The Priestess Is In

Eating Sabbath Peace in the Berry Moon!

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The sweetness of summer foods. Every year when summer comes, I wonder about spending a year eating in season… not buying anything “fresh” at the supermarket.

We used to do that. They certainly were better about that in Sweden. Salads were almost always cabbage based… cabbages that had been stored in cold cellars alongside the carrots — and they were great!

And what makes that worthwhile is the wonder of how good the food tastes when you eat the first fresh spinach, the first fresh strawberry. oh… yum… The bounty of Mother Earth is extraordinary!

Explosions of tastes and food eaten in comfy outdoor places. I like picnics but i like lunch on the porch with no ants as well!

Lovely slow meals, it’s a great way to observe the Sabbath! Hope yours is Peaceful and Joyful and filled with flavor.

BerryMoonLunacyMay31

Traveling Peace in the Berry Moon

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It was such a silly image, that my suitcases should be excited about a trip i can’t take.

But I love that they’re going traveling… so the fact is I get excited about trips i can’t take.

It’s Summer and I think Summer is about adventures. And if I’m not quite ready to take off on adventures, no reason my friends shouldn’t go and take my light, wheelable luggage with them.

Now I get to wait and hear the stories they tell when they get back. I’m not picky, I’ll take them from my friends, or the luggage. What kind of berries do you think they’ll be eating in British Columbia during this Berry Moon? Mmmm. ooh, wonder if they have ollalaberries for ollalaberry pie?

And Peace of the Road to the friends and the luggage! Fill up with stories!

BerryMoonLunacyMay30

New Land! New Peace!

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New land is being formed as we speak! Imagine that! The world is still being created.

If that’s not a referendum for Peace what is?

Peace with one another and Peace with this beautiful planet. Reverence for Mother Earth.

I remember being shocked when I went to visit Kilauea with a friend and seeing people casually dispose of litter on virgin ground.

It was such an affront.

People missed the Mystery. They missed the Holy.

They wasted a moment for Peace. let’s not do that any more, shall we?

BerryMoonLunacyMay29

Signs of Peace in the Berry Moon

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Lots of other things happening, so it’s hard to give the Moon her due right now… But things just keep happening.

Yesterday was a busy day. There was lots going on, some work, some pleasure, some personal business — but it all meant no pauses.

When I don’t pause, it’s sometimes hard for a musing to take shape. And there’s been a lot stirring about how to make Peace in unPeaceful times… Social action is a stop and start activity…

So I had a blank for the day. And a bit of the grumps. I hate heading toward the evening without a musing, let alone an idea.

But it was Jazz night, my husband was playing my friends and my dance partner were waiting. Out I went. The group hadn’t had a gig in town for a bit, so it was nice to hear them and even nicer to be with everyone… Summer time and the living is easy.

Except that time when someone bumped a table which bumped the wall which knocked a sign off the wall which fell on my head which read: It’s never too late to start again.

So Peace, what am I complaining about? There you are — waiting for me to find my way to you. We can’t let the hating get you down. Let’s look for the possibilities. Let’s Peace!

BerryMoonLunacyMay28

Whoa! A Little Peace, Over Here, Stat!

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As I’m running around bewailing the lack of attention paid to the needs of our living soldiers, my local paper was printing a letter to the editor that incites insurrection and the public execution of our president.

Well, that’s one way to observe Memorial Day.

Goodness gracious me.  I think perhaps public civics lessons would be a good thing.

Even though I often think of myself as a religious rather than a political animal, it’s pretty easy to understand that this man’s writings were lunatic and the paper’s decision to print wrong-headed. This man’s letter goes, I believe, well beyond free speech to threat and insurrection.

I believe in local newspapers. Most of the time, I believe in this one. Knowing what goes on in your community is important. Local newspapers give us that. We need to know about each other. But salacious reporting and warmongering letters don’t seem to me to fill a needed niche.

But it gave me a chance to act on the premise of my new facebook page The Responsible Citizen Pledge. So I wrote my letter to the editor, and it got published. Reviewing it, i wish I’d sat on it a little longer and I wouldn’t have used the word disgusted… because even though I am, it doesn’t invite the paper to change…

But let us attend to the living. And let us apply no small measure of Peace. It is needed.

BerryMoonLunacyMay27

 

Peace and Honor in the Berry Moon

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I guess I should look at the clock. Apparently it happened at 10:30… but whenever it happened, I went and stood.

We must allow ourselves to be moved by those who made that sacrifice, whatever our longing for Peace.

In their honor, we must do two things, I believe.

We must stand for Peace. We must look for new ways to deal with our world. Because hatred and fear are getting us no where. Technology makes our world smaller and smaller. But posturing politicians try to keep us in the same hateful cycles. We’re the ones who are going to have to break that. We’re going to have to reach out our hands to meet other hands reaching out. We’re going to have to push Peace up the pipeline.

