Harmonize in Joy for Advent Peace

I find singing harmony far more fun than singing alone. When everyone has to listen to each other whether or not you’re singing lead, it’s so fun. And when you’re singing lead, in some ways your choices are narrowed. You sing the tune. You hold the center. It’s not about being Ms. Bigshot, it’s about holding the clarity while other people weave around you. Because if you start wandering off, your harmonizers have nothing to hold on to and you make them look bad.

If you’re a strong center, then everyone else gets to lay back and take risks. And if a risk goes awry, oh, well, the center held, try again. Ready to take the risks for a while. Find someone else strong enough to hold the center. Ah-mazing! And then everyone needs to adjust as a new singer starts. Where is the center of their notes?

Oh, it’s a good metaphor for this Peace-making thing. First you find the tune, then you find the grace notes that embellish it, all the while listening to the other singers so that your grace glides lightly over their grace. Peace! Harmony! and Understanding! Yahoo. That’s what you want in this season of Holidays! Making Magic. Making Memories. Doing the hard work and having a fine time as you do it. Joy! Joy! Joy! Deep in my heart.

Calm & Joy for Advent Peace

Funny, Calm and Joy seem rather at opposite ends of the spectrum, although who’s to say that Joy can’t show up in a lot of ways? But I’m wondering if we don’t need to calm ourselves so that we can see the joy.

It’s so easy to get agitated about the yucky stuff. And then we start to spin. And spin. And pretty soon, it’s difficult to see the path out because what we see is the spin. One big exhale and an inhale later, the spin can stop and we can begin to see the the steps.

Calm owes a lot to good breathing. You deal with what’s in front of you. But when things are grand, then it’s fun and even good to jump for joy. As kids we know the joy and jumping connection. As adults, we’re really rather more attached to jumping up and down in horror or rage. Those are situations that require a calm heart and a reasoning brain. The Jumping is just a distraction, a way to let the rage and the horror win.

Now Joy is an entirely different kettle of fish. Joy bubbles out of us or radiates depending on how open we’re willing to be and it infects others if we let it out. Again, would you rather people caught the Joy or the rage and horror?

So calm yourself deal with what’s going on, and open to the Joy of simply being alive and sharing this Life. Wow! You’re here! Celebrate! Dance! Peace!

Connect to the Joy of Advent Peace

EEK… almost forgot to connect about connecting. Happy Holidays! I’m running around like a fool… I had food and money cards from church to get to our local food bank. Do you think my family is expecting gifts? hmmm. I admit it, I’m a failure as a gift giving Grannianni… I find other ways to connect! I need to find more and better…

The holidays, which ever one(s) it is you’re celebrating, are a great opportunity to connect. You know me, I’m a big proponent for celebrating lots of holidays. (There’s no place like your home for my holidays. It’s my new favorite song!) But remember you don’t need to connect with people who don’t make you happy. Lonely is far better than actively unhappy at Christmas. Lonely can be experienced (connected with) and then connections can help smooth a path and perhaps change your holiday experience.

And if you’re alone? Perhaps you need to take this time to connect with yourself. Make your space wonderful. Feed yourself healthy foods. Plan what you want to do next. Take steps toward the best you!

Connecting. It matters and it helps. Peace is all about connecting the dots and connecting the hearts.

Revel. Joy. Advent. Peace.

I’ve always loved seeing, reading about, imagining what were known as Christmas revels. Wild dancing, feasting, drinking, firelight, yule logs and drafty manors. The rhythmic thump of feet hitting the floor in intricate country and court dances.

Those people worrying today about putting the Christ back in Christmas as in the olden days maybe should understand much of Christian revelry is ancient and interfaith (if by interfaith, we understand that every tradition that touched it put its stamp on it.).

I’m a Unitarian Universalist, so plurality delights rather than threatens me. The more the merrier. What do you know from your searching? And believe me I get it. I am grateful for the understanding and the wonder that the birth of a small babe brings. Whether or not you believe more about that babe, it’s astonishing that the birth calls the world to a halt.

