Fountains of Peace

I know it has something to do with the ions, but I don’t think it can be all of it. Water is mesmerizing. It’s amazing when it’s still and wonderful when it’s moving.

And lacy sprays of fountains are such a gift. I can watch and watch and watch.

This will always be one of my favorites. So happy it’s back in action in my home town. How lucky that Scott, who took the picture, lives in that town and is just as fascinated by water as I am! If you get a chance, go visit your favorite or any random fountain, let it give you some peace!

Breakfast on the Road to Peace

I am so lucky to have 6 weeks in July and August for both vacation and study. I read, read, read… and that’s fabulous. I try and tuck in visits to family, friends and colleagues. Looking for love in all the right places. Looking for ideas as well.

My husband keeps playing during the summer, and most of the places I’m going are about what I’m reading, what I’m growing for next year and who I know who can keep asking better questions than I’m asking.

So driving is time for thinking.

But on Roadtrips… you gotta eat to keep your strength up, right?

So on my way to my friend Faye’s, I stopped for breakfast. I got up extra early which is not my favorite, but got to drive through Dawn down alongside my beautiful river. And then I stopped at the River House Diner. They make their own raisin bread there. And then they make it into grrrreat french toast. I rarely eat french toast. Breakfast is usually eggs. But when you’re someplace special… Rome and all that!

And there I was, with my lovely mystic fantasy story, which is looking an awful lot like a story about racism now that I’m focusing on that in my thoughts and prayers… It’s a great re-read, which is what I do when I’m reading something challenging for work so it doesn’t interfere with the thinking part of the work!

Great Sunrise. Great Journey. Great Breakfast. Great Book.

And back on the road to Faye’s, where we walk and eat and talk about things that matter.

Peace is often a lovely journey.

Let the Sun Rise on Peace

The Olympics. I know what some of the problems are. I don’t understand why they’re not permanently in Greece and just frequently improved. I know they cost a lot of money and countries, particularly this one, hide their social ills…

And I love them. I love the all the athletes. I love all the sports, even the ones I don’t like (boxing, yeah… not so much but still…) I love the precision and the daring; the strategy and the just plain chutzpah! I love the strength and the cunning! I love the hope and the pushing oneself beyond what is possible for any person to do!

I love that there’s a way for athletes whose countries don’t have a team to compete. I love that there’s a way for refugees to compete.

And people do the most beautiful and astonishing things. Once every four years. Young kids make it. Old farts make it. They take their gifts and they offer them to the world. How great is that? Pretty damned great.

And all the while, most of the time, people are kind and open and interested in meeting the athletes from another country. There is Peace in these games. There is Grace. May there be Peace and Grace in us as well. Let us watch. Let us remember.

May the Peace of the Sun Shine Upon You

This is a great pic. There’s the Sun, falling out of that tiny hole in the clouds, falling on you.

It seemed a gift, this picture from Trish. This little bit of the Sun, with the cooperation of the clouds, has chosen us. Our work is to say yes; to choose back. You know me, what I think we’re to choose back, what I think we’re to say Yes! to is Peace. Our world, and specifically our country, is in deep need of Peace.

What to do? Well, here’s one place I think each and every one of us can make a huge difference. As many I know, I’m disturbed by the people, young and old, who think that opting out of civic responsibility is a choice. Today I’m really talking about voting.

Voting is a gift of the republic. It is also a gift to the republic. We are to vote in the best interests of the republic, not simply based on our hopes and disappointments.

If people are put in harm’s way as a result of our actions, we are responsible. Are people safe? Are they fairly paid? Do they have insurance? Do they have enough to eat? These are things we cannot put in jeopardy. Or perhaps farther in jeopardy.

Not getting what we want in an election is a call to be involved in the long term, rather than notice to abstain.

Voting is just one thing where we need to be involved over the long haul to make a difference, or to make the difference we want.

I keep reading that good, responsible, caring people, when it comes to voting, fail to cast our votes in ways that will protect the people most in need.

This means that we must wake up. We are our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers. We are our mothers’ and our fathers’ keepers and our aunties’ and our uncles’ and all our children, and they are all our children.

We do not stand apart. People’s lives depend on our actions. The Sun shines on us… we are responsible for Peace. Let us lift our faces to the light. And let us do what is just. Peace is all about Justice.

Getting on a Peace Boat

The refugees that cram on boats on their way from Syria to Lesbos take their lives and their family’s lives in their hands. We really need to consider how awful it must be to take your tiny children and pray your way across deep water.

On this particular boat there were good reasons for prayer. the boat sprang a leak. Only a half an hour from land, but still a half hour. As if these refugees weren’t already frightened enough by what they had left and what was ahead of them.

In all probability they all would have drowned if the Mardini sisters had not been in the boat and been brave and resourceful. They got on the Peace Boat and they brought it in to shore. Amazing young women.

Here’s wishing Yusra the best as she competes in the Olympics. Here’s wishing that all of us might participate in Peace.

The Peace of a Life of Service

“May I help you?” When someone asks that question and means it, it can be the start to a wonderful interaction.

