The Priestess Is In

Peace Team Sabbath

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If today’s word is teamwork, today’s job might well be taking the day off to look at your work and decide that it is good. And while you’re puffing yourself up about your own work, look at what a great job your neighbor has done as well. Offer him or her a glass of tea or lemonade or beer and reflect on this week’s accomplishments… and then, take a nap, take a swim, take a walk…

Blessed Sabbath, my friends, and oh, did you see the moon last night. No? well, look again tonight.

Teamwork… one of the most important things about it is choosing your team wisely and then relying on their work… Peaceful Sabbath, everyone.

PeaceJune23

Peace and Deliberateness

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When I was looking for the right form of the word Deliberateness to use… it’s rather an awkward word, I admit… I wondered for a while if it was really different than intention… But I think so. I think deliberateness includes intention, but it also includes being aware and being careful. So in the pursuit of both Sacred Vocabulary and Peace, it seemed a good word to add.

I often have clear intentions, but I also often fall in the “ready, fire, aim” class of doers, so this is an important word for me. Peace is a fragile endeavor. Much of the work can be accomplished with good will and large vision. But you have to be aware, present and somewhat self-reflective, as well.

If ever a word argued for partnership and cooperation in my life, this would be it! And do you know, I don’t believe either of those words have yet made it onto the vocabulary list. What was I thinking… perhaps that vocabulary is something that develops slowly and relative to the needs of the situation and the wisdom!

So move about your day today with great deliberateness…see how that changes things. It will certainly slow things down and if your weather is like ours, it will be a wise response to the heat…

PeaceJune22

Peace Harmony

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Well, Happy Solstice, my friends! One of the things that’s been hard to adjust to since we’ve returned is that we have dark here (and clouds, barely saw a cloud in Alaska). They have light there, a lot of it, especially as we were bearing down on the Solstice. But on the other hand, I was so reassured to see that the well beloved fireflies have returned — just in time for the California kids to arrive next week. oh, there will be ice cream and fireflies at the Purple Cow!

I haven’t even begun to process Alaska, things to catch up on after time away. But I as aware when I was there, in that vast land of mountains, sky and water, that when left to itself, the land has its own kind of harmony, even if it’s sometimes harsh. And in the face of so much land and so few people, the people will-he-nil-he live in harmony with the land and the seasons as well. There are lessons to be taken from that, for sure… And Mother Earth is inclined to teach those lessons.

And I guess that says as much about Harmony as anything, doesn’t it? Living with what is here, what we’re given? and then finding the place to add our voice to the chorus! What could be sweeter? What would be better work? What could be more Peaceful?

Remember back when Coke wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? Well, harmony is imperfect, but it’s fun to look for and fun to participate in.

PeaceJune21

Peace Constiuency

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My friends, I’ve posted these for your enjoyment while I’m away enjoying nature and time with my sister. I’ll be back live by the 21 of June.

So a friend wrote the other day, a bit fractiously, about finding a word for why one remained silent in the face of a group, to which one belongs, shall we say, shortsightedness. I suggested that it was for the good of the constituency.

It was the only word I could come up with. And then thought, hmmmmm. obviously I needed to muse about it. I like the word tribe, but tribe is an exclusive word. So, I worked on constituency a bit. It’s a beginning, because it’s new to me as well… and ten lines is just a start. but we need to know who our tribe is, because Peace has to be negotiated with them in mind and with their help. hence the tongue-biting. except when it’s not for either the tribe or self!

PeaceJune16

Peaceful Forgiveness

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My friends, I’ve posted these for your enjoyment while I’m away enjoying nature and time with my sister. I’ll be back live by the 21 of June.

Forgiveness is not really all about the person who wounded you. It’s greatly about your own psyche. If someone has done you grievous harm, it may be that you want to accept that it happened and forgive yourself for having been in harm’s way.

I hate the emphasis we’ve seen in the past couple years on cheap forgiveness. When heinous things happen, they remain heinous… and as I said perhaps we accept that things happened and that this person was damaged and sick. But we don’t need to embrace them. But we do need to let go of the past.

At the same time, if someone has done something that really is forgiveable and apologized, asking for forgiveness, why are you withholding forgiveness? Because you’re really the one now holding the weight of the action.

One of the most important parts of forgiveness, I believe is to put down the weight when we are ready. It’s a thought to entertain… I don’t think Peace happens without letting go of the grudge or making sense of the past. There has been the most unbelievable reconciliation work done in Africa, because people have confessed. The perpetrators of violence and the recipients are now, once again, living side by side.

PeaceJune14

Practice Peace

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My friends, I’ve posted these for your enjoyment while I’m away enjoying nature and time with my sister. I’ll be back live by the 21 of June.

