Zucchini Peace?

It’s come to this. I’ve just created an analogy between zucchinis and Peacemaking… A bridge too far?

When I said I would write about summer vegetables, I knew I’d have to write about the zucchini… I mean, it’s a constant of the garden box… So I thought, tackle it early in the month and get it done.

People write differently. I’m never exactly sure where I’m going to go with a piece, whether it’s a sermon or a poem. I’m one of those writers who hears from her subjects rather than one who starts with a plan. I write to find out what I think/feel/believe, and then I formulate and format. So there was the lowly zucchini, the butt of so many garden jokes, imparting its wisdom about the importance of versatility and willingness to get along and, oh, by the way, the gift of abundance.

If you live in central PA, people are as likely to be making chocolate cake with this squash as they are ratatouille! Oh, they exclaim it makes the cake so moist. I’m sure it does, but if I wasn’t eating that 15 inch coconut cake at our local diner yesterday, I’m not wasting the calories on zucchini cake! I’ll take mine with sauce, thanks anyway!

I dawns on me as I write this, that versatility and willingness to get along or go along are not always good… it’s up to us… isn’t it always? Nature provides what she does, in this case in great abundance, the question is what do we do with it? So, my dears, wishing you the Peace of the big zucchini!

Sabbath Peace and Potato Salad

Of course, it would have helped if I’d have written this post yesterday, and we all could have prepared by making a big ol’ bowl of potato salad to mellow overnight in the fridge.

There’s something fabulous about having a day when the food is made in the fridge and all you have to do is pull it out. Some cold protein, a couple salads, an icy slice of watermelon. mmmmmmmmmm. and life is grand. Add people and it’s a party. Add a book and it’s relaxation. Either way it’s Sabbath living and that’s pretty grand.

Maybe I’ll clean off the porch before I go over to my sister’s this afternoon, because the weather is really just perfect for porch sitting. What will you do to revel in your life? It’s a fair question, I think…

Peace, my friends. Enjoy the day.

Peach Peace

Every time we come to a new fruit or vegetable, I think, “there simply isn’t anything better than this…” whatever this may be… and so I’m stuck, obsessing about some particular piece of loveliness until Nature and agriculture’s next gift comes along.

Right now, it’s peaches. Oh, so good. Not those cue balls they sell in grocery stores, but the juicy, run-down-your face things you buy at your local farm stand. Sweet. and weirdly fuzzy. Why did that evolve, do you suppose? Certainly not just to entrance those of us who devour them! And of course the camp is divided between the entranced and those who just can’t stand the feel of the fuzz on their lips.

They are, for me, the quintessential August fruit. You can’t eat them elegantly, they’re juicy when ripe. You delight in them and their stickiness. And what more is asked of us than that we delight in creation. Give thanks, say grace and eat a peach. And then consider how your being in the world might offer people delight… even Peace. Be a peach for Peace, how about it?

Lemon Peace

Yummmm. Sounds like pie, doesn’t it. Lemon Chiffon? Lemon Meringue? I’m beginning to wonder if August isn’t going to be the month of foods in celebration of the harvest. I could probably do a week on tomatoes! Nature and the seasons keep delivering bounty, what can I do but wonder and write odes!

My friend Susan Willm taught me to make the best lemonade (using the lowly Joy of Cooking Cookbook), although her lemonade was made from, drum roll, Meyers Lemons. Oh, yeah. That raises the bar more than a notch!

I don’t drink lemonade often, but when I do, I’m transported to childhood and delight. It’s one of the few sugary drink treats that Mom ever had in the house. (she must have liked it a lot!) And let’s not forget limeade — swoon.

But lemons… those tart beauties are the beginnings of many favorite things in my life and the transformers of other favorite things. Pour a glass for a friend! Pour a glass for yourself! Drink deeply! Savor the sweet taste of Peace. Consider how sharing increases the delight. Ah, August! Summer!

Sweet August Peace

I know, I know, dog days and all that… but I love the sheer laziness of August accompanied by peaches and watermelon and cantaloup and tomatoes and, and… I love the act of being present to what I eat and of carving out a bit of peace and quiet in a noisy, busy world.

And I admit that I speak as a non agricultural person. I’m not toiling in the noon-day sun for low wages. I am not a gardener (so not a gardener), so I am enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labor… if I really say grace for the food I eat, I must consider the well-being of everyone from local farmers to migrant farm-workers as I celebrate.

But there is also time, indeed there must be time for meditating on the deliciousness of a ripe peach whose juice drips down your face. There’s probably a poem in there… And there’s certainly a peach for me to eat! So I’ll go do that very thing. And I’ll think slow and Peaceful thoughts. You do the very same thing, too, ‘K? I’ve got a bowlful, if you want a peach, I’m happy to share.

