Mountain Stream Peace

For me, there’s something about water running over rocks. I think I inherited this gene from my family. Dancing, skipping, burbling water surging through a canyon that continues to change as the waters rise and fall.

This place is not just beautiful, it’s dangerous. It seems a ludicrous statement on a fall day when 8 inches of water cavort by you. But two years ago this stream rose 20 feet to eat that bridge. Every year some crazy college kids assume they can run the spring run off and too often one or two of them don’t make it. It is not just still water that runs deep.

The space in the canyon not taken by water and rock is filled with trees and sweet, sweet air. Air that tastes like a benison after what we’ve been breathing down in the valleys. Air that we should fret over as the frackers peer over our shoulders.

To many times in the last year, I have taken my grief to this stream and it has eased my burden. Back and back again, I’ll go this fall, because my heart will be heavy a long time. I’m thinking that Steve and I need to go, drum in his hand and simply sit to watch the leaves change and the water run. He’ll find the rhythm the creek dances to… maybe I’ll find some words. Maybe I’ll just find the silence broken only by the hawks who scream overhead. I’ll be present and the prayer the creek offers will soothe my soul.

This valley is beautiful in every season. Even when the water roils and rises, Peace runs through that valley and caresses me on its journey downstream. Over time perhaps it will tumble smooth the shards of my heart and I will focus more on the dancing memories and less on the painful grief… But the seasons come and the seasons go in this Valley and my heart will fill. The creek and my beloved will see to that.

Fall Fair Peace

I live in a beautiful, agricultural valley and count myself lucky to do so. Every fall, (except the fall of the devastating Hurricane Lee) my hometown hosts a Fair. Everything good and bad that fairs have, this fair has in abundance.

It’s Fall, after all, and fall is all about the abundance. People compete: they knit, and stitch and sew. They can and bake and grow. They raise livestock large and small. They show their pet chickens, dogs, bunnies and burros. This year you didn’t see horses as big as houses because those horses went to live on my classmates farm. Lady and Duke are lazin’ it up, retired from show biz. Folks get on their tractors, ancient and new, and drag large weights around to burn out their engines… huh? There are rides. Sadly there are side shows. There are bands. You can win the ugliest plush toys in the world if only your aim is good enough and your money lasts. People guess your weight (you want to see that person at the beginning of your trip by the vendors). People guess your age (you want to avoid them altogether.).

And then you eat. You taste the first cider of the season and eat something fried that later you really wish you hadn’t. You have food that you eat every year at Fair. You consider all sorts of odd foods, but you avoid the fudge/bacon. ‘Cause what the heck it’s Fair week. You walk for hours! Kids are bedazzled and so are the adults. You always see someone you went to high school with even if you lived a half hour away, because EVERYONE comes to Fair. You run into people from where live now which is also a half hour away, staying with the theme above.

You remember that food is grown, not just processed. And that that is an earthy messy process. You realize that some families are making a portion of their living from the food that’s grown. Others are proudly showing of skills that have kept their families fed for generations. Other people are making cakes that look like spaghetti and meatballs, and you can only figure they have too much time on their hands.

Fair. It’s a great way to celebrate the Fall… and Fall is worth celebrating! Fall, Peace!

Happy, Grateful Peace

or is that Peaceful Happy Gratitude? It’s all so confusing… but the video said…. which video? this one… that by identifying actual points of gratitude and then letting people know about your gratitude, particularly the people to whom and for whom you are grateful makes you a happier person. It makes people who are the least happier far more happy than it makes people who are already pretty happy. Maybe they’re already pretty grateful… and maybe they tell people how much they love them and why.

But telling people how much you love them and why is probably a pretty darned wonderful thing to do always and forever. Because even if it didn’t make you happy, it would make them happy… and that would be reason enough to do so, don’t you think?

So right now, I’m grateful for two things. I’m really grateful to those of you who take the time to read my writing and to comment on it. It makes me work harder and think a bit deeper. It humbles me when you write to say it pushed you to think differently about something. Thank you so much.

