Peace of the Moment

Living in the moment. ack. According to most traditions, being present is what is asked of us. We are to delight in the moment. Pay attention heretics… it’s not all about the next life. Why would we have this life if we weren’t to enjoy it?

There are those glorious moments when it’s easy. Look. Life is grand!

But most of life is? Not that.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ‘way over yonder recently. Not so much the ‘way over yonder of death, but the ‘way over yonder of “if I can only finish this, life will exist on the other side.”

Hello! Lying to myself. Life is in the mess. In the packed dishes, mine and my sister’s mingling, in the paper on the floor, in the box spring that doesn’t go up the stairs.

It’s not about snapping and whining that life is too hard. It’s about opening and going through. Because, in fact, I have a box spring that doesn’t go up the stairs in my cozy little home. I have stuff. I had the most remarkable sister. I had a great family whose mementos surround me. I have great family who love and laugh and bicker. I have friends who pack my stuff, who move my stuff, who hold my hand, listen to me moan, weep with me. Life is right here.

If I fail to be grateful, I miss the point. I miss the Peace. … dammit. Once again, here we are, lookin’ for love in all the wrong places. It’s not about sitting on the mountain top, it’s about living in the muck. In the summer, I need to remember I love the feel of mud squishing between my toes. In the winter? I’ve got great boots. forward ho!

Present and accounted for. Until, of course, it gets hard. And then I can learn this lesson again.

Paradise, Peace and Ugly Reality

There I was, reveling in the beauty, focused on my own sweet task. The weather was unbelievable, out of season fabulous. The beach was clear and wide and clean. Impossible to tell there’d been a horrible hurricane just last year. And the water? September sweet. Warm and clean. No better place, it seemed, to lay my burden down.

And there was my cousin along with me. Her first step out into the world after a summer of back surgeries and setbacks remembering that she is a woman who travels. We have fun together, we laughed at the inconveniences. We both worked. (I worked, I read, it felt like old times. There was my brain, processing information, in what felt like forever. What was not to like?)

Well, of course, even in the midst of euphoria, reality intrudes. We’re not the only ones who came to this waterline. And not everyone came to worship.

Many came to gamble. Many came to party. Many came to work so that others can do those things. This is a town of gritty realities. I live tucked away a rural landscape where our gritty realities are spread out. Easily avoided. There’s no town square. Homeless people don’t “sleep rough in the woods.” They live right there, waking or sleeping. They panhandle.

People who gamble here do it on line, in the privacy of their homes. If they wander downstairs, dazed by their addictions or their losses, whose to see. Who’s to hear them through their thin walls, calling, begging for more money.

It was time to go home and start thinking about it all. Because that’s the irony, isn’t it. These things live side by side. We were finding Peace in this place because the price for sitting on the beach was right… and of course it was… because money was being made on folks whose seeking was so very different. But the magic of the water was there. The possibility of being present, there as well. All the tawdry tinsel in the world couldn’t change that. The couple in their 80s he in his wheelchair, she frail thing that she was, sat in the same spot every day, soaking in the wonder. The shoreline… so much happens there. Self-reflection… self-indulgence … immersion, in the water, and in the greater wonder.

Mountain Stream Peace

For me, there’s something about water running over rocks. I think I inherited this gene from my family. Dancing, skipping, burbling water surging through a canyon that continues to change as the waters rise and fall.

This place is not just beautiful, it’s dangerous. It seems a ludicrous statement on a fall day when 8 inches of water cavort by you. But two years ago this stream rose 20 feet to eat that bridge. Every year some crazy college kids assume they can run the spring run off and too often one or two of them don’t make it. It is not just still water that runs deep.

The space in the canyon not taken by water and rock is filled with trees and sweet, sweet air. Air that tastes like a benison after what we’ve been breathing down in the valleys. Air that we should fret over as the frackers peer over our shoulders.

To many times in the last year, I have taken my grief to this stream and it has eased my burden. Back and back again, I’ll go this fall, because my heart will be heavy a long time. I’m thinking that Steve and I need to go, drum in his hand and simply sit to watch the leaves change and the water run. He’ll find the rhythm the creek dances to… maybe I’ll find some words. Maybe I’ll just find the silence broken only by the hawks who scream overhead. I’ll be present and the prayer the creek offers will soothe my soul.

This valley is beautiful in every season. Even when the water roils and rises, Peace runs through that valley and caresses me on its journey downstream. Over time perhaps it will tumble smooth the shards of my heart and I will focus more on the dancing memories and less on the painful grief… But the seasons come and the seasons go in this Valley and my heart will fill. The creek and my beloved will see to that.

A Deliberate, Discerning Sabbath Peace

Life’s a confusing thing to balance, isn’t it? And yet it’s walking that teeter-totter that we’re supposed to do (and how long has it been since i’ve printed that word?)

