Helping Peace

Writing about the Three Sisters made me remember other helping plants. You wonder, when thinking about the bold Marigolds, who discovered that they worked well together, or did the plants just make their way to one another in some garden?

It’s pretty much the same for Peace, isn’t it? We want to do Very Important Work with Peace, but much of the work that’s really needed is leveraging Peace, making it better where we’re able. Some people’s gifts are big and splashy (just like the red hot tomato!). The rest of us are best suited to be sturdy soldiers in the garden of Peace.

And that, my friends, is not nuthin’!

“All we are saying, is give Peace a chance.” The chorus may have started with a sit in, but it needs to continue with concrete, consistent (hard) work for Peace.

The Peace of Three Sisters

I was late yesterday getting to my musing. It had been a challenging day. Off to the cancer doc with my sister in the morning and the news is not good. We’re working and waiting to understand what hope will look like as the situation develops. Strange how a limbo changes from hell to a large and hopeful plane… At the same time I was needing to focus to write a funeral for a member’s beloved father. Focus wasn’t coming easily and all the hours at the doc made me aware of a low level panic in the back of my mind.

I’m actually not much of a procrastinator and perfectionist. I’m more of a mediocre and done and then exhale and polish kinda girl. So finishing the night before is difficult for me and feels disrespectful to the family, but then you do what you can. And Deb has been very sick. And she is very sick. Although a short-term treatment may have helped her feel better and may allow her to have more options… whatever your choices, options are what you want. Choosing is powerful.

Her short-term treatment was a vast relief for those of us who love her who have seen her plummet down hill in the past week. By last evening she was walking without the walker and had color in her face. And I had a bit of space and relief to write.

But having finished the funeral, there was the musing. I could skip a day I suppose. In these instances, people would understand. But I find the writing fulfilling and completing. But what to write about? I’d had corn for dinner… did I write about corn? I’d started to, but then I thought wait, what were the Three Sisters? These three plants were the staples in a Mezzo-American Agricultural. It spread over much of North America with a few changes.

In addition to making a full protein and giving us lots of essential vitamins and minerals, they care for one another. OK, that’s a bit of anthropomorphism… But they give one another what they need. It was an important message for me as I consider how to care tenderly for my sister, whom i love, giving her what she needs not what I and a thousand of her well-meaning friends believe she needs. So there are three sisters teaching me what they know… do what you do best. Thanks, Sacred Girls. It helps to have mentors and role-models.

Cucumber Peace

Cucumbers are coolness personified as far as I’m concerned. I love them in so many ways. yum! They show up in so many different cuisines and with so many different herbs. In Mexico street vendors marry their coolness with mayonnaise and cayenne. Ay Caramba! (and yum!)

And then, still wandering along that coast, I was at a spa that had a whole big vat filled with oranges, mint and cucumbers. It was the most decadent thing I could imagine. Soaking in a hot tub after a mud bath sipping on icy cold cucumber drink. Drink the drink and I’ve got the whole experience!

In Sweden, cucumbers were ubiquitous. That’s the first time I met the “English” seedless, burpless cucumber. All year long, you piled them high on your open-faced cheese sandwich and my mamma often had a bowl of them in a vinegar sugar mixture in the pantry. I don’t make a cheese sandwich that I can’t feel her love.

Back at home, my mom used to slice them up alongside the carrots and celery that often made an appearance on the lunch table. Filling up with fiber and goodness (with just a little salt.) She also made the vinegar/sugar dish from time to time…

When Debbie married into a slavic family I was introduced to the creamy version of cucumber salad… and that was all over New York when I lived there. Then I discovered them chopped finely on my favorite cold sesame noodles. There really is no end to the ways I enjoy my cucumbers.

And so as I was thinking about cucumbers last night, it dawned on me that as hot-headed and blooded people worked to make peace, a cool cucumber drink might go a long way toward soothing the atmosphere. And consider… it’s good for you. All that green vitamin C and no sugar? Yum.