“Thank you, yes you can.” Who doesn’t want to be helped.

Sadly, many people are not as gracious in their responses as the question demands. People don’t understand that service and courtesy are not to be taken for granted. Civility becomes more and more obsolete, it seems. And gratitude sadly out of fashion. (Fear not, we can bring it back!)

But to make your living on the question, if you allow it, can become about the way you face the world and not about the way people respond. And indeed, mostly, the more honestly you say the words, the more genuinely people respond.

To be of service. Each of us should experience making our living in service. It changes you. Hopefully, it makes you embrace gratitude and civility. Hopefully it makes you tip better as you appreciate that, for the most part, the people who ask that question with every interaction are often fiercely underpaid.

But to ask that question and mean it can be exhilarating. As frustrating as it can be, it can be a way of Peace. And all of us, whatever our work, might learn to ask that question and base our interactions on it. How may I help you? I try to ask it of people I meet. I try to ask it of Peace.

Volunteering for Peace!

Send me! Those of us eager to serve often go in a little earlier than we might. Sometimes we could have used a little extra study on the lay of the land… But there we are: Send me!

Volunteering to lead in the Peace struggle is a good thing nonetheless. Stepping out alone, sticking out, always desperately feared as a child, can be a thing of beauty.

Leading can offer others the opportunity to come on along. And when they do: change happens.

So there are deeper levels to think about here… but there’s also the wild wonderfulness of the corn erupting in the midst of a soybean field, doing what it does best. Whatever we do for laughter, whatever we do for Peace it’s a good thing! Be brave. Stand out in your field! Peace!

The Peace of Watermen and Women

You know me. I’ll wax eloquent all year long about the water. There is no time more special for me than the summer when I’m able to swim outside — I know, you’ve heard me say this often enough — but I like watching water almost as much as I like floating in it.

Its Beauty stills my soul.

But in all my water rapture, I often forget that there are those who make their living, a very hard-working living on the water.

Water is beautiful, but it can be dangerous. It can also just be unpleasant. When the cold wind blows frigid water or the boat is rocking in the tempest, it’s got to be a challenge. And yet this is the work they’ve chosen.

And so often (and lobsters are certainly a lovely case in point), the bounty they bring back is extraordinary.

Water is full of lovely gifts, but it doesn’t always make it easy to retrieve them.

So here’s to the Watermen and women and all they do for us. Here’s to their hard work and generosity. And here’s to the Peace they make with their work and the Water.

And oh, I am so grateful for Summer and the Peace I find in the laps I swim. I am so lucky.

Spice Up That Peace!

I find it interesting that Peace is often categorized as bland and calm. Where is it written that Peace can’t be interesting, multi-leveled and, well, spicy? In fact, how could it be anything else. For Peace to be Peace, everyone has to be involved. That’s going to make it confusing, fragile, and fabulous.

We often talk about it as a blanket of Peace. But I suspect that blanket is more like a wild and wonderful art quilt, full of fabulous colors and movement. Perhaps there are places in the quilt not quite resolved but working toward discordant beauty.

When I think about it, nice gets the same bad rap. I’ll admit, I always thought nice was sort of namby-pamby. Now it’s a thing I most aspire to. Being nice, which doesn’t preclude having opinions or doing justice, makes space for people and allows them to be that which all of us want… to be seen. So now I no longer think of niceness as “nice,” said in that cooing voice.

Niceness is radical kindness and hospitality — or it should be. It sees what is and offers balm and works for solutions.

Peace is wild and challenging as well.

Maybe it’s even spicy. Maybe they both need some onion and garlic started in the pan… Come, sit with me, and enjoy the bounty spiced up with laughter. Peace and Niceness are not bland they include the world and let cultures and customs overlap.

Here’s to Spicy Peace. Here’s to raucous Niceness. Here’s to all of us, imperfect as we are living the perfect, rocky, stretching, trying, failing, succeeding life — together.

Sweet, Summer, Sabbath Peace

This weekend may be the first since I started my reading sabbatical that I’m really living the life that’s planned… reading, writing, swimming, summer foods. Not too much more.

It’s such an overwhelming privilege to have this time to just fill up. I fill up with interesting books. I fill up with strength. I fill up with silence. I fill up with summer fruits and veggies.

It’s amazing. It’s necessary, because I’m pretty depleted by the end of the year, but that doesn’t make it less amazing.

I don’t really have time to read during the year, not things of substance — and often I don’t have the brain space to absorb anything that’s not directly related to what’s going on that minute.

I love my job. But I love new ideas as well. I love the people I work with… but it takes me a while to settle into taking in rather than giving out mode… So… oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

And today. Sorta grey and cloudy. I’d better get my swim in early. I’d better pile a cucumber on some bread. Isn’t life grand? Well, my life is grand. I hope yours is

Sweet Summer Sabbath Peace to you, my friends. I wish you long conversations with friends and quiet times with yourself. And a leisurely swim, or whatever does it for you… Peace. Fill up, so you can give out.

And enjoy dawn in Lewisburg!

Sacred Village

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