But here we are, with a day ahead of us in which to practice discernment… in which to practice refusing a mindless response to life, to release knee-jerk business.

I know not all the world observes the Sabbath on Sundays — Sadly, many of us don’t observe them at all. “I’m not religious” people say. But church-going, snyagogue-going, mosque-going or temple-going or not, the sabbath is about the pause and the in-breath and the out breath and then the repetition… in that sweet stillness is a place of regeneration and a place of sound decision making.

So, altogether now, exhale. now inhale. repeat. What — exhale first???? Yeppers. get rid of the stale air before you put all that fresh, clean, sanity giving air on top.

And then make some choices about your day… Wishing you a slow Peaceful Sabbath of being present and of doing the work that’s allotted.

Sacred Detour Peace

I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of Sacred Detours recently. I don’t know when the term came to me, but I know that it’s true for me.

I am a planner. I’m a dreamer, but I’m also a planner. Here’s a bunch of things. Get them together. Check them off. But then life happens. I had a writing project and an organizing project I had been dreaming about for months. I was ready to go. Deb and I went to Alaska, wow, even broader/deeper scope for those dreams.

And then, the re-emergence of Deb’s cancer. And the suddenness of it. They called it dynamic. I call it ravaging. “Deb, how do you feel, on a scale of 1-10.” “Shitty,” was the response.

Much of July and all of August were spent hovering, trying not to hover, working to be present to whatever was needed. Working to focus my sometimes snarky self into kindness. All I could ask of myself, was to be there and to be tender. I think I mostly succeeded. But I couldn’t care about the other pieces of my life. Because this one precious piece needed my full attention.

Sometimes the world has to wait. And really, how self important to think that in the grand scheme of things your little contributions might matter more than your absolute presence where you can make a difference.

But I’ll tell you one thing I’m clear about. These Sacred Detours take the stuffing out of you. They demand a great deal of you and leave you wounded and winded. No, I don’t want to hear, “you’ll never regret.” I know that. It’s just that, lying exhausted on the shore, you wonder how and why you’ll survive. what wisdom you’ll take from this. and when you might be able to put this to use. Knowing it’s a very long way away, and yet immediate.

But for now, it’s enough to know I’ve been on one and that it has left me feeling sad and barely alive and wondering how long Peace will take to mend my heart and fill it up again with life. and not really caring, concentrating on moving breath in and out of my body and finding safe arms to hold me close.

Committing Peace

I’m a woman full of dreams and plans. I’ve gotten better as I’ve aged in bringing plans to fruition. But I realize, that whatever my plans, there is a thread to my life. When I plan with that thread, when I at least recognize it, my plans flow along a lot more fluidly. One of my friends would tell you my calling is to be with those who are dying. It’s true, I’ve walked with people up to death and celebrated their lives afterwards.

But I think the crux of my gift is to be present. That’s what I’m good at. And it’s sort of hard, because I’m also a doer… So those two things struggle in me for supremacy. Both have their value. But for a high energy person, I’m good at being present. And I really work well when I’m present for a specific project and then to leave when I’m no longer needed. Sometimes I feel as if I’m a gadfly because other folk have the gift of constancy, instead of my short intense forays into presence.

My friend Jean has the gift of hospitality. Through her great food, she nourishes not only individual souls but also the sense of community. Many of us have been made welcome at her table. Some people build houses. Others build organizations. Some just keep things humming along.

If we do those things at which we are best with open hearts and minds set on Peace… the world begins to change. And when we do those things we’re passionate about, people want to join us. Life can get deeper. Life can get broader. Life can become simpler and more beautiful and oh, by the way, better. Joyful, even. Peaceful.

So, what is it for you? what do you do best? How do you make Peace. The world needs us desperately. We need to stop the violence. We need to stop the hate. We do. right here. so we can call upon our neighbors and get other people involved. and slowly, slowly, slowly, and then perhaps not so slowly, the world will change.

Trying to Remember Peace

Spare me the platitudes. I know, I believe, I trust that she is with her family. Don’t tell me that God took her home, because then you would want me to believe that a loving God/Goddess killed her children and her husband one by blessed one and that is not a God I will ever worship.

Today I struggle to be glad that she died peacefully in my arms, and so quickly, before that god-awful disease ravaged her and I was able to practice what I believe — that Love is present to each gasp and welcomes your heartbeat back into the mighty and resounding pulse of life. I was able to be the hands of the Goddess who comforts me and comforted her, administering the drugs that eased her labor, being the loving face that smiled at the moment of her death, rejoicing that she is with Wayne and Jan and Chad, and stilling the voice that wanted to scream and scream and scream “do not leave me.” I could find moments of peace in her (Deb’s) and Her (The Lady’s) Love

Today, when I cannot remember that life will ever be normal again, still as I sit here in her house I remember that she was loving and extraordinary and my sister. We bickered and fenced as sisters do and we loved one another. She protected me to the very end making sure that there were caretakers to do what was too hard or beyond me and still letting our intimacy make space for the physical demands of dying.

