Happy New Peace

A year filled with ups and downs, marvels and mourning. A full year. A year of my life. I’m not wishing it away — after all, this is the year I discovered I’m a Peacemaker. The last year of my sister’s life, and the year of the sweetest connection. A year with Alaska in it. Visits from the kids and grands. How can I fail to give thanks? And I refuse to wish it away, even the painful bits. They were sacred as well.

A year of trying to be present no matter how painful. At the end of this year I’m tired and I start the year having to hold my hand and heart open once again so that I can say goodbye to an old friend. But once again presence.

So, I’ll thank 2013 for the lessons learned. And welcome 2014 for what’s in store and settle my intention not simply to be present but to be a presence, to act on 2014 so that it might grow in beauty.

Thank you my friends for Love and Peace and the demand that I be the best Ann I can. I hope I’m asking the same of you. I leave you in 2013 and I greet you in 2014 with a prayer for Peace, with prayers that we might be Peace — wild, wonderful burgeoning, laughing Peace.

Wild Chaos, Sweet Order, Sacred Peace

All very important words. Too many people think that the first two terms are in opposition with each other. But when they’re in cahoots with each other, they really work. (maybe they should be called Sweet Chaos and Wild Order!) But I say in my musing that I believe that Peace teeter-totters between the two. My guess is that the sweet spot is always moving!

Peace isn’t orderly. or should I say, Peace isn’t only orderly, it needs creativity to explode all the preconceptions of what Peace might be. But Peace isn’t only chaos. It helps to establish a foundation for Peace. You want your foundations to be well-crafted if they’re going to last. The Practical and the Possible need to keep talking to one another.

They need, in fact, to find one another beautiful.

Too often, they get shoved and maneuvered into taking sides and made to fight with one another. Only one can be “good.” Dualism. Pah! Sacred Peace requires the best of each of us. And it demands a pretty healthy sense of humor. If you’re more gifted in Chaos or Order, look for Peace Accomplices. You can’t make Peace on your own. It takes two to Tango… It takes two to Peace… and so many more! But find the balance and enjoy the ride! It’s good work. It’s good play. It’s Peacemaking!

Love-Peace

This may be the world’s most important connection.

It’s so painful sometimes to touch the Love we live in. What comes up first, usually, is the spots where Love isn’t. And so we guard those spots and they get bigger and bigger. And take up more of the space we want to use for Loving the world — or Loving ourselves.

It’s where we have to start isn’t it? in the Loving ourselves part of our hearts… It’s hard work, but it’s the first step to Peace. When we see ourselves as valuable, we see our neighbor as valuable too…

Let’s patch up our hearts and get them back up to snuff… We’ll feel better. And the world will have a much better shot at Peace…

Stories for Peace

The Dark is the time of Sacred Stories. We are asked to recall and recite the stories that make sense in our lives, the stories that make sense of our lives. Every time we tell them, a layer is added. The meaning deepens in the telling and so do our connections to the stories.

We have choices about the stories we tell. We have choices about how we tell the stories, what is it we want them to teach us. We even have choices about the way our stories evolve, because we can make choices about how we live our lives.

When I started this year, I decided to let a new storyline emerge. I wanted to explore Peace in my life. Writing about Peace every day, no matter how obliquely has turned me into a Peace-Considerer and is moving me toward Peace-maker. Choosing to capitalize Peace and other nouns that lead toward it, while choosing to take power away from unpeaceful nouns by keeping them lowercase has had impact, on me, if not on others. The capital (particularly from someone who is capital challenged) is a small, lingering caress. I pay attention to the Peaceful details of the stories I tell.

And oh they matter, those stories. I’m trying to collect them about a friend of mine, who died a week ago. He was a wacky, wonderful guy with a sly sense of humor and a penchant for collecting things and people and stories. and awful jokes. There are so many Charlie-stories worth telling. Telling them well, next week when we have the memorial will help those stories settle into our collective hearts and become part of our history.

Telling Charlie stories will ease our sorrow and shape our shared future and perhaps our individual ones as well. That’s what stories do, the bring the past into the present and offer a path into the future. And if you make your stories stories of Peace, you will build a future of Peace. The more people in your stories, the more people on your Peace road. So observe so you can collect those stories, practice so you can tell them and listen to what you say so you know what to tweak and what to do next. Which ones exhort you to show up? Which make you reflect? Which count the blessings of sweet memories made from your feats of derring-do and your moments of collective lolling about.

Tell the stories that make you happy, make you laugh. Tell the stories that remind you that your heart bruises. Remind yourself of big work completed and little times enjoyed. Tell the stories that help you remember what you stumble over. Remember what you’re proud of. Tell the stories of how Love grows, and Hope and Joy. Tell them simply or embellish the heck out of them. But most of all? Enjoy each and every one of them. Peace, my friends… Happy Story-telling!

Wishful Thinking on Christmas Peace Past

So, here’s the deal, it’s all a pretty fantasy. Annandagjul sales (2nd day Christmas!) another big sales day. It’s good to have Swedish Sisters who keep track of you to keep you on the straight and narrow.

But I am going to sit in my chair and pretend. (Making it so, thanks Jean Luc!) Nothing but visiting, walking and because I’m Ann, swimming. I love me some fantasy, so I’ll keep spinning the stories… In a land far away… there is comfort and joy, comfort and joy… oh, well, but at least the pastry shops are probably open over there! And at my house, there’s strata waiting to be warmed and salad to be consumed. Brunch. Yes.

Why not make your Christmas Peace last… The Priestess gives you full permission to laze about today. Need a note from your Priestess? Lemme know.

