Companionable Sabbath Peace, llvl

Mmmmmmmm. Here we are, it’s mid-week Sabbath in my whacky world of calculations. Having started the year on a Wednesday, I’ve continued to start the weeks on Wednesday, introducing Deb Slade’s new pic, and thus my new week every Wednesday. It makes Tuesday a special day of anticipation, because Deb’s pic is coming and Wednesday a day of pleasure, because I’m introducing it and having to think differently in response to it… which brings us to Sunday, smack dab in the middle of the week. Yay.

So, I’m not sure whether I’m only mid-week or also mid-life (technically, i know probably past midlife by a good 10-15 years!), or whether it’s just that we’ve been snowbound, but I’m really appreciating the remembrance that we’re not on this journey alone.

It’s been wonderful to start working on Love Flows: The LOVE project, which involves our gathering money to feed hungry kids on the weekend. And it’s been even more wonderful to gather people who are willing not only to think about the project in different ways, but to do something about making a really big dream a possibility.

Being in community makes big dreams achievable and companionable. And on the Sabbath, you get not only to celebrate the dream but also appreciate the community. Well, you do, if you want to. This week, I’m feeling particularly grateful and counting blessings.

and You? are numbered among those blessings.

I’m also enjoying winter, and although I’m not going along… i’m happy that a whole bunch of folks from the church are going off ice skating this afternoon. This is one of the things I remember from my happy little childhood… have a great time guys!

And yikes! because Sabbath to me also means church, I’d better stop sitting around smiling and get ready to go sit around and sing and smile and not be responsible today, because one of my companions on the journey is responsible today!

Blessed Sabbath. Celebrate the Dreams. Imagine the Peace. and do something that’s not work!

A Present, Local, Peace Blessing, LLVL

If you’re going to count your blessings, you have to be where you are. You have to live centered in your life, your life has to have a location. You have to live locally.

Blessing counting is about real things, or should be. Not just gushy things, but the little things like warm socks on a cold day and the friend who cared enough to give them to you. (Ms Live Locally somehow missed the fact that it was going to be below zero degrees last night.) It’s not just about being aware that you can afford or beg or borrow enough to pay your fuel oil and the realization that there are others who can’t and who might need your help — and you might be able to give it.

It’s about recognizing and appreciating the beauty of the land around you and understanding your responsibility to it. It’s about celebrating your relationships and doing what’s necessary to nurture them.

You can’t count blessings if you’re not engaged. That’s not a passive thing. I think you can’t count your blessings if you’re not willing to be a blessing to be counted. Maybe you start with counting little blessings when you’re young, like a child at prayer: Bless Mommy, bless Daddy, bless Sisty and Bro, bless the dog, the cat, the chickens. But then you grow up and so should your blessings. You still count them but you get active about your love, you bless the challenges that allow you to test your strengths and ingenuity.

Life is hard, it’s true. But it is filled with things that soften those blows, and we must rejoice in them, and we must be them. Preachy, this morning, I guess. But Peace depends on the blessings we’re willing to see and be. And we depend on Peace and our work toward it to give our lives meaning.

Sacred Acts of Peace, LLVL

I sometimes need reminders that Life is a sacred endeavor. I’ve chosen to use capitals to help me remember things I might pay attention to and in the paying of attention, cherish.

If I hold my Work as sacred, not just routine, I pay attention and I do it. People might say, well, sure, you’re a minister, when you stand by a deathbed, that’s sacred. And that’s so true. but sometimes you’re frightened or tired or… and you need to remember…

But ministry is not made up of only sublime moments. There are the things that need slogging through as in any job.

And ministers lead very mundane lives as well. Someone has got to go to the store, wash the dishes, order the fuel oil. And as long as I’ve been doing it, I’ve noticed that the wash never gets done on its own, darnit.

All of those things can be done with reverence. I’m lucky enough to be able to buy fuel, the dishes I use are family heirlooms and I love fabric and clothes, so doing the wash helps me remember all the wonderful clothes I get to choose from when I go to the closet. (I’d say colors, but you know me, I only wear red and black! but hey, some of my red is wine colored!)

Today, I’ll trudge carefully through my snowy neighborhood to meet my friend at our local coffee house and we’ll work together on our separate jobs. Communion on a Monday morning.

By noticing life’s sweetness and allowing it to be important, I pay attention. And you may wonder, indeed I do, who am I to natter on about Peace, but if we don’t talk about it, don’t hold it as sacred, we don’t do the little things that begin to pile up into a sizable mound of acts that move us down the Peace Road.

