Peace Steps

Let me hold myself accountable. Let me, at the end of every day, remind myself of the progress I have made. Most days we will not be making Peace strides, although some days we will. Some days will be a chacha and we’ll dance in place. Many days we’ll just take mincing steps forward. But those are steps forward! This is progress.

I am sick to death of people’s whining that progress doesn’t need to be made because “he” or “she” is guilty of some real or imagined wrong. And therefore we’re off the hook. I’m tired of reading people’s posts on FB where we sound more like 6 year old’s who are angry because our 2 1/2 year old sib doesn’t have to do the chores we do. so we’re not going to so there. great. stupid. tiresome.

I once wrote a prayer for evening ice cream eating and blessing counting. The thought was you limited your bites of ice cream to the blessings you could count. I may need to do one with what chocolate and peace steps. Want your chocolate (insert any favorite food here) work for Peace. Worried you’ll eat too much chocolate? given the number of steps most of us take toward peace, i wouldn’t worry too much… and once we get good at the dance, we’ll be too busy, except to celebrate a little.

It won’t happen every day. But begin to notice when you’re kind. Begin to notice when you’re reaching out toward people who are not just like you… Begin to notice that it feels good to believe you’re making progress. Notice. and keep creeping toward Peace.

Peace One, Peace Two

I realize that I’ve harped on this before (moi? harp?) but I believe in blessing counting. Do I always do it? Nope. it’s easy to slide out of the habit, just as it’s easy to pop outta bed without taking time to say “Today is a good day to live.” I’ve thought about that Buddhist saying that it’s a good day to die, and that should infer that you live consciously until you die, but you know life ends in death, so let’s, as the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines.

The careful totting up of life’s blessings, large and small, helps us to remain thankful. Being thankful puts us in a much better frame of mind. If we go to bed aware of the abundance, we wake up filled with it. How can that do anything but make our lives better?

But as started to write this, I realized, well, what if I started counting the progress I’d made toward Peace every night. Would that encourage me to lengthen the list? I once wrote a poem in which I suggested counting your blessings with bites of ice cream. there was no more ice cream than there were blessings. So how much ice cream would I get if I could only eat when I enumerated a Peace-ibility! I’m thinking I’d get better at it! (sorta like clicker training for Peaceful humans!)

I always worry when I talk about this, that we will get fatuous. We begin to talk blithely about the “wonderful” challenges put in front of us… there may be blessings we can wring out of challenges, but they’re in our lives because they are, not because they were meant to teach us blessings!

But still —to be able to say at the end of the day, that I took these steps toward Peace. To begin to raise my expectations of myself that I might become a better Peacemaker. There’s an interesting challenge… and the topic of tomorrow’s poem? who knows?

Obliging Peace

As a kid and a non-Catholic, I was always intrigued by the notion of Holy Acts of Obligation. As an adult with an even less Catholic viewpoint than earlier, I’m even more intrigued — and less tied to what they really were and more interested in what I think they ought to be.

For instance, thanksgiving. Not the day with turkey and all its fixings although I’m a pretty big fan of that, particularly fixings! But the action. The making reflexive of the giving of thanks first thing in the morning and the counting of blessings at night.

Each day is a gift. And if I treat it so from the very outset, it’s more likely to become that in fact. And I’m alive. I have great memories AND great prospects. And the present is challenging and engaging.

And so I give thanks. For all I have and all I am and want to become. And when I do, when my feet hit the floor, I am a different person and my day is filled with possibilities.

In my thinking about thanking, I also consider the countless religions that have small prayers to take you through the day… what would those thanksgivings look like, I sometimes wonder for those of us who live in today’s world… I may explore that… but at present, I will give thanks that I have friends coming to help me say good bye to my sister, to hold me upright when it is time, and that I may do this for the sister I loved so dearly. I give thanks that I have a cozy home and friends and family who have helped me reclaim my place in it in the aftermath of loss and grief. I give thanks for a wide-flung community with whom I laugh and kvetch and wonder…

I give thanks because life with all its challenges is mine to explore.