There has been so much loss. I said to my shrink on the morning Jan’s death, the older of Deb’s children and the second to die, what makes this so painful is that I know I will laugh again, I will recover, because we recovered from Chad’s loss. Losing your sister doesn’t end your world. It merely feels that way. What I fear is that I will feel this way for a very long time.

And yet I know, you love me and so does the Lady. I know she will call me to be her hands and heart and voice again and give little heed to my whimpering because people will need shoring up. And so today, I cry and remember Deb in her living and her dying and try and remember that Peace is there, even when I cannot find it, and trust that it will invade my heart again. Oh, Deb. my heart is broken. This may be the hardest blow I have ever sustained. So I’ll try to keep being present to the pain and the beauty, try hard not to break under the weight of knowing that we will be making no new memories and I’ll go about the doing of those things that are needed at the end of a life. write the obituary, pick a date for the funeral and discover in which closet Deb hid the box that holds the ashes of our parents and her husband and will hold her in death as well. Now there’s an agenda.

cook with rosemary, don’t hug me too hard or cling, I’m fragile.

Spinach Dip Peace

Some foods are all about the luxury… and spinach dip is one of those foods. yum.

But spinach is a mighty food warrior. It is so good for us — filled with all sorts of vitamins and minerals. For something that cooks down to nothing you really have to give it its props.

Lots of folks love it raw. I’m one of those people who has a problem with the acid and I hate how my teeth feel when I munch it that way. But top that salad with cooked scallops or a burger with onions? I’m a happy woman.

But simply because spinach dip isn’t the best thing in the world in terms of fat content doesn’t mean it’s not food for the soul. Dips are one of the few foods we eat from a communal pot and there’s something to be said for a conversation shared over a shared food bowl. You’ve already moved toward intimacy… the conversation deepens. You’re being present before you know it. And that’s a good thing.

So eat your dip… and eat your spinach in other ways. As Popeye reminds us: “We’re strong to the finish when we eats our spinach!” (or something like that!) And just imagine, he ate canned spinach… a more ghastly invention I can’t imagine!

Happy Summer!

Soft-serve Peace

Every summer our kids come to visit. We are so lucky. Me particularly. Not having had kids myself and now getting to add the soft blessing of Grannianni to my list of nicknames is priceless. I’m awkward at the grandmother thing, there are things you learn as a mom, that makes this transition easy. So, I struggle a bit…

But one thing my mom taught me, that I can put to good use with the littles, is the sense of occasion and the building of traditions. And the soft-serve ice-cream place is one of those places. It is magical on a warm summer evening. To sit out under the trees, while the kids are playing and to watch the fireflies light up the soybean field next door, is just lovely. To sit there with a friend or with my Sweet Pea… equally grand.

We don’t do it often, and that makes it even sweeter. But we layer the memories on the same way the soft ice cream piles up in a cup. And then no matter where we eat soft ice cream, it’s piled with the memories of the place where we hold hands to watch the fireflies or our children and our grandchildren. Sacred ground, indeed!

And here in the country, the ice cream reflects the season… strawberry, peach, pumpkin, each in its own seasonally appointed time… and right after pumpkin, it closes down for the season, not to open again until after Easter. Being the country, Easter is proclaimed on their sign. Everyone in the neighborhood now puzzles to figure out how the resurrection, bunnies, eggs and ice cream are related. But they are somehow, and that’s the way it is.

That’s a lot of delight for a small cone to impart! But even a small cone is big enough to carry the memories.

Lingering Peace

I forget, until it happens again, how absolutely wonderful it is to dine outside in a quiet courtyard as dusk moves in on a summer evening. It can be the most indulgent, sybaritic experience.

I had that experience the other night, and I wonder, why don’t I do more of it. The food doesn’t cost any more, but it always seems to taste better. We all had our little islands of light and conversation in the dusk, but were pulled together by the music… It was a marvelous experience.

And here it is the beginning of August, and I’ve still not set up my porch. Too busy, too hot, too… and yet, some of the best porch sitting is ahead of us… so I’m off to accomplish at least some little part of that today!

It’s good to have lovely indulgences in our lives that take advantage of the beauty of nature, the gifts of the seasons (and of our senses), and the sweetness of good companionship. And it’s important, now and again, to give ourselves the gift of simply being present.

There on Friday night, in a little courtyard off a busy street in Williamsport, over plates of good food, in the company of friends, to the accompaniment of wonderful music, I did that. I hope you find the time to do the same… You are all the reason you need to indulge yourself in Peace.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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