So soothing, cooling cucumbers to you, my dears, and may we all be united in the Peace of a summer afternoon…

Soft-serve Peace

Every summer our kids come to visit. We are so lucky. Me particularly. Not having had kids myself and now getting to add the soft blessing of Grannianni to my list of nicknames is priceless. I’m awkward at the grandmother thing, there are things you learn as a mom, that makes this transition easy. So, I struggle a bit…

But one thing my mom taught me, that I can put to good use with the littles, is the sense of occasion and the building of traditions. And the soft-serve ice-cream place is one of those places. It is magical on a warm summer evening. To sit out under the trees, while the kids are playing and to watch the fireflies light up the soybean field next door, is just lovely. To sit there with a friend or with my Sweet Pea… equally grand.

We don’t do it often, and that makes it even sweeter. But we layer the memories on the same way the soft ice cream piles up in a cup. And then no matter where we eat soft ice cream, it’s piled with the memories of the place where we hold hands to watch the fireflies or our children and our grandchildren. Sacred ground, indeed!

And here in the country, the ice cream reflects the season… strawberry, peach, pumpkin, each in its own seasonally appointed time… and right after pumpkin, it closes down for the season, not to open again until after Easter. Being the country, Easter is proclaimed on their sign. Everyone in the neighborhood now puzzles to figure out how the resurrection, bunnies, eggs and ice cream are related. But they are somehow, and that’s the way it is.

That’s a lot of delight for a small cone to impart! But even a small cone is big enough to carry the memories.

Tossed Salad Peace

While tossed salad might be a bit confused for a Peace metaphor, it’s probably not far off. A while ago, people suggested that the term melting pot was not as helpful an analogy as it could be and the idea of a salad, where bits of individuality are tossed in merry abandon is really far more what society is like. The more bits, the more interesting! Life is abundant, we need to open up to experience the joy of that, rather than holding on to things so tightly that we squeeze the life out of them…

When we rub up against one another, we take on each other’s flavor a bit… life gets spiced up… balance is established and that’s a good thing, that’s a Peace thing. That’s a beautiful thing.

It’s wrong, I think, to consider Peace as a calm pool… it’s a river, it’s flowing and changing… Peace is like that. Our job is to keep it running smoothly and stop throwing acid into the water.

Oh, dear, now I’m off on a river metaphor and have left the salad to the side. Ah well, rather than fix it, let’s just take our salad to the river and sit in peace and quiet beside it.

Sweet Peace of a wonderful salad to you.

Iced Tea Peace

Nothing gives me more pleasure than a pitcher of cold tea in the fridge … other than perhaps a thermos jug that still has ice tinkling inside. For some reason, I have been sporadic in my tea making this summer. But right now, I have one of those jugs sitting on the counter in my kitchen, and I’ve been running back and forth for two days, filling my glass. (my haven’t they changed jugs for the better, there’s still ice in there this morning!)

Not having tea all ready is actually a sign of my not taking very good care of myself. I caught myself doing a couple half-baked measures that pointed toward iced tea… wound up with cool rather than cold… but finally… or rather again!

That pitcher of tea also makes me more hospitable… Here, c’mon in, sit down, have a glass. We need to encourage whatever it is that makes us feel so at home at home that we want to invite others in… Opening our hearts, our home, extending our hospitality to others is a huge and important first step on the way to Peace. Having a jar of tea in the fridge makes that huge step much, much smaller…

So, for me, there really is a connection between Iced Tea and Peace that moves beyond my own enjoyment of a peaceful glass of tea on the porch… What is the food or drink that most invites you to open… your heart and your home? We need to capitalize on any cues for Peace we can find…

Melon Peace

I realized as I was sending out this message, that here it was hot and humid, and there is no melon in my fridge! That’s an oversight that needs to be connected with a trip to the farm stand today. Mother Nature really concocts some wonderful things, doesn’t she?