Spiral Sabbath Peace

Our lives are so busy. I think we, okay, I, often fail to notice the rhythm of the spiral. And I think we often fail to stop when we finally make it into the center to enjoy the Peace, before turning and moving back out into an every deepening meaning. In and out, in and out, and so we weave our lives.

I’ve been in a frenzy, trying to reclaim my house and write my bits for this weekend.

So much ahead. The terror and sadness of saying a formal good-bye to Deb. The joy of gathered family and the gift of my Swedish sisters’ visit. Counting noses in the swimming pool — and missing the absent. The overwhelm of too much stuff and the joy in seeing this beautiful house re-become my home and refuge. (and maybe even the place where I invite you to tea. How long has that been!)

Fall, in all its beauty, ready for our admiration. A cornucopia of opportunities for interesting ways to spend a lovely Sabbath. A musician, a play, a labyrinth, a Circle. Today I’ll take some time to replenish myself for the trek into the middle of that circle, a circle that is both everything and nothingness.

What will you do to pass this day in Peace? May your day be one of Beauty. Wishing you a blessed Sabbath, my Friends…

Present for Peace

Everyone’s life is busy. And when you add our illusion of control to our to do list, we begin to think our tasks are monumentally important. And it’s clear, says one over her head in tasks, that sometimes tasks require an immense amount of attention.

However, in the midst of that busyness, we are often asked by friends or even strangers to show up. Every instinct screams that we don’t have time… sometimes that’s right, but we need to be sure.

Because often the very most important thing we can do is to do less than our stellar best on a task and make time for a relaxed, human encounter. My parents drilled this into me. They were at a friend’s house once. The friend was dying. They’d gone for a visit. “Stay,” he said. “Tasks,” they said. He died that week. “Never do that,” they said to us. “Never.”

We need to prioritize Friendship. We need to prioritize Love. We need to prioritize Life’s Sacred Passages and show up for them. Houses may be messy, grass un-mown, but cups of tea and glasses of beer or wine will be had, shoulders will be cried on. Funerals will be attended, conversations will be frank, people will get the ride they need to the doctors appointment or the medicine from the drug store. Doing good work and good works is the most important work. Stepping up can be hard work, yet, in doing that, simple presence will be offered and life will be transformed.

Extending our hands beyond our normal circles of caring begins to build great possibilities, and starts us down the road toward a Peace that is bigger than we are. All because we rearrange our time and our priorities. It’s sometimes messy and frustrating and inconvenient, but Peace and Caring? as the ad says… Priceless.

Profligate Peace

Oh, I had such an Evans moment yesterday. I’m still not sure that it’s finished. I went (at long last) to replace the glass shade that was broken when I moved into this house. And that, I slowly figured out, was seven years ago. Despite the huge amount of stuff at my place (and really, thanks to my friends, there’s more, but there’s also less!), I am not really a shopper. I acquire, but not because I set out on acquisition trips. And the looking thing of shopping that people do, so not me.

But I had to go to Bloomsburg yesterday and the lamp store was on the way. I’ve been feeling numb recently. Long lists of things to do, no sense that I will ever accomplish what needs to be accomplished by due dates. And I’m churning. Up in the morning, writing, sorting, meeting with those who need me… and the day goes on. It’s been so hectic here as the arrival of the new stuff has been an opportunity to pull everything out, look, sort, wash/clean, put in order, recycle, toss. You’ve seen my posts, you know.

But there I was. I did not buy the most expensive lampshade. Saying no to the upsell, I bought what I came to buy. But then, from across a crowded room. a brilliant flash of turquoise. Turquoise, well you know… turquoise. The exact turquoise, it must be said, that is in the rug that graces my living room floor, carefully agreed upon by my mother and father… the color mavens of 736 East Third.

