Accepting Peace

Choosing one’s own path to Peace is a challenge.

For many of us, I fear, we make our choices as we recognize that whatever place we’re in is not one that fosters Peace in us rather than catching sight of a vision that dazzles and attracts. No not everyone, but many.

Sadly, few of us are skilled in divining what we do want or daring to ask for it — let alone pursue it. It’s too easy to frame our choices against what is wrong with the world we’re leaving rather than what is right with the world we’re choosing.

Neither is it easy stepping out of the status quo. This is a big and powerful river headed in one direction, so swimming to an edge and finding another branch of that stream or climbing out on the land to search out a trail requires quite a bit of determination.

I don’t know if it’s possible to do such a thing freely, without defensiveness. Not choosing what our family, friends, lover choose makes them question their choices. Who likes that?

I do know, for our health and sanity as well as for the future of our relationships, we need to find that sweet, easy conviction about our decisions.

Watching a couple exchanges recently allowed me to look back and wince at my own movement from my theological/socialspiritual roots and consider how lurching a process that was. A good friend said to me then, “Annie, clarify what you DO believe, you can’t just NOT believe.” It was great (if painful at the time) advice. And life is so much easier since adjusting the mantle I’ve chosen to sit comfortably on my shoulders.

It’s a challenge to keep asking ourselves “what do I want” and looking for real answers. Not self-indulgent ones, not the preferencing of me over you… but the deep answer that allows me to be me in relationship, perhaps even consideration, with all others, because I know and take responsibility for who I am and what I believe. And then, finally, I take Joy in it. And in that Joy I find the fuel to move toward Peace.

Self-reflection’s a bitch, isn’t it? But oh, so worth it.

Sated Peace

Now, when we’re filled up with Thanksgiving, giving thanks, blessing counting, turkey and oh, yes, stuffing, let us capture this emotion and use it to start our movement forward into Peace.

And if you’re shopping, consider asking yourself, what you need to be a Peacemaker…

In the meantime? Continue giving thanks. It’s good for us. And hey, make another date with the friends and family for whom you’re grateful. Nothing sweeter to give for the holidays than the gift of presence.

Thanksgiving Peace

It’s an odd day today. My heart is both very full and very empty. I miss my sister Deb, I cannot lie. My heart aches for my nieces who lost their father 2 weeks later. And my friend who lost her husband just a month after that.

I mourn the loss of tradition and I celebrate the reforming, re-imagining, the cut-from-new-cloth-entirely of traditions. I cherish knowing that you are somewhere you like with someone you love — or that you’re taking care of yourself by not being there.

And in the face of so much hunger, I celebrate that we’re the ones who will do something to make a difference. Because we will be. Because we can’t look away. Because we care. And that is Thanksgiving Peace enough for all of us. So I’m trying to stay present. I’m counting my blessings. I’m going to eat turkey and stuffing with no guilt about the fact that others hunger or that I’m overweight. I will be with my Beloved… and I can think of nothing sweeter.

All’s not yet right in the world. but it will be. And today, let us be at Peace and give thanks. Blessed, blessed, blessed be, my friends. I am grateful for you.

Acting Thanksgiving, Acting Peace

I’m an applied theologian. I care less about what you believe than what you do with what you believe. I think often in active verbs, noticing, becoming aware, deciding, giving… sometimes rejecting. Always celebrating, always seeking.

Don’t get me wrong, applied theology isn’t all there is, not by a long shot. But it’s what I’m good at. You’d better be reading, You’d better be reflecting.

But when it comes to thanksgiving, you’ll do well to consider how to make your thankfulness dance. If you’re totting up your treasures, do it because you want to put that love to work in the world.

It’s time. There is so much need in this world and you are the answer. And you need to put your skills and your love to work in the world.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday filled with so much that’s good. Eat the wonderful food. Enjoy being with your family. Reflect on the wealth of your life. Give thanks. And then move into your generosity. It is the best part of who you are.

The more generous we can be, each and every one of us and all of us together, the closer we are to tearing down the walls between us, the closer we are to Peace.

Presto-Changeo Peace!

It really is about changing your mind, about deciding that Winter is not going to bother you. Actually, it’s about going even farther than that and allowing Winter to delight us. I don’t mean people with SAD… I understand that your malady is real. (change those light bulbs, get out and walk.) I mean those of us who sit around in our cotton tee shirts and complain about the cold.

We have to dress for it. Hats, mittens, coats, long underwear. Boots that are not just fashionable but functional. (It was interesting looking at my Swedish sister’s boots. They had thick soles to keep your feet off the cold pavement.) Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it’s sloppy.

Winter has an important job in the cycle of life. It holds all the mystery and the time of looking within. Can we draw a correlation between the soles of our boots’ not being thick enough and the fact that we have no time to examine the state of our souls?

But there’s also something about being satisfied with what we have, with changing what can be changed. We can’t change winter (well, yes global climate change is changing winter, but we can’t wish the cold and damp away.) So let’s explore it. We can change or at least impact the numbers of people who are at the mercy of winter. so let’s consider that. Let’s step up, in our thick-soled boots, to the very sensitive and painful problems.

Peace is pretty concrete these days. Enough to eat. A warm place to sleep. Healthcare when you need it. Peace in the Winter.

Winter Peace

It is cold outside, I have to acknowledge that. But I’ve decided not to fret about it this year. It’s not going to be too cold. It’s not going to be too hot. It’s going to be life. I live in the Northeast. We have winter. It rains. It sleets. It snows. It’s cold and windy. It is what it is. Because you know what? Life gets cut short. And then there’s no time to spend together.

And if we spend our time together wishing our way our time together, we’re not having time together. I spent a lot of time last year working on improving my relationship to the dark and searching for the mystery. I think I’ll spend a lot of time this winter looking for (and finding!) the beauty.