And enjoy Nancy Cleaver’s incredibly beautiful mandala: Organic Peace, a water color she painted in 2009. She says this about the design: “This holds an ambiguous natural form for you to interpret. Is it a chrysanthemum, a shell, a seedpod, a cone? Whatever you see, it may perhaps be your totem for peace, calling you.”

Peace calls us and sometimes it just blesses us where we are. For me, August is one of those months.

Peace Away, Peace at Home

I’m not an outdoor kinda girl, except in theory… and of course, unless it’s a beach or a lake or a pond in the summer. I’m probably the only concrete Pagan Priestess you’ve ever met! But I know how important it is to our well-being to be in nature. This cruise was great this way, it was sorta like living in a travelogue! Look, Nature! Over there, Beauty! (My friend and I loved the list of things that made your brain work longer, brushing teeth, lowering your cholesterol, drinking green tea and watching nature shows. pretty doable, eh?)

But we all need a break from our lives to be able to see our lives. And we all need to make a pilgrimage now and again to a place that reminds us of our insignificance in the face of such grandeur and abundance. We need to practice awe.

This trip offered me that opportunity. Where do you go to be amazed back to silence and Peace? Where are your prayers for a better world startled out of you? Alaska did this for me.

A Peace of Convenience

When I want to decouple from my busy and intense life, I tend to read fluff. Nothing shuts your brain off at the end of the day like a romance, mystery or fantasy novel. Some people like TV; it doesn’t work for me. So, in all of the regency romances (man, I’m REALLY baring my soul here!), there’s conversation about marriages of convenience.

So how is a trip to Alaska like a marriage of convenience you might ask? And what does that have to do with Peace exactly? Well, as I said, it’s not so much a marriage of convenience as it is a village of convenience. 50 people getting to know one another in 10 hour stretches. You find out a surprising amount about people… maybe not so much what they do back in the real world, but how they treat one another, how much they laugh… those things.

Well, Alaska is like Love, it seems, and conquers all. There we all were, hanging out the window oohing and ahhing at every little moose and caribou. We were joined together in wonder… and that made for a very pleasant, Peaceful village. Alaska triumphed and we all lived together Peacefully and happily, with generous offers to trade seats for great photos. It was a short-lived village, but it prospered.

Wonder. Beauty. Nature. It changes us. It helps us make Peace. Why, we wonder, don’t we let that happen more often? Why won’t we do it in the villages where we live and love everyday?

Eternal Sabbath Peace

On a very hot summer day in plain view of the majestic mountain we released a small bit of our parents’ “till.” They were always sorry the mountain was wrapped in clouds when they had traveled there 20 years ago. Today the mountain was in full glory under a cloudless sky. Here their spirits will linger and rejoice in the beauty and the Peace and quiet. Gilead is many places, but the balm is constant.

Lingering on a beautiful day and rejoicing in the bounty is a pretty good idea. Resting in Peace is not something to be confined to the afterlife. We might do well to occasionally put our burdens down and rest in the Peace of Possibility. Wishing you a blessed Sabbath.

Peace? Mostly a Pest

Mosquitoes are part of Nature. I have to keep saying that. I keep trying to find healthy keep aways for them and sometimes resort to the horrible stuff. In Alaska? Horrible stuff. “All day, all night, sucking blood…” (If you’re old enough, you’ll have trouble getting that earworm outta your mind!) My One with Nature philosophy gets completely disrupted by that high pitched whining in your ear. Although these are the basso profundo o mosquitoes! It’s a wonder these puppies fly. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

One of the ways you knew you had begun to see your fellow travelers as your village — as folk waited for the bus to go to the train, those who had had enough foresight (and had believed the rumors) to bring their bug spray along, ritually handed off their deep woods off on the veranda as they left. People were practically weeping. “How can I repay you?” they asked. “Share the wealth!” was always the answer.

But they were the only downside to this incredible park. Somehow the magic of sitting on a deck at 10 pm in the midst of incredible beauty wasn’t tainted by the darned bugs (at least if you shared liberally in the magic potion). The golden light in the season of the midnight sun is an astonishing gift. (Just make sure you make sure the bugs have left the room before you go to bed. They are not fun overnight guests!)

Majestic Peace – Past and Present

My parents made it to Denali, but they never saw the mountain… that and the Galapagos Island were two of Dad’s great regrets. The privilege of Denali, and oh, we saw it and saw it and saw it was magnified somehow by knowing we completed a journey for them.

It’s a gorgeous Mountain. And the terrain is fascinating. Once again, Nature offers us a different glimpse of her power and Beauty. There is great Peace in this land that cannot be disturbed by the humans. A geologist friend says: Mother Earth bats last. In this place, you understand, whatever we do, she will triumph. There are many sweet beings whose existence we threaten, but the powerful Earth will prevail. It’s a sobering thought.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In