biggest co-conspirator on the Love Flows. He’s the logistics end of the dreaming. So when I said, flood relief, he said here’s how. When we started thinking food, he’s now thinking BOLD and LARGE and occasionally I think about logistics. While we’re thinking about about what we do next, no reason not to throw some money in the pot if you have some. We’re building up resources for the next assault against hunger. Hopefully we’ll get to work on the website next week. Living la vida local is loco… lots of demands on a priestess’s time… but the donate button works. Or donate where you are. And stay tuned. Priestesses reflect, but it’s not all they do.

Lliving in the neighborhood, dancing around the village helps you see, and seeing confers the need to speak, and speaking pushes one to gather others around to make a difference. It’s a Peace Dance, and we’re all invited. And for the moment I’m not going to worry about the fact that I’m channeling info from a stone angel.

Ear Inclined toward Peace, LLVL

So, what do I think about angels, you ask me? I don’t know. I don’t actually think about them. I know when I heard a Catholic Priest tell a woman who’s husband had just died, a husband I’d heard screaming at her just the night before in their hospital room, that now her husband was one and she could pray through him, I pretty much rejected him.

I can tell you I write about them occasionally, stories of beings of great power, but I never spend a lot of time on them.

But here’s this little stone putti-guy who (I’ve decided) is listening, and I allow him to remind me: listen. And then I find myself in a place where listening is required. Did he just go from angel to Angel?

Just another Angel, agitating for Peace, for Love, for space in the world for aching hearts to begin to heal. Hark the Herald Angel is singing, even now, even in January. Will I listen better now than I did before? I hope so. And isn’t that more likely, if there are angels, are they watching us, or are they herding us toward Peace? In that case, they probably have bigger things in store for us than we’re likely to be comfortable with. Oh, now there’s a surprise.

I knew that little guy had to be distracted with something important if he didn’t notice the snow…

Listen! Peace. LLVL

What would we hear I wondered? What was the angel listening to?

For me this morning, she was listening to the sound of my friend Jean, whose life was ending. She heard her distress. And I was asked to listen as well.

To her family. To her friends. I got there too late to listen to Jean.

And I was able to share everything she’d told me about her wishes for a service, giving her family some comfort and structure.

And I could tell her stories. And take in the ones being told. I could savor them and consider how to use them.

Sweet to have an angel to remind me to incline an ear. Peace has many faces. Sometimes the face is covered with tears. Oh, Jean. Your community will miss you. So will I. I loved you. We all loved you. But there you are with everyone we know. who knows what living la vida local is like in heaven… I’ll bet it’s fun. I’ll bet it’s beautiful. and I know it’s filled with Peace. Say hi to my family, will you?

Knowing, Being Known, Peace & LLVL

Well, it certainly hadn’t occurred to me that poking my head out my door and getting to know the neighborhood made me part of the neighborhood to be known.

Huh.

So, it is in my own best interest to have a good idea who I am even as I seek to know who you are and where I live. It’s an opportunity not just to deal with my gifts, flaws and foibles, but also to determine who I’m going to be. I believe that living your life deliberately helps you to become that person. Making a difference in the world makes a difference in who you are and how you think about things.

If I’m going to be Peace, I have to know it, really be on speaking terms with it. I have to embody it. I have to admit that it’s possible. I have to do that for me, because I want it to be true for you. You have to be careful when you start your writing; you don’t know what you’re stirring up. I guess if I’m going to live locally, I have to be part of the scene. I maybe even (oh, heaven forfend) get out now and again (despite the winter chill). To be comfortable being known, I’m going to want to know myself — and well. Because I’m just as happy knowing things about myself before you do. Time to use that mirror beside the door! Living la vida local. Living in the present!

Vulnerable Peace, LLVL

When you live where you live, and when that place is a small town, you have to get to know yourself, because other people will know you well — sometimes better than you want to know yourself.

But it’s never a great idea for someone else to know you better than you know yourself, so it behooves you to keep looking.

I’ve been tired, emotionally up against my physical boundaries. It’s a wonderful privilege to do the work that I do, but sometimes it’s very demanding. You can’t always tell the demands to take a hike. or rather, you can’t always tell all of the demands to take a hike. Sometimes when you’re a minister, people need you. So you show up.

But it’s important to pay attention. Sometimes you can pass things off… And when you can, you probably should. For a lot of reasons, but two big ones. Those you love need to know you trust them to be as big and powerful as they are. And you need to honor what’s too much.

I love sermonizing. (ya think?) This week I had set myself a high bar. I was headed toward a more researchy sermon than I normally do. But post Charlie-memorial and post Jean visits in the hospital, there really wasn’t any brain power left. I finished the sermon. sorta. And went to bed, because bed was what was needed.

The next morning, as the poem says, I watched the river. And something about that flow reminded me. I wasn’t alone in this. I certainly wasn’t alone in mourning Charlie. I wasn’t alone in my fears for Jean, now, thank goodness somewhat allayed. And I am not alone in my ability to chew up a bunch of ideas and get something out of it. And this is a crowd who trusts me to love them.