I’m going to buy marvelous potions and lotions and slather myself in them.

I’m going to wrap up against the cold and take long walks. I’ve got the gear. Why not try it out?

I’m going to hope for snow and be glad to shovel.

I’m going to light candles in my house and keep the tea and oranges coming. I’ll keep my house clean and cozy.

And I’m going to give up wanting the clock to move in anything other than its stately progression. I’m going to work to be present and self-reflective. Because this is the time I have with you. This is the time I have with me.

So Winter is going to be all about Peace for me. It’s going to be about wonder and the sacred, sacred Dark. It’s going to be more work on living my life as a prayer of thanksgiving. I hope it will be for you as well. Because it certainly is beautiful. And this is our time.

Steppin’ Out Sabbath Peace

Such a simple statement. We have the power. And so, we conclude, we don’t do anything because we’re frightened? Uncertain how to begin? What Peace and no poverty might look like?

Some might say it’s because we’re entitled, but my experience (and I know, I know, we can’t just generalize from experience, but still), my experience tells me that if you show people a path, they’ll walk it. If you lead, people will walk with you. If you get up to follow a leader, others will come along.

So we have to make sure that the leaders we choose to follow are leading toward Peace and the absence of poverty. And then as the song says: “We have to keep on Walking… ”

So something to think on this brilliant, frigid Northeast sabbath. Why not consider… where you would like your next step to head…

The Power of Peace

I hadn’t really thought of it in such straightforward terms before. But there it was in Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech. “For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of poverty and all forms of human life.”

Pretty stark, eh? We don’t think of ourselves as capable of abolishing poverty. We wring our hands. We decry other people’s actions (and rarely our own inaction.) The notion that we can change this, whether through governmental action or personal grit, has slipped from our grasp.

What would that be like, for us to erase poverty?

At the same time the notion of power to abolish humankind (what a difference 50 years makes in language, right? Women are now included. Just like that 51 percent of the population is added to the make a difference team.) We can stop that too. There’s John Kerry in Switzerland negotiating away from nuclear options. If you were born after, what the mid 60s, you probably don’t think much about that. That threat loomed over our heads through much of my childhood. There’s a group that believes in Zero Nuke possibilities, that negotiates ceaselessly for that to happen.

So, if “they” think we could abolish nuclear threat, couldn’t we do something about abolishing the threat of guns or at least lessening it a lot?

Could we really be that powerful? Could we really be unwilling to make poverty disappear and Peace appear, or were we just ignorant of our options? Perhaps we’d better step up to the challenge.

Remembering Shattered Peace

50 years ago today. I know where I was. I was in 5th grade. Home sick with a cold. My father called, he was crying, saying the president has been shot. Turn on the TV, tell your mother. (Dawns on me I called my sister and my parents, crying, on 9/11).

It was just the start of what would be a hard decade, where people decided the way to change life was to kill people. John, Malcolm, Martin, Robert. (Oh, heaven, I think of how impossible it was to lose my sister’s kids five years apart. One to suicide, one drunk driving. Impossible to fathom. Impossible to believe. What must it have been like for the Kennedys with two boys shot within five years.

What must it be like for people in the ghettos and the trenches with all their children dying whether one by one in drive by shootings and gang violence or in a group in a bomb in some war-torn place in our world. How do parents stay sane? How do they keep going… but of course few people really do die of a broken heart.

How can we believe that violence is the answer? I didn’t understand then. I don’t understand much better now. “There is no way to Peace, Peace is the way.” Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me.” Peace. May I be Peace. May you. May we together be Peace.

Do-It-Yourself Peace

I’ve had a lot of cause to be thankful to FB over the last couple months. I wasn’t really seeing anyone, so, my friends around the corner were reaching out on FB the same way my friends in Sweden were. And it was great. I am so thankful. Because I still haven’t been able to turn my hand (okay, my heart) to my thank you notes or to casual phone calls or tea encounters.

But in the same time period, and perhaps always, but I’m just a bit more sensitive at the moment, there has been a whole lot of whining going on.

Now, i am a champeen whiner. The tireder I get; the more vigilant I have to be. wah… Life is too hard. My (fill-in-the-blank) doesn’t understand me, was mean to me, doesn’t know i’m alive. We all need to do some whining it lets off pressure, but then, I believe, we need to stop whining and get back into it. Because i don’t feel better when I sing that song, I feel justified. And that? Gets us nowhere!

Right now the political whining is at a frenzy. It’s their fault, she(he)’s a horrible person so I can complain and do nothing to help the rest of society. As a favorite shrink used to say, “where is it written?”

Here’s the deal folks. People are hungry. In our country we collect money in plastic canisters in stores to pay for life-saving operations for children. People are living without heat, without shelter. None of these things, none, is acceptable.

We don’t get to Peace; we don’t get to Justice; we don’t get to full-bellied children by doing nothing. We don’t get to any of those places by going backward. We only get to those places by moving forward. By forging coalitions. Much of what we have to give up in forging those coalitions are entitlement and whining. We have to want what’s best for someone else as well as ourselves.

In the next two days, I’m going to go fix the page at Love Flows, in case you’re local and you want to donate money to help the UUCSV feed people in the Susquehanna Valley, I’ll give you the link.

But you may not live right here. We’d be happy to have your money, but so would your hometown. How can you get involved?
Build something constructive rather than tearing something down that someone else has done.
Add to life, don’t take away from it.
Get informed — not about how stupid others are — but about what’s needed.
Work locally to make a difference.
Join with others to make life better.
And stop whining. Because it doesn’t make you look smart. It just makes you look mean.

Then let’s just get busy building Peace. And Hope. And Justice. Because we’re just the folks to do it.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In