But in the cold and the dark, people gather and people dance. In the face of a dying year, people revel in the life that flows through them. Dancing in the face of death. Demanding the stories that remind us that life continues beyond us. And yes, celebrating babies. (and, perhaps, making them? Baby it IS cold out there!)

So, revel. Enjoy. Revel in the possibilities. Revel in the Peace. Revel perhaps for Peace. Remember all the wonderful things that make life worth living. And then live!

Share the Joy for Advent Peace

Sharing the Joy… and most specifically my joy in you and all you can do.

When I stop and think about my life, I’m astonished to realize how many wonderful people I know and encounter. Sure there are those, who, shall we say, fail to live up to their potential. But then, if I look in the other direction, there are hosts of people who are quite lovely and filled with talents and gifts that they’re quietly realizing.

It’s a lot about where we put our energy and our focus isn’t it?

And if I’m looking at you with awe and wonder, why would I fail to share that with the world? Because if I can help them take a wonder-filled work, and they can help others, pretty soon Peace will begin to break out.

So try it — notice how grand a couple people are and then share that with them and with the world. Fill up with joy and let it bubble over. Share the Joy. Live for Peace. The holidays are hard enough with all the frenzy. Give your self a chance to count some blessings and get centered in how abundant your life — and the world — really is, and, then, celebrate!

Elate, Joy, Advent, Sabbath, Peace

Well that’s a mouthful! But a fun one!

The third candle is Joy. Part of life’s journey is enjoyment. Are you quick to smile at a baby or laugh at a joke? It’s amazing how much better a day is when we make the effort to be joyful. People respond to joy. Life is short, let us live into it.

May I take joy in the dailiness of life, revel in its opportunities and in the people I encounter. May I be filled with wonder and amazement at life’s beauty and bounty. Blessed be.

And the today’s verb is to elate. To be elated. To allow the Joy of this Holiday season to move you to gratitude, certainly, but also to full on appreciation of, elation in the moment.

Here the white stuff makes me incredibly happy! Last night I got to go out and walk in Winter Wonderland. It was gorgeous. This morning I’m far more elated now that the snow is off the car and I believe it will pull out of the parking spot! But really, enjoy it! It’s the Sabbath so you might give yourself the chance to lean into the feelings of happiness. Thank Mother Nature for the snow and the beauty. And then allow yourself to feel it! Elation! ahhhhhhhhhhh!

Thrill to Love & Advent Peace

I love my work. I really love most aspects of it. Some of it’s challenging. I’m just learning how to raise money and awareness, but when the fundraising/difference making thing works, I can feel the quiver of joy happen. But the ritual stuff. ah. I love it. Even in middle of my most focused work when celebrating, I’m aware of the rightness of what I’m doing. This? is what Tiggers do. No question.

I’m privileged, I know that. Not everyone gets that opportunity. But I’ve taken a lot of risks to be able to do that. Compromised my financial present and future to be able to do what matters to me. Not everyone is built for that kind of risk taking and not everyone can live life on the edge comfortably.

But I’m not moving back. I don’t do it for the thrill, as much as I love it, I do it because it makes a difference. Celebrating life and trying to give people a better shot at it matter. And the thrill is a pretty big bonus. I don’t know what else I’d do, or how else I’d live my life, but I know I’m making a difference, even if it’s only a little one… or a big one in a small number of people’s lives.

I wish that for you. I wish you to look forward and backward in your life, thrilling both to possibilities and accomplishments. Live your life large, whatever that means. As far as we know, whatever we hope, we only get one shot at it. So why waste what we’ve got. Let’s set our hearts on Peace and thrill to its possibilities. Because we can. And with Peace and thrilling, if we can, we probably should. And I think Love makes both the thrilling and the Peace possible.

To Please. To Love. Advent Peace

Taking the time to consider another, to please them in some small way can change the way they think of the world.