One of the places that people get ministry wrong, I think, is when we don’t trust them to love us back. And there’s that awful hubris where we think we’re the only people who can… you fill in your own blank. Ministers could be the only people who have that problem, but I’m not taking any bets. So I went to church said, I’m going to give you my premises and my research… see if you can help… lots of thinking happens in the heads of my community… so there was a lot to be said for that. And in the end… it was a great sermon, jointly preached. I was supported and they were grateful to be asked. And the next time? I’ll do my stuff…until I need help again.

Ah, the timeless, sacred river… encouraging me to show up and be present, facilitating the moments of reflection, forgiving (even encouraging) the vulnerability, and offering the Peace of being right where you are, in this place, in this moment of time. Living la vida local has lessons I hadn’t any notion I might want to learn. ah, that darned praying constantly thing.

Sabbath Peace, LLVL

Trying something new this year thanks to a friend’s wondering. When we were talking about this year’s LLVL adventure, Sarajane got excited about the weeks’ starting on Wednesday.

I hadn’t really thought about when I would change the pic, but I found this interesting. How would it change our thinking, if at all, if the rest days were the center of the week rather than the end? What if Tuesday became the day we finished things up at work and Wednesday was a new beginning.

What if we began to think about recalibrating our week with a period of rest in the middle?

Would it change things? Would we use the sabbath differently? Embrace it more fully?

Whatever your tradition, whenever you take it, giving yourself a day of relaxation and reflection once a week is a good idea. Holding that day as sacred, understanding it as a responsibility to yourself is a great gift. There’s Peace in the looking at life and breathing deeply. Peace in the moving forward with all that play and silence within you.

Falling in Love, Peace, LLVL

I wonder if it’s that simple. Just to fall in Love. To allow myself to become curious and infatuated with everything outside my door. What is this and why is it like that?

When I was in seminary, I spoke about finding the new Eden… but it’s really more like co-creating a new Eden, isn’t it. If we want to live in Eden, we have to make it. Not by walling ourselves off or excluding people, but rather by making a place where everyone is welcome, where we work for Justice and Life is revered.

Some of that starts with not hating my life, with being welcoming of the Beauty I live in and celebrating the Beauty I contribute to. It means focusing on what is important — not in ignoring what is ugly and unPeaceful, but on working to change that.

There are so many ways to make a difference. We all “see” from a different perspective. But if we begin to celebrate what we see that’s beautiful and to make better the stuff that’s not… it’s got to get better.

Part of what I’m beginning to see as important — or should I say, what I’m beginning to say that I can do — is to help see and describe one place where people can make a difference — a lot of one places… maybe this, maybe that. There’s not just one place, but there might be one place for you.

What do you (allow yourself to) fall in Love with outside your door? It’s a fair question, isn’t it. If nothing does, open your heart… there’s something wonderful waiting for you.

Being Present to Hope and Peace LLVL

Snow brings me joy. Even hunkered down against the cold. I’m happy for the brightness and the mysterious piles of white. Days like this when it’s cold and the sun shines, the entire world sparkles… It’s too cold for even the cars to make the snow gunky.

While I know it’s dangerously cold, and you have to be well-clad against its dangers, when you’re on the inside, it’s a soft and comforting blanket, keeping me safely indoors. (easy to wax eloquent when you don’t have kids clamoring to be out!)

Sitting last night by candle light, writing Charlie’s memorial, flanked by Marlin’s picture of Deb and Mary’s portrait of Charlie, there was a lovely feeling of gratitude as I remembered the love. That certainly brought in Hope in the midst of the melancholy. Love really lasts. And we can call on it when we need it. We’ve got to make room but it’s willing to rush in.

Gratitude for the Past. Love in the Present. Hope in the Future. That’s what Peace is built on when you’re living la vida local. Right here. Right now.

HNY, LLVL, Peace

Whew! there are a whole buncho assignments! Is it possible to have a happy year, to live la vida local and to keep stretching out toward Peace?

I guess I think that the openness to the new (built on the old), the decision to pay attention leads us down the road toward Peace. Provided, of course that we agree that others in the world are invited to walk those paths with us.

Consciousness. Wonder. Love. Determination. All supremely difficult and challenging; all consummately simple. So, reflect a little. Determine to fill 2014 to the brim with wonderful memories. Commit to laughing a lot, a lot, a lot. And crying once in a while. Dream deeply. Resign yourself to the constant starting over a little smarter a little saner. Keep going down that Peace Road.

It could be a great year. Many more people might have what they need and the space to become who they’re meant to be. We could claim that space because the likelihood is if you’re reading me, you have a great many options. And then we could start expanding that space for others.

Want to resolve something? Resolve that you’ll be as kind as you’re meant to be. As generous. As observant. As happy. And then make it so. You’re already a wonder! Peace in 2014.

(and how about Deb’s opening photo? Pretty great, eh? Here’s to Deb Slade and her challenges to appreciate the beauty where we are.)

Sacred Village

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