Defiant, Present Beauty and Peace

Today the news from my community is sobering. One woman’s sister has been diagnosed with a challenging illness. One woman’s brother has been shot and killed in the line of duty, leaving a wife and 5 children, with one more on the way. How do we support these women and help them feel loved in a world world whose meaning has shifted for them?

Walking around the corner on a gloomy day, it’s helpful to encounter unexpected Beauty, present and vital long past its due date. Everywhere else around here, tulips are stem… These long, rangy beauties are still tightly furled. They promise: more beauty to come!

In the face of tragedy or simple daily challenge, we must persist with Beauty and Peace. We must struggle to figure out what that means. We must persist. One step at a time toward Peace and Beauty.

Peacemaking: Why We Do It and Who Supports Us

We’ve only to look around, and this we do easily and often to see why we make Peace. Who are your Beloved and your Peace Reasons beyond the sheer ethics and vast need for Peace?

It’s far less likely for us to take a good accounting of those people in our circle and their skills and our skills and how we complement one another.

It is however a useful exercise. We don’t make Peace on our own. But if we’re to undertake the pursuit of Peace because of the people in our lives, we should do it to the best of our ability and that means we want to join forces with others who also Peace.

It’s so much easier to undertake tasks together. Who is in your Peace Circle?

Peace on and from our River

The Susquehanna is so beautiful. Your river is probably beautiful too.

As they bless us with their Beauty and their Bounty, we must also bless them.

We must care for them.

Clean water for everyone is a great start on Peace. Water you can drink, water you can fish in, water you can swim in, water you can walk beside… wait, am I sounding like my (Middle Susquehanna) Riverkeeper? You bet I am.

Clean Water for Peace. Us for Clean Water. Us for Peace. Pretty simple in theory. Let’s make it true in practice.

Disturbing the Peace to Make the Peace

Jays are wild and noisy birds. You know when they’re in the neighborhood. When something’s wrong, you really know. They shriek and holler and dart by in beautiful blue.

Right now, in all our neighborhoods, I think there are many things going wrong. Democracy is under attack. if we don’t step up, who will?

I think it’s time to make some noise. It’s time to show our Beauty.

I’m actually a very Peaceable demonstrator (although I do love me some loud and rhythmic chant.) But my democracy is important to me, and I’m not going to see it waltz off without any resistance, without any persistence.

Welcome backs sisters to the Persisterhood!

Let us be like the Jays. Let us be bold. Let us be noisy. Let us be beautiful! Let us be like the Jays for Peace.

Flowing with the Stream, Digging out the Silt, Peace

Too often, I suspect it’s those of us who have caused problems who want to let the problems just be water over the dam, gone and forgotten. Who, after all, wants to look at their mistakes?

And those who have been harmed are left to dig out the silt. (Still not looking!)

Maybe it’s time to reverse that. Maybe it’s time for us to be willing to let go of some of what we fear others might do to us and dig out the silt so the water and the waterway are clear.

Am I being obscure? I’m thinking about racism. We’re astonished that People of Color have “thin-skins” about racism… and yet the term “white fragility” grew out of white people’s inability to look at the impact of racism on People of Color.

Time to undo that. Time for change! Some things may not be allowed to be “just water over the dam.” They can’t be because people are wounded by our casual participation in institutionalized racism and oppression. Time to grab for the shovels to dig out the muck we helped to lodge at the base of the dam. It’s not glorious work. And in the silt is our embarrassment at our complicity. Yet, and, yet — Imagine how freeing it might be to not have to go through all the contortions to shut ourselves down to the damage evil does to our souls. We still need free flowing waters. We still need to remove the build-up. More than anything, we need Peace. Until we stop participating in it, racism is going to continue to muck things up. So let’s not. Let’s figure out how to flow, how to dig, how to Peace.

Beauty is as Beauty does; Peace, too.

Whatever our talents, they are to be appreciated, developed, and employed.

As children, we have been taught to both denigrate our own talents, “oh, really, but I’m lousy at that,” and to inflate them “i’m the best at that,” particularly when we’ve not applied any discipline to what may or may not be a skill.

Skills, talents, and gifts are too often ill-utilized, either because we’ve not done the work to develop them or because we hesitate to employ them, simply dismissing their value.

Time to take a good look in the mirror and tot up those gifts. If there were ever a time the world needs our gifts to be used for Peace and the well-being of everyone and the Earth we live on… it is now. We will live in Peace only by making it.

We will make Peace with our gifts.

Graduations, New Beginnings, Peace

Hopefully before moving on you pause to pay attention to where you are. Look around. The song is right, “We may never pass this way again.” Therefore it’s good to pause and imprint it. Remember…

I like graduation ceremonies. Well, we know, I like all kinds of ceremonies.

But I think they’re particularly important to help us understand that we’re moving on…

It’s a huge cue to stop and think about what comes next. Thank you to the past and an opening to where we are now and what we’re thinking about for our futures.

Endings and Beginnings and Peace. May we bless our endings and begin again in Love and Peace.

Uprooting the Old, Planting the New, Peace

We think of trees as standing tall and holding fast, but they have a life cycle. Over time, their roots weaken. And then, as so many did in the winds yesterday, they fall over. If we haven’t been tending them properly, if we’re lucky, they don’t fall on houses. Yesterday, we weren’t so lucky in this region.

It’s hard not to draw analogies to the institutions tumbling down around us… especially since we’ve paid so little attention to our infrastructure. We have to ask ourselves if the right institutions are being remade…

But when the old fall, we then have to ask ourselves if we’re going to plant the right trees in their place. Since those trees were planted 200, 100, or even simply 50 years ago, we’ve learned a lot. Let us plant with what we’ve known for the world we need.

Wishing us all the blessings of Spring budding, Summer shade, Autumn color and black Winter branches writing in the skies. Hoping that we all gather to plant new and tender Peace saplings.

Movie Theaters of Peace

I am not the world’s biggest movie buff. I do love our little meticulously restored Art Deco theater in town, however. There used to be thousands of these, and now simply a few remain. But ours is gorgeous. And the beauty is a big seller for the woman who goes to movies sometimes begrudgingly. In addition, they have butter, real butter, for their popcorn. Large buttered, parfait style, please… (they layer it!). If that doesn’t help me wander a long way down the Peace road, what would?

I try to be judicious about movies if I’m going to go. A long time ago I decided no violence. I keep trying to find movies that lead me toward possibilities and hope. Or giggles. I’m big on giggles.

Every day and every day as i see more ugly parsimony taking over my country, I try to push more hopeful encouragement out. We can get by with a little help from our friends.

Together, let us watch films that encourage us to keep building Hope and Peace in the world.

Fleeting, but Powerful, Beauty

Because flowers come and go so quickly, it’s easy to think of them as fragile. I guess, in fact, they are in one way. But they are also immensely powerful. All of the plants energy has gone into this beauty whose job is fall apart after having attracted the pollinators and protected its reproductive organs. We’re not supposed to cut the leaves while green because they’re doing their little photosynthesis thing for the plant.

But as far as most of us think, the tulip’s job is Beauty. Proud, loud Beauty and delicate, fragile Beauty. (if you cut them, remember to put a penny in the vase and it will keep them happily upright — not fake news!). They come in Spring and offer themselves for our delight. They remind us the Sun is returning. If rain and wind don’t do them in, they stand as proud sentinels until they fall apart.

But they grow tall and beautiful and please us mightily. They bring their own kind of Peace. And they are instructive. They use their energy to do what they’re best at and then they go away for the year. May the Fourth, Friends!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

The Priestess Is In