And oh, my goodness, we must work for benefits for our soldiers. We love dead soldiers the way we love dead women. It’s the live ones that are problematic. (ooh, here’s tomorrow’s poem!) But too many of our soldiers are homeless and have health issues, both mental and physical that are inadequately treated. If we love our country, we must love these men and now increasing number of women.

Let our sad memories bear the fruits of peace under this beautiful Berry Moon… let us make memories for soldiers that are worthy of the sacrifice. It doesn’t matter where you enter in… but these young men and women dead and alive deserve our support… and our world deserves Peace.

BerryMoonLunacyMay26

Remembering the Dead & Longing for Peace

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Memorial Day. Decoration Day.

A beautiful early summer day when we commemorate and honor our war dead.

I’ve been thinking a bit this morning about the cemeteries i’ve seen in Europe with row after row of white stones, or crosses and stars.

I don’t come from a military family. My father was a chemist. My uncle as well. They served at home, doing things I don’t much want to know about and raising victory gardens on the side.

Actually, writing the above, I realize that my two uncles on my mom’s side served in the war, but we never knew that side of the family well… so, i never heard stories, although my one uncle was on a bomber, i can see a picture of him with one of those leather hats…

But I never had connections to that world at all until I visited Europe when I was seventeen and i saw those cemeteries. I remember hearing that so many Brits died in Europe in WWI that there were more British men buried in France than in England. Rows and rows of mostly young men violently dead far away from home.

Those beautiful, carefully manicured monuments taught me of the enormity if not the ugliness of war. But you didn’t need to see the ugliness to mourn. And you can’t read history and think you had any better alternatives…

And still. All that young life, sacrificed… cut short. I think about the words to the song from Dido and Anaeus that I sang this year: Remember me but forget my fate.

And so we remember them. And if we honor them, really honor them, we’ll work for Peace.

BerryMoonLunacyMay25

Summer Memories, Sabbath Peace, Berry Moon

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It’s a positively beautiful day.

It’s a day for breathing in the Beauty and all the promise and possibility in the beginning of this Berry Moon Season. Strawberries, soon! Swimming, soon! Memories abounding. New possibilities ahead.

It’s the Sabbath and a day for reflection. Today among other things, I’ll be remembering an old family friend. Part of my parents’ crowd… fewer and fewer beloved elders. (as I become one despite my shock and surprise!). Jack. loved steam engines. Did the best corn on the cob. Funny, corny jokes. could fix anything. His wife and my mom shared a birthday on December 24, so we always lunched together that day. Making family every way we could.

Hope your day is grand. Hope you find some sweet Summer Peace to indulge in and some memories to make. Sweet blessings of the Berry Moon be with you…

BerryMoonLunacyMay24

Peace of the Little Things

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Yesterday was a day of plowing through this and that. And indeed this and that was accomplished. Since the day before had been a pretty big slog, it was a joy to get things done. Even the one thing I had to do again because I had deleted it from my computer.

Sigh. and Ah well. It actually was much better the second time around.

So much of the work i do is work that has no finish point, it often just morphs into the next thing. So when I can tick a lot of things right off the list, I’m in heaven.

So little, but so sweet. And maybe only so sweet in my life because it’s not every day, but I’ll take it.

And those conversations, those little snippets of catching up and loving each other. I’ll take that too! So much of life is not about grand gestures. So much of it is about the sweet little moments.

And for me, yesterday, the sweet little moments held me upright for the hard moments of letting go a friend who died. Her memorial was on Thursday evening and yesterday we interred her ashes. She was only 44. She left a daughter who is only 12. and a heartbroken mom. So hard, so hard. I’m so thankful that I have work I can do, ways I can support that are useful, words I can find even when words can’t get at the deepest of the sorrow. I am grateful that the Earth receives us at the end of our lives after having supported us through it. I am grateful that nature is so beautiful. and I’m very sad.

I’ll take the Peace of the little things in the Beauty of the Berry Moon. They soothe the heart.

BerryMoonLunacyMay23

Save the World for Peace

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This is the Berry Moon. it’s the Moon of growing things. The Moon of that first harvested sweetness.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, where they’re already harvesting sweetness, they’re using water they don’t have for households to produce berries for people everywhere.

And out on the coast, an oil line has burst and degorged into the sea. the beautiful, beautiful sea.

And CEOs get to say sorry and think that is a response.

Big business, fragile Earth. it’s a bad mixture. And Peace is definitely the casualty. What are we going to do? I have no idea… But you can’t unsee this… and you have to keep asking yourself questions…

BerryMoonLunacyMay22