Cutting through to the Heart of Peace

I love these roads that slice through broad swaths of fields on their way to somewhere. Roads with trees that act both as windbreak and tunnel. You’re going where they lead you and that’s that.

What if we were to set our minds and hearts on Peace and simply go?

Straight ahead toward Beauty. I find myself dithering between the word Home and the Word Unknown, because Peace is surely both, isn’t it?

What an odd and wonderful concept. But one way or the other, Going where Life is headed! Peace. May the Unknown become Home to all who travel.

Shhhh! Dawning Sabbath Peace

The soft quiet of a morning. Before the birds wake up; before you’re really awake. The world turns softly golden and your only responsibility is to drink it in.

“When I breathe in Love I breathe out Peace. When I breathe in Peace I breathe out Love.”

What a start to the morning. What an incredible way to set yourself up for the day.

And then, as the saying goes, begin as you mean to go on. Begin in Peace, continue.

Peace be with you, my friends. Every day.

And today? Is Mother’s Day. A happy day to all who celebrate. And commiseration and congratulations to those who have had to do this without the mother everyone deserves. It was her insufficiency. You are beloved and you did an amazing job without her.

Never Too Late for Beauty or Peace

Sunsets often transform cloudy skies into wild beauty. There you’ve been, moping along all day, complaining about the clouds or the rain or the mist, and the Sun, on the way out door, headed home for the night, takes advantage of the moment and turns the sky into Beauty.

It can steal your breath and stop you in your tracks. And oh, I hope so. Paying attention is so very important. When we’re offered Beauty, we should take advantage of it.

It’s good to remember this when we’re gloomy about the prospects of Peace. We can be the transforming Beauty. We need to be.

Spring Showers & Peace

There’s crazy Beauty out there. Spring! Spring! Spring! It’s sometimes hard to remember that it’s the showers that are part of what brings the Beauty. And it’s hard to imagine that May flowers could have anything on this!

Everywhere you look something wonderful is happening!

What if we looked for small pockets of Peace the way we look for small pockets of violets? What if we looked at dandelions and saw their beauty, their tastiness, and their importance to bees. We could discover a lot, I’m sure, that we didn’t realize was Peace.

Let’s do that! Let’s look for Peace! Let’s be it! Let’s bloom and flourish and spread like wildflowers, shall we? Here we come after the showers, May flowers to the rescue!

Making Time for Peace

You think life looks one way and it does, for a while. And then it changes. And so do you.

Waking on my 64th, somewhat bemused that this is where I am in life, I’m aware of two things:

How very lucky I’ve been in love and family and life experience.
How precious the time we have is.

So we need to make it count. We must be thankful and celebrate, that’s for certain. We must also be accountable. It falls to us to make it wonderful for others. We’re the ones to make Peace. We’re the only ones who can.

So thank you. Thank you so much!

There have been times in my life when I’ve felt that the losses in my life have left huge crevices that will never be filled — but the sweet friendship and kindness of so many are brilliant stones and shining pearls that have filled up those crevices with Beauty. The ache for those gone before is replaced by astonishment for those here. What’s not to celebrate?

Love! Peace! Blessings! oh, Hurrah!

Different Colors of Peace.

Happy Pesach. Peaceful Sabbath. Beautiful Day.

I love those rosy dawns. And I’m forever indebted to Deb because she snaps so many of them — and I often sleep through them. I’m not sure when I became so much less of a morning person, but Deb transforms mornings for me at least on Sundays!

But this beauty gave us a different look at Dawn. The stripes on the River! That redbud tree!

That’s the thing isn’t it? The work of our lives, to keep looking at the same things, differently. To see how they change, to see differently. To see Beauty in something other than what you’d expected.

I believe there is all sorts of Peace lurking around in our lives and communities, we just have to find a way to tease it out. It’s easy enough to unleash the hate. We may have to work harder at Peace, but it is waiting… We are the ones Peace has been waiting for. Each and every one of us!

Slow Sabbath Mornings for Peace

I used to be a person who could be up and out the door in 15 minutes. And that included a shower.

But life has changed. Or I’ve slowly grown into the person I am. Mornings are for writing and for slow approaches to the day.

Even on Sundays, my busiest out of the house work day (or at least that’s the theory, although whew!) I get up early enough so that there’s some staring into space time involved. Thanks to my weekly plans with my friend Emily, I can always count on Sunday evenings ending slowly and peacefully.

This is the day! I need a slow start to appreciate it. Just like the duck. Fly on, my brothers and sisters. I’ll just sit here and appreciate!

Whatever you do with this brilliant Sabbath morning, I hope there is Peace to be enjoyed and shared now and all day long!

The Peace of Not What You Were Waiting For

Spring is so beautiful and so powerful. The force of life returning, reaching through cold soil for the sun is overwhelming and will not be stopped.

However, bits and pieces can be interrupted. This year, it was.

This magnificent magnolia was on her way. She was filled to the brim with dazzle, ready to delight.

But the freeze was insistent. Nothing personal. The freeze wasn’t thinking about the magnolia at all.

The freeze just won the weather battle that day, and the beautiful magnolia turned brown and withered away… The flowering beauty won’t appear until next year, weather willing.

And we’re left with the reality that life doesn’t always give us what we’re waiting for. The freeze has its own icy beauty. And we must make Peace with that.

Capricious April Peace

If you’re going to love April, and why wouldn’t you, you’re going to have to put up with her wild mood fluctuations. I think of her as a young month. She’s always trying things out.

The seasons are still bickering — and April’s watching the way her skirts float in the breeze.

Everyone seems to be heartily tired of Winter, poor old dear, but she and Spring are still playing. She’ll sleep soon. I know Spring beguiled us in the month of March with warm weather. Everyone went out and and got their seeds started.

April doesn’t seem to care.

For me, April is a wonderful example of the need to be here now. She is what she is. And she is filled with Beauty. It is, it’s true, a Beauty all her own. But, oh! the Flowers! Let us rejoice in her wild mood swings and make Peace with her particular Beauty.

Might as well. She’s not going anywhere. I, however, am off on the hunt for the fields of grape hyacinth.

A Beautiful and Peaceful Beginning

Good Morning. Happy Easter!

Unlike today’s beautiful picture, Our day in the Valley is going to be one of mist and mystery. Which sort of suits this holiday of profound mystery and rampant —and I admit it fun — commercialism of talking bunnies bringing eggs and new clothes. (The new clothes imperative belongs to a Pagan holiday Beltane, when you throw off winter and burn your clothes. It makes more sense when Easter’s a month later. Did you get new clothes growing up? We often got Spring Clothes, but my mom was very clear we did not get a new outfit for Easter. She hated the connecting of the profound and the profane. I appreciate that understanding a lot better now! And in fact, practical child that I am, a pretty little spring dress when it’s very cold wasn’t really that much fun to a child who had no meat on her bones. The egg hiding was originally incentive to our bird friends to fruitful and multiply.)

However you celebrate today, I hope it’s in the presence of those you love.

And oh, Deb Slade, what a picture. Such Beauty. This branch of the Susquehanna is a slow moving one. So many days, and this picture represents this, it looks like a lake rather than a river.

Peace to you. Peace and Beauty, and Joy. The Peace and Beauty of rose-gold mornings and rivers. The Peace and Joy of Easter. The Peace and Beauty and Joy of another day to be a live and make a difference.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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