I have a picture I treasure of my friend Lorraine and me eating melon on a beach in Corfu. Back in the days before we knew how dangerous sun worshipping was, we were young and tanned and beautiful and thrilling to the taste of watermelon. It was so hot that day and the sun was so bright. We’d hauled that melon on the ferry with us for our day-trip to another side of the island. Oh, it was heaven.

Actually, when I start reminiscing about melon, I can think of many wonderful meals with melon as a focus point… and all of the memories are of slow, relaxed meals. What joy. And it’s not as if eating an abundance of melon is bad for you. Slurp! And how many foods can you say that about?

I don’t know if melon is really a key to World Peace, but I do know that the cultures that don’t grow melons crave them, and the cultures that do relish them. So perhaps, they could be a reminder of the importance of World Peace. Certainly we need reminders. And we need slow meals with friends from cultures all over the world. If we start weaving peace, there is no way they could bring us to war with one another. So, maybe, yes, melon could be a key to World Peace. Let us make it so.

It’s certainly delicious enough to be!

Putting Up Peace

I don’t know what it’s called where you come from, but around here, thanks to German roots, you put up vegetables (up where, one wonders.)

So yesterday faced with far more zucchini than I (even after waxing eloquently about it) could manage, I through it in the crockpot with a whole bunch of other wonderful things, set it on simmer and came back 24 hours later. yum. A whole pot ful… some summer for now, a bit for later in the year.

I’m currently savoring Nature’s bounty over polenta, with just a bit of cheese! yep! Yum!

I don’t know how we’d manage it… whether taking a photo and putting it on our mirror would do it… but imagine if we could take out a little Peace success and fill up/fuel up when we’re not having much luck moving forward… It’s one reason we really need to catalog successes, no matter how small. It hits the reset button, helps us to remember that small successes work and that we have made progress. and hooray for us.

Computer glitches have me running behind… so it’s time for me to finish today’s bounty (sufficient unto the day is the bounty thereto!)

Eat now, put up some abundance for later!

Eggplant Peace

Oh, I know I’m shallow. I know the only reason to make Peace here, there, and everywhere isn’t just so you get to taste the food of other cultures… But it’s not the worst reason, really, it’s not! Food can be an interesting place to enter… and entering to explore beyond the food boundaries…

Those beautiful, comma-shaped Japanese eggplants were an invitation beyond my world. it seems so simple, change the shape, change the spices (but keep the garlic constant) and everything was different. And now I feel differently about the aubergine… and all the other delightful shapes and colors with which the eggplant graces the world.

“Same, same, but different,” isn’t that what they say in Thailand? That’s what the eggplants are and that’s who people are… and that’s one thing that makes life delightful.

Nature offers metaphors everywhere. It’s up to us to explore them and to live beyond them! That way lies Peace.

Lingering Peace

I forget, until it happens again, how absolutely wonderful it is to dine outside in a quiet courtyard as dusk moves in on a summer evening. It can be the most indulgent, sybaritic experience.

I had that experience the other night, and I wonder, why don’t I do more of it. The food doesn’t cost any more, but it always seems to taste better. We all had our little islands of light and conversation in the dusk, but were pulled together by the music… It was a marvelous experience.

And here it is the beginning of August, and I’ve still not set up my porch. Too busy, too hot, too… and yet, some of the best porch sitting is ahead of us… so I’m off to accomplish at least some little part of that today!

It’s good to have lovely indulgences in our lives that take advantage of the beauty of nature, the gifts of the seasons (and of our senses), and the sweetness of good companionship. And it’s important, now and again, to give ourselves the gift of simply being present.

There on Friday night, in a little courtyard off a busy street in Williamsport, over plates of good food, in the company of friends, to the accompaniment of wonderful music, I did that. I hope you find the time to do the same… You are all the reason you need to indulge yourself in Peace.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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