Color was a thing in our house. So was fabric. So were lines of furniture, dishes, glassware, paintings. My mom was an artist. My dad, a dye chemist for a rug factory. A date who went to a play with my family came away bemused: You were all talking about the set of the sleeves on the heroine’s dress. Well, yes, they were very cunningly wrought. And didn’t every family? Well, it seemed not. Who knew? What DO people talk about?

My brother’s first wife, upon showing me a jar of peach freezer jam and at the same time talking about a “wall” of thin shelves for canned goods, was taken aback when I lifted that jar and said, “oh, my goodness, can you imagine the light in this kitchen filtered through this gorgeous peach jam???” “Your brother said exactly the same thing,” she said. Of course he would.

And Deb and Ann? you knew us by our colors. (Although I never wore the hot pink velor pants — I wore the turquoise polkadotted ones, back in the day. Our houses riot with color. And sure I wear black… but that’s only a foil for all the color.

But color hasn’t been very interesting to me these days. It’s a no-color world after your sister goes away. It will change, I know that. But it’s not going to be a quick transition. And I’m, quite frankly, mopey and overcome by the list, The LIST of things, that Must Be Done. And the shopping has been strictly whatever is needed at the moment. I forget food. I buy the silver polish. There’s TP. There’s paper towels.

Deb redid old oil lamps for us, and I broke my shade. And so it sat. But now she’s gone and I’m getting company and so, I will buy a new one. In memory of who she was. So there I was, a woman, checking things off the list. Do this, do that. sigh.

The store of lampshades is outside of town, along a highway. The owner has all kinds of stuff in that store and you have to weave your way through. She remembered the lamp (oh, a Juno, very nice. Yes four lamps, a red and three green shades, must have done it about 8 years ago. Your sister, was she a tall woman? — why yes, she did, yes, she was.) But one lamp shade a little furniture polish and I was outta there. Until I turned my head.

There it was, a vivid turquoise shade. Extravagantly exquisite. The color of my people. And she had two. Two! for the lamps for which I’ve never found anything but mediocre hats, lamps which came to me from my buddy Rocky (my home — a paean to my beloved dead) and now sit on the table behind his wonderful squishy leather sofa. They could have new hats. My house could be blessed with turquoise light.

Oh, I am in lust. I have no idea whether I’ll succumb… They would be Lampshades of a Lifetime. There would be Peace at home in their gentle glow. Shallow? As my friend from seminary used to say: “Shallow can be nice.” My husband won’t mind my being happy with lampshades, but he won’t understand it. His people came up buying antiques, took pride in not wearing something until it had weathered in the drawer. Pondered long and hard before buying something. Traded in antiques. Useful antiques. I come from a family where my dad would successively put on every new present he’d gotten at Christmas time, and there he’d be a sweater over his robe, a hat, new mitts… in a place with beautiful carpets on the floor and fine lines, color and fabric on the furniture.

Lust for life, a reminder that I am alive and that there will be life after my sister’s death, and because of her profligate extravagance? Mine will be filled with beauty, fine lines, color and fine fabrics. And maybe turquoise lampshades. Maybe. There is Peace in lampshades, you ask. Oh, yes. Beauty is not a sin. Neither is abundance. It’s all about how you hold it and how you share it.

Mysterious Peace

We really have to give up the notion of being in control. It’s never going to happen and it keeps us from enjoying the profound Mystery (Mysteries?) of Life.

We’re so busy being in control that we can’t pay attention. The fog creeps in from the river and spreads out across the land and all we can think about is interference with our drive to work. We know that there’s fog (at least in this season) because the earth is warmer than the air and so when the cold air meets the warm earth sprites dance, I mean mist happens.

If we miss the Mystery, we miss the incredible privilege and responsibility of living. Not that list of responsibilities, but the honor of meeting life face to face and then working to protect and enrich it. The realization that what is here took millions of years to develop and that we are merely witnesses and not the destination of that work.