And I’m also grateful to and for my sister. More and more I realize how much she took care of me and how much she let me take care of her and that makes me so incredibly grateful… even now, when I’m being very sad and grieving… it softens and opens my heart…

For what are you grateful? To whom are you grateful? Why? Tell them. And then? get back to me and tell me how it made you feel… Giving thanks! Feeling Joy. Celebrating Peace.

Foggy Peace

Luckily for me (and for you if you’re following me!) the world is willing to remind me why we keep working for the good. There is so much in life that is challenging, desperate and sad… that serves as a reminder of the many ways we can we work to make life better.

At the same time, there is Beauty that reminds us to pay attention. No matter how cynical we get about the “system” there is beauty to pull us back. Whatever else we pray/acknowledge/express… Thank you should be our first prayer and our last of the day. Giving thanks for what is opens us to see more Beauty. Seeing the Beauty and drinking it in fuels us for the work to be done… If Gratitude is not one of the direct routes to Peace, it certainly smooths the path.

Every time I cross it, or watch it, or sense it, I’m grateful for this incredible river.

Peace and Despair

I admit, i find it overwhelming right now. That youngsters, because they’re always youngsters, are so despairing of a future that they agree to become human explosives … not to transform the world, which would still be God-awful, but to kill people they’ve decided are enemies for existing.

On the face of it, it’s religion. At the base of it is poverty, no path forward, not enough, not enough, not enough. Here’s the truth. Not enough is enough to cause people to kill others. It’s at not enough that we must go to work.

I’m trying to balance the need for the Peace Journey when my heart is on empty. Right now all I can do is hold this up… but I will… and I do… We must look at the agony and be willing to bring it to an end. That’s the first step. There are a thousand, a million, a billion second steps as we each step toward peace in a different direction. Each and every one of them is a prayer for Hope and Peace.

Handwashing Peace

With all the cavalier decisions being made by politicians recently, all the violence in public and private, I’ve been feeling we’ve really missed the point. Life is sacred. and we’re treating it as if it were nothing. We’ve forgotten the awe. We’ve forgotten our responsibility to that awe.

Life is brief and beautiful. And when we touch it, we should do so with reverence. Creation is an astonishing gift, however you believe it came about and whatever/whoever you believe was the genesis of that beauty. It too needs our care and respect.

And if our world-weary hands are soiled with greed and anger and disdain, we must wash them… and begin again. I’ve always believed the notion of baptism had it backward. Babies, new things are precious and sweet… it is we who must get busy with the soap and water before taking life into our embrace.

We’d all like to point at the other and relieve ourselves of responsibility by proclaiming it is they who besmirch Life and Creation. But, if we’re honest, we all have responsibilities we’ve been shirking. All have satisfactions we’ve been harboring about our righteousness. But if people are without what they need; if Creation is being despoiled… we cannot point fingers. We must roll up our sleeves, pour living water from the ewer into the basin, wash our hands (and cleanse our hearts) and set to work with a will. Because, whether you believe this quote is by the Hopi Elders or June Jordan, we are the ones we have been waiting for. Others are waiting for us as well. So, lets get busy.

Gun Stats Disturb Sabbath Peace

Since the Battle of Lexington until today in Afghanistan, 1, 171, 177 Americans have died in battle. Since 1968, 1,384, 171 Americans have died from firearms in this country (including suicide). This means 212,994 more Americans lost their lives to gun violence in 45 years than in all our wars. (Henry Porter gathered these statistics from the CDC).

Tough statistics to pack along to your favorite house of worship, mountain lake or desert hill. And yet, we’d do well to live with them. If they disturb enough of us enough, maybe we can consider how to make it different…

It seems the Sabbath ought to start with more calming news than this… This is not the road to Peace.

Gleaning Peace

I’ve said it a million times, I’m a religious not a political animal. When a vote is taken by our lawmakers, whether it’s posturing or not, to deny poor people food, I’m aghast.