So Peace, my friends. Consider which words and actions are sacred in your life. Consider elevating them in importance. See if you pay attention differently. Honor Peace. make it central in your life and begin to examine what isn’t leading toward that exalted end. Celebrate the Awe. It makes life so much more exciting.

Calm & Joy for Advent Peace

Funny, Calm and Joy seem rather at opposite ends of the spectrum, although who’s to say that Joy can’t show up in a lot of ways? But I’m wondering if we don’t need to calm ourselves so that we can see the joy.

It’s so easy to get agitated about the yucky stuff. And then we start to spin. And spin. And pretty soon, it’s difficult to see the path out because what we see is the spin. One big exhale and an inhale later, the spin can stop and we can begin to see the the steps.

Calm owes a lot to good breathing. You deal with what’s in front of you. But when things are grand, then it’s fun and even good to jump for joy. As kids we know the joy and jumping connection. As adults, we’re really rather more attached to jumping up and down in horror or rage. Those are situations that require a calm heart and a reasoning brain. The Jumping is just a distraction, a way to let the rage and the horror win.

Now Joy is an entirely different kettle of fish. Joy bubbles out of us or radiates depending on how open we’re willing to be and it infects others if we let it out. Again, would you rather people caught the Joy or the rage and horror?

So calm yourself deal with what’s going on, and open to the Joy of simply being alive and sharing this Life. Wow! You’re here! Celebrate! Dance! Peace!

Peace of Goodbye

Today is the Day of the Dead. It is certainly the day of my dead.

It’s the day of the change of conversation. It’s the day of goodbye. It’s the cusp of something different, something unknown, something desperately sad, something infinitely precious, something terribly final.

The fact is that we come to this point in our lives. No looking away from it. No pretending.

Things change. And people die. And their loved one’s lives go on. And we all have to find ways to accept, transform, adjust.

And there is a Peace in goodbye. There is an ending to the limbo of shock and disbelief. And a path into whatever the new normal is. The post life, the folding in of the absence into the present… the ability to remember those memories that are currently walkabout, waiting for a place to settle down.

Oh, my sister, I miss you. I am missing you. I will be missing you. I have missed you. I will have been missing you for the rest of my life. And I am so grateful for the life we shared, both hard and fabulous. … I offer us both the Peace of Goodbye. Fly Free. “And I’ll keep living the life we were living as if I were two.” (Holly Near)

Hope/Fear Peace

In the Tarot spread I use the most, there is a position entitled hopes and fears. The question it asks is this: Will you accept your potential?

With this position, giving in to your fears means saying no to that possibility, clinging to your fears rather than opening to life. Saying yes to hope means making plans (right now!) to make things come true. It means accepting responsibility for your future.

I completely understand the Buddha’s look at hope and fear as the twin evils. I understand how easy it is to live out of what is true now. But I am a Westerner with a Judeo-Christian sense of the word Hope. I cherish those with the courage to live as if the world were different now.

I understand how seductive our fears are and that we can obsess about them. But I also know that fear is a healthy response to things that are dangerous. When we face those fears we can make good decisions about behaviors in which we might not want to engage or strategies that can make us better able to cope with what frightens us if in fact we must engage.

But what the Buddha was pushing at, I believe, is the notion that we live in the present. Some biblical sage said it this way: “Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof” or as people have rephrased that “Don’t borrow trouble.” We have to stay in our day’s chaos and work our way out toward tomorrow.

Because Peace is also here. If it is chaotic then tackle a tiny corner of it and smooth that out. And then the next corner. I’m preaching to myself here, slowly working on the “but firsts!”)

And here’s what else. Celebrate your progress, because that will encourage you to make more. Every step toward Peace is a step in Peace.

Fall Fair Peace

I live in a beautiful, agricultural valley and count myself lucky to do so. Every fall, (except the fall of the devastating Hurricane Lee) my hometown hosts a Fair. Everything good and bad that fairs have, this fair has in abundance.

It’s Fall, after all, and fall is all about the abundance. People compete: they knit, and stitch and sew. They can and bake and grow. They raise livestock large and small. They show their pet chickens, dogs, bunnies and burros. This year you didn’t see horses as big as houses because those horses went to live on my classmates farm. Lady and Duke are lazin’ it up, retired from show biz. Folks get on their tractors, ancient and new, and drag large weights around to burn out their engines… huh? There are rides. Sadly there are side shows. There are bands. You can win the ugliest plush toys in the world if only your aim is good enough and your money lasts. People guess your weight (you want to see that person at the beginning of your trip by the vendors). People guess your age (you want to avoid them altogether.).