I’m not sure what there is to say about this, beyond 10,000 hours. It takes that many to get good at something. If you have a Peace-skill, Peace-ability to develop, better get crackin’! Peace is hard work, but the world needs us and what we have to offer. Let’s become very good at applying our skills to the making of Peace.

PeaceJune9

Courageous Peace

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Courage is such a under-appreciated trait. There are so many people living courageously every day. Getting out of bed and accomplishing the day’s chores sometimes requires greater courage than folks who decide to summit a mountain.

Courage for soldiers is probably as great living in the aftermath as in the moment when training and adrenalin are surging through their bodies.

And the courage to work unflaggingly for Peace. we need that. Let us encourage one another. What we always need is the courage to be present to the moment and respond to the needs to the best of our abilities. Here’s wishing us all the courage to live our lives for Peace.

(I’ll be off for two weeks, but keep checking the website, posts are scheduled to appear! Probably not everyday, but often enough that you’ll know I thought about you as I prepared to leave on my two-week vacation with my sister! Peace, my friends.)

PeaceJune7

Peace Adventure

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No really, I didn’t plan this when I set out to write about a month full of words we might want to live into. But on the day I write about adventure, I’m off on one! Today I climb on a bus to New York with about 35 other people to attend a gallery opening.

My sister’s bestie from high school, a woman with whom she got up to all sorts of shennanigans while being 11th grad Girl Scouts traveling across Europe, has her first gallery opening in New York City.

It’s so easy to turn your life into a rut and never climb out. And yet, the trip to school is an adventure if we exhale that breath we are holding. We’re alive. We’re with people we love (even if at the moment we’d like our cheeky child to be kind just for once be pleasant to her sister or brother), and life is therefore grand. What do we notice as we travel the same ground day after day.

I think one of the most important periods of my life was the time I went to feed my mom two times a day for two plus years. Not only did I never exactly know what was going to happen when I got there, I began to pay attention to the landscape. Oh, not always, there was plenty of routine, but there began to be places where I could tell that summer was folding his tents or spring was making her way. Suddenly the everydayness of it became exciting.

But it’s important to take adventures outside our daily lives. Because they teach us so much about not only others but also about ourselves and our ruts. Once we peek our head over the rut, life looks very different. Once we’re outside, we begin to notice that there’s a huge difference between peaceful and Peace. We’re working toward Peace. Being peaceful is helpful but not mandatory. Adventures? I don’t know if they’re mandatory, but they’re a lot of fun! (even if slightly scary in the moment!)

And of course for me, today is sort of a practice adventure for a HUGE adventure. On Friday, Deb and I go to Philly and spend the night. Saturday we get on a plane to Vancouver. Sunday we get on a ship to cruise the Alaska Inner Passage… and then days later a train to Denali National Park. Lots of fun ahead. And no internet. and I’m not sure how much cell phone coverage. Lots of being present to the moment and the beauty and my beloved sisty. Maybe some self-reflection. Definitely some memory-making. Lots of blessing counting for my sweet love and rich life. Oh, Hooray! Oh, Joy! Oh! A two-week Sabbath. Oh, Adventure!

PeaceJune6

Reverent Peace

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I’m realizing how much I believe that our attitudes are choices — and important ones. To be reverent about the world in which we live is a responsibility, I believe, for the gift we have been given.

I recognize however… and I haven’t found a way to acknowledge this in the poetry, that not everyone can do that. Not everyone’s neurons are firing cheerfully away. Many people work to get out of bed and continue their lives. Every day, a struggle. A woman wrote to remind me of this the other day… Struggling to understand the writer’s responsibility to widen my view. Am I the poet for this woman? should I be?

I’ll keep thinking about it. And I’ll work to keep trudging reverently toward Peace, if that’s not an oxymoron… Peace. Hard work. Awe. It’s all part of the puzzle.

PeaceJune5

Prayerful Peace

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In my own experience, I find prayer a powerful tool, and certainly hospital studies bear that out. But how each of us defines prayer is different. And I’ve come to believe it is not the definition of prayer that determines its efficacy, but merely the doing of it.

Some of us may not call it prayer when we hold someone in our hearts, but I no longer believe, and I know, this is my understanding, that prayer requires a deity to receive the plea or thank you. Prayer is an action. We pray or we don’t. How you pray and how I pray will be different no matter what our religious tradition…

But I’ve also come to believe it is not only good for the one prayed for but also the one praying… my thoughts, understandings, beliefs keep evolving. In the meantime, I hold you and our precious world in my heart and I will continue to pray for all of us. Peace be with you. Peace be with us all.

PeaceJune4