So much of the world is hurried and inconsiderate. Small sweet gestures of kindness can be like lit candles in the dark to tired and wounded people. Everyone needs kindness.

So appropriate for Lucia day, which custom says is when light is called back from the South to the North. (one more holiday in this season of holidays.)

What candle of kindness will you carry today to give to another person? How will you please them, let them know that they matter? Will you dare to take a moment to be kind to a stranger? To a loved one? To please them by giving them something they’ve wanted… or perhaps not even known that they’ve needed?

Where do we find the balance, to think enough of self to care for another, to give them Peace? How do we move to the place where we understand that pleasing others enriches rather than depletes us. I’m not thinking about the self-effacing kindness that the world urges, particularly on women and children, where everyone matters more than you do, but rather a self-conscious kindness… a caring for the other based on your awareness of the fullness of your heart and life. Sometimes we need to take a calculated risk even when we understand that there will be cost to us.

Kindness is the work of Peace. Pleasing others is not the if I please you, you will like me thing we were taught or maybe just learned as children, it is the I will please you because it makes the world sweeter, easier in some small way. In that way we move closer to Peace, and we move together.

Encourage Love during Advent Peace

To encourage the Love. Is there anything more important that we can do in this world?

And the sacred season of Advent is built for exactly this possibility. Of all the holidays I left behind as I became Post-Christian, Advent is the one that has most called to me across our differences. I have been unable to release the feeling — don’t you hear Leonard Bernstein’s “Something’s coming, something Good — I don’t know when…”

For that to happen, we have to make space in our lives, our hearts, our souls. We have to encourage it. I started writing about Peace in these musings a year ago. My sense that it is possible has only grown — and I haven’t even left Dodge! I know more people for whom this is a concern. I know more people who are not like me and we are forging conversations and even doing good work. Little Dreams are taking root, and growing.

It’s got to happen where we are — here where I am, there where you are. And as it spreads. As we relax into Love, we relax into Peace. We start naming it, we start letting it be important. We start doing things that are not, perhaps, on the surface about Peace, but which create Peace in their wake. Because we’re caring for people. We’re feeding them. We’re fighting pollution in their name. We’re standing up against ecological disaster. We’re each doing the things we do, and widening our scope a little. Perhaps even gentling our touch.

There’s something that each of us can do to encourage Love. One of the great things about it is that it’s habit forming. If we’re kind. If we’re generous. If we’re thoughtful or resourceful or determined. The Love makes the setbacks bearable. The Possibilities of Peace illuminate the journey. We have a place we’re bound. There is more Love, more Peace, more Grace. And I’ve found it in your company.

Oh who you are and the work you do are worthy of all the encouragement I can give you.

Surrender to Love, Advent Peace

It’s funny how the words go together during this advent mash-up…

We don’t look very often, for Love can be overwhelming… not just the “I love you” kinda love, but that too… but the look at how much love there is kinda love.

And once in a while, it’s good to allow yourself to be washed away in the Love. (I know it’s a bit of a cold metaphor for a winter’s day, but it’s how it feels… hmmm should i have used sledding? oh, too late. surf city here we come!

Right now, with the work we’ve been doing at church, there are a whole bunch of possibilities that may come about, simply because we decided we could make a difference. We have done stuff so much differently this year as a result. But the part that’s overwhelming is that it’s changing what’s going on around us.

Clapping for Tinkerbelle works. Magic requires a lot of hard work, that’s the part we forget, but then it becomes magic. or maybe just exponential. But we don’t want me to be doing math metaphors… eek. Love can go viral. There a nice internet metaphor. and when it does, we should throw up our hands and squeal with delight (Knoebel’s roller coaster metaphor) and ride the ride. Because the squealing with delight is part of the fun.

So surrender to it. And ride the wave, or the roller coaster, or the interwebs! Delighted squealing for Peace. Delighted squealing as a prayer path. Let’s hear it!

Sacred Village

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