Control is about fear and the fear leads us no place good. It puts us behind barricades and separates us from each other… It makes our work and existence so wildly important and forgets how incredibly transient our lives are, in the end.

Stop, look at the mist. Find the creatures in the clouds, wonder at the beauty of the river, teach your children to do the same. And while you’re at it, sign the petitions, and show up and protest the actions that will despoil the world (ours only in the sense that we are bound to protect it). Here’s a great place for you to do that… they want to build a tire burner on the river… (the oldest river in the world!) by a school… (our children!). Complain fight struggle against the culture of violence that pervades our schools and allows our children to believe that killing people is a way to deal with our problems. Oh, it’s a sad morning with more children engaged in violence and death, even here in our privileged country.

The Mystery must be observed with wonder. And Peace pursued gently and with great determination.

Cloudy Peace

Much of our October weather this year, here on the east Coast, has been smack between your eyes beautiful. Blue skies, vibrantly colored leaves, still green grass. These are days where the focus seems sharper than ever.

So sometimes we let those soft grey (gray?) days go by with no appreciation at all. These are the days that begin to usher in the Mystery. Mystery is far more slowly moving than the obvious. This may be why we don’t have time for much of it these days. And yet, and yet, it changes our lives — The wonder and perhaps also the stealth and slow speed which is required.

It is not good to live disconnected from the Mysterious. So much is asked of us these days, and so much requires our being fast and flashy and brilliant. Mystery requires our being still and quiet and open. Open can be dangerous in today’s world. But I think in the long run, it is more difficult to live without it. As the month draws to an end (so soon, too soon) I’ll look more at this. But for now, do not curse as the soft dark draws in. Explore it. See what might be waiting for you. (and those of you with SAD? get out there and stride around when it is light, it helps us! It’s that breathing thing and the light thing.)

Threads of Peace

One of the interesting parts of writing the musings is that a line sometimes emerges that you hadn’t planned. There you are heading somewhere, and poof, a new metaphor. I was caught by the notion of spinning the mist into the threads of Peace.

Before we can begin to weave a blanket to warm us, we must spin the thread and that thread must contain all the colors of the seasons, winter whites, spring greens, summer golds and winter reds and oranges, the many colors of the sky and the waters and our beloved Mother Earth.

Only then can we begin to weave a blanket that will comfort and protect all of us. I am here, we can tell the world, these are my colors, this is what I know and can teach you about. Which are yours… what can you tell me about them?

My father, the dye chemist, was very proud that he could hand spin… and proud too that he could find the chemicals that made the colors sing. Everything adds something to the thread. Some of it will be expertly spun, some of it some of us will make a hash of… but once there is thread, we can weave that bumpy, uneven totally gorgeous mantle of Peace.

Peace of Tomatoes Past

A ripe tomato may well be my favorite food of all — but there are raspberries… and corn on the cob… and blueberries… and of course strawberries… and don’t fail to mention clementines… and, and, and.

The fact is that the perfect food is what’s ripe and good in that moment and perfect for the moment. You may have a raspberry in February, straight from the freezer, and they’re good, but they’re not, that perfect raspberry. I’ve finally found a tomato to eat in the winter that enhances that grilled cheese sammich, but it’s not THE PERFECT tomato; it’s an okay substitute.

Things are right when they are. And Peace is a whole list of things that are right when they are. (OLIVES, I forgot to mention olives!!!!!) You may favor one piece of it more than another, but you can’t deny the existence of the others and the rightness of them. All that is what makes the season wonderful. That kind of variety is what makes Peace possible. Everything has to go into Peace so that Peace isn’t a sterile ideal, but a warm, messy, wonderful thing. (sorta like watermelon!!!)

When one season ends, we must open our hearts and minds and tastebuds to the next round of deliciousness. Nature is filled with abundance. There is plenty for all. We give thanks by enjoying what is offered. Count your blessings and dig in.

I hope you enjoyed your last summer tomato — or whatever it is you enjoy, leftover from last season, ready for the next…

Sacred Village

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