75 percent of SNAP households include a child, a disabled or an elderly person. And yet that’s still not the point. People are hungry. They must be fed. We are our brothers’ and our sisters’ and our neighbors’ keepers. We are.

I feel naive and stupid… I don’t understand how this thinking enters our worldview. And it is our worldview. I don’t want to hear people say, it’s “their” fault, because people’s being fed and housed is everyone’s responsibility. That’s not socialism, that’s my moral understanding of a just world. Or maybe it is socialism, because I believe our government should provide, I don’t care. I believe that no one should go hungry in a land of plenty. That’s not an equivocating statement, that’s the most forceful statement I can make.

Somehow, we have to turn the tide… in our area we have teachers buying food and slipping it into their students’ backpacks so they can eat over the weekend. Lovely sentiment, lousy precedent. what will we do? what will we do?

One friend wrote this: “We all need to bombard our Congressmen with demands that they restore a reasonable amount to allow a person to live on SNAP. $1.40 a day is not sustainable. That amount is 1/100 of the DAILY meal allowance each Congressman receives ($137.41). We as good people cannot allow this insanity to continue!!”

It certainly puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? But some response is needed…There is no Peace when the people are hungry. There is no Peace if we are not doing what is needed, if we are not doing good.

Uncertain Waters, Complex Peace

I lean toward Pollyanna, I know that. Even when I’m prostrate with grief, I know that somewhere someone is singing: “The sun will come out, tomorrow…” and yet, as I know only too well, you can’t rush past the truth of grief… and not everything is beautiful.

Not every body of water is navigable and many are treacherous. To deny that, to defy that is dangerous; in some cases even stupid. That’s true with floods, and it’s true with simple water on stone…

So, as I look for metaphors for peace, i realize they have to include the way beautiful things have the potential to be dangerously overwhelming… All our movements toward peace need to be carefully considered, because Peace is both wildly abundant and quite carefully measured. Our job, as always, dammit, is discernment — and then adjustment.

Flooding, Frightening Peace

I puzzled before I wrote this musing and this post whether or not I could really combine Peace and Flooding. But after looking at the way neighbors responded two years ago, particularly in places like my hometown Bloomsburg, there is Peace to be marveled at. These are the moments in history where people really move beyond their societally limiting boundaries and offer hands and hearts and help.

But poor Boulder. Twelve inches of rain, in an area that almost never sees that much, would have been frightening enough. But the resultant floods and the incredible damage are overwhelming. Communication has been wiped out in many places, but at this point: Eight are known dead, hundreds are missing. Best estimate at the moment is 19,000 homes lost.

In addition, this non-historically flooding area is home to a good deal of fracking. What have the waters boiled up and spread over the land. We won’t know for a while. This adds a level of long-term fear to what’s already overwhelming.

We don’t know if this flood is a result of global climate, but there are plenty of things that say this can’t be completely discounted.

There are places to offer money… check the web. Money’s what’s needed, not goods. From other parts of the country, money makes good neighbors.

I’m trying to focus my energies on places where I can have impact. I’m not a good fracking activist or a good climatologist. I can point others towards those issues. I am good at helping people reach out and at motivating folk to do that. I will do what I can where I can. But this is another choice point where we get to ask ourselves, how much, really do we want Peace? Do we want it enough to reach out? And having reached out, understanding that that extension of the hand and heart is Peacemaking?

Can you personally do something about Boulder, other than sending money? I don’t know, I don’t know your skills. I don’t know how close you are or what kind of hard work you can provide. But can you as a result of Boulder, or whatever stirs/spurs you to action, extend your support in your community where you can do a great deal of good? I think we all can do that. It’s not always easy. It’s sometimes tedious. But it’s the practicing of Peace on a daily basis that makes the practicing of it in difficult times second nature. Stepping up when the steps are little makes climbing the big stairs easier.

So, yes. Peace. even in the floods. And perhaps, in the aftermath, some activism.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In