We had a dusting of snow, and I’ve got a dusting of laziness… ahhhhhhh. Enjoy your day. I’m going to enjoy mine. Peace, out!

The Peace of Christmas Come and Gone

This is a hard day for me. First Christmas without Deb. The reality of so many wonderful family Christmases, the remembrance of family gathered last night, and the beauty of family close by and far away, my dearly Beloved and my dearly beloved… and the sweet sadness of a woman missing, calls not made, hugs and kisses not given, conversations stilled.

I miss her. Terribly. I think about my friend without her husband. My nieces without their father. Our church without our Charlie. And my friends who have lost and lost. The loss is always true, always there, a small payment for the joy of having loved, but still… On a day when there is Hope, it is Hope despite the breaking hearts… and the Love which you all share with me.

There is so much that has been beautiful about this year. I am grateful for my Peace Path, for Love Flows, for my writing… and for all of you. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve, the people who trust me and the ones I trust. Broken-heartedness doesn’t render me unable to serve and it doesn’t touch the Laughter. Thanks be for that.

And the Christmas question… can we allow (can I?) — despite aching hearts and broken promises and tattered dreams — Christmas to come? Come with a renewal of hope and faith in Possibility. Come with the enjoyment of family and friends. Come with its own urgency to Peace. Come with healing on its wings?

I hope so. And till it does, as it does, Deb, I miss you so much. And I fantasize, because we know nothing, that they keep Christmas in heaven (may there be a heaven) and you, at last, at last, at last, have your kids and your husband around the Tree and parents checking in… all hearts mended, all problems solved. And you’ll know we’re coming along some day…

And so, I will pick up the living room and put up the tree. And Steve and I will call the kids and celebrate… For I believe in Christmas and I’ll keep Christmas Day. And it will keep me until my heart is healed because I have kept it with you… and the many people I have loved… living and dead. Peace be with us all.

Wonder at Advent Peace

This is a night of wonder: Whether you’re awaiting the birth of a babe or the flight of reindeer or a moment of quiet, let heaven and nature sing…

I’m in a tough place right now… missing my sister, too many deaths around me, people living in impossible situations, it’s a bit overwhelming. And yet Christmas comes. For me, there’s the sweet familiarity of carols and ancient stories that remind us of great possibilities… and things that happen that we can’t even begin to understand…

don’t wonder at babes in stables, talking animals, angels in the heavens, reindeer in starry skies, fat guys in skinny chimneys, and presents under the tree? you’re missing a lot. how about the sweetness of friends and their generosity? all pretty wonderful. and a day of peace… can you let it be that and can you let it be wonderful?

Have I said in this blog that a bishop at a recent ordination meant to say we need to become apostles of the truth… and he said impossibles of the truth and I thought: brilliant!!!! Let’s be Impossibles of the Truth. and here’s the Truth: Peace is Possible… there is much to wonder at in that!

the awe is palpable on this night of Love… Happy Everything!

Expect Advent Peace

What if we just did that? What if we just expected it to be Peaceful and then acted as if it had happened? How would the world change?

This isn’t like wishing for a pony for Christmas, this is expecting that you will care for all ponies because ponies are needful.

This is an expectation of yourself that you will be Peace. In Advent, in the sacred season of coming into being… This is an unwillingness to expect any less, not only of yourself but of others and then loving yourself and your neighbors when we fail and encouraging us all to try again.

Expect Peace. The world needs you to ask the very best from it, to not settle from less. Part of expectation is going back again and again and again, and asking for more. Advent: Hope. Love. Joy. Peace. The hard work of Advent is expecting all of that. C’mon, I have great expectations of us.

Joining Advent & Sabbath Peace

At last, the fourth and final Advent candle: Peace. Do we understand that we are responsible for Peace, responsible for being Peacemakers? Not just smoothing things over, although calming rough waters is important; but acknowledging our similarities and celebrating our differences. The prayer might read like this: “May I be a person who encourages that which is right and just. Let me stand fast for my beliefs and cherish the work of Peace. Blessed Be.”

To that we add (join? connect?) the Peace of the Sabbath. A very weird warm humid Sabbath here in Central PA. Today it’s 59 headed into the 60s, by tuesday night it will plummet into the teens. And the stinkbugs are out. blech. I know, as Bill Staines says “all God’s creatures gotta place in the choir.” Obviously fragrance is part of that choral arrangement. And I’m not properly appreciative. But if the verb is join, they’ve just joined the heavenly chorus. (can you hear it?)

But the harp is sounding. We are to join the chorus for Peace. We are to be the chorus for Peace. (wow, weird dream flashback, I was joining the men’s chorus in my dream — given my cold this morning, not inappropriate, i’ll cover the bass as long as it’s only one squeaky note. But the men’s chorus just practiced on a better day!)

Ok, back to Peace. That’s what it’s all about, wherever we go, whatever we’re up to, we just get back to Peace. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Silent Joy in Advent Peace

Wordless Wonder can override the noisiest chaos. Oh, you have to be open to it, no doubt about that. And usually you have to stop and make a little bubble around yourself for wonder to grow.

I believe one of the most needed pieces of the Christmas story — and the whole world regardless of tradition can learn from this — is that the world can stop and wonder at Mystery. And that we do well to do that.

Silencing the criticism and the indifference and the, let’s be clear, bullshit, makes a place for wonder.

Wonder’s an important building block for growth and for Peace. So, shhhhhhhhh. see what you might be missing. Go look and see what’s hiding in the Peace and Quiet in this season of the Sacred Dark. This may be the work you’re born for!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In