And then you eat. You taste the first cider of the season and eat something fried that later you really wish you hadn’t. You have food that you eat every year at Fair. You consider all sorts of odd foods, but you avoid the fudge/bacon. ‘Cause what the heck it’s Fair week. You walk for hours! Kids are bedazzled and so are the adults. You always see someone you went to high school with even if you lived a half hour away, because EVERYONE comes to Fair. You run into people from where live now which is also a half hour away, staying with the theme above.

You remember that food is grown, not just processed. And that that is an earthy messy process. You realize that some families are making a portion of their living from the food that’s grown. Others are proudly showing of skills that have kept their families fed for generations. Other people are making cakes that look like spaghetti and meatballs, and you can only figure they have too much time on their hands.

Fair. It’s a great way to celebrate the Fall… and Fall is worth celebrating! Fall, Peace!

Happy, Grateful Peace

or is that Peaceful Happy Gratitude? It’s all so confusing… but the video said…. which video? this one… that by identifying actual points of gratitude and then letting people know about your gratitude, particularly the people to whom and for whom you are grateful makes you a happier person. It makes people who are the least happier far more happy than it makes people who are already pretty happy. Maybe they’re already pretty grateful… and maybe they tell people how much they love them and why.

But telling people how much you love them and why is probably a pretty darned wonderful thing to do always and forever. Because even if it didn’t make you happy, it would make them happy… and that would be reason enough to do so, don’t you think?

So right now, I’m grateful for two things. I’m really grateful to those of you who take the time to read my writing and to comment on it. It makes me work harder and think a bit deeper. It humbles me when you write to say it pushed you to think differently about something. Thank you so much.

And I’m also grateful to and for my sister. More and more I realize how much she took care of me and how much she let me take care of her and that makes me so incredibly grateful… even now, when I’m being very sad and grieving… it softens and opens my heart…

For what are you grateful? To whom are you grateful? Why? Tell them. And then? get back to me and tell me how it made you feel… Giving thanks! Feeling Joy. Celebrating Peace.

Teary Peace

Last night a group of my sister’s friends had a gathering at a local restaurant that Deb had loved. They all sat around and told stories about her, fun stories, stories that showed what a character she was. The fact that the staff donated their time says a lot about who Deb was. Celebration and remembrance… it’s what we require…

And I did what I hadn’t allowed myself to do up to that point, or at least in public — cried me a river… Losing Deb is world shaking. I know we lose our siblings. I know Deb was sick and not going to live a whole lot longer. It’s a good thing that she slipped away easily. I hope it’s one bright morning over yonder.

But I hate that she’s gone. She was a sweet and easy part of my daily life. One of the ironies of people’s dying is that as they become weaker, you care more for them physically and so the bonds are even more tender and close and then they leave. I honored my mantra, and kept my hands and heart open so she could leave, but now, until the cracks men in my heart and it holds love again, I’m left feeling pretty empty-handed and -hearted.

It’d be nice to think that my musings weren’t always reflective of my inner churnings, but that’s what musings are I guess. I’m aware of the importance of writing about Peace as I mourn Deb’s loss.

So, since I’ve been thinking a lot about water in the September Peace musings, it seemed inevitable that I draw the connection to life-changing tears. If the chemical composition is really different for tears of heartbreak, (can anyone help me here???) then it seems to me that they must leach the sadness out of our bodies and dilute the grief somewhat. Is there a chemical compound for grief? Do we really require 35 hours of story telling to begin to heal? What if we stop up the outpouring of our hearts and souls… how do we pollute ourselves? And then, Ann being Ann, I have to ask, how do we find the balance… because some of us certainly continue long beyond what helps us… and some of us never let loose…

But the water of Peace, sweet and refreshing… I have to believe it’s richer for the bitter tears we shed. Certainly our Love deepens…

Simple Peace

On a day where what is remembered is senseless violence and senseless loss of life, let us remember that we can so easily be people of Peace. The only response to hate is more Love. Love was what we saw that day as well. And Courage. People were so brave in helping one another, on that day and in the many horrible days that followed. Brave even unto death.

Nothing will bring those beloved lives back. Nothing will make that “better.” People may quibble with my statement that those lives are unredeemable, there was no reason for God to redeem them, God simply gathered them home to the Divine heart. But the notion that we redeem them by our actions implies a power I don’t think we have. We can only mourn and honor those lives and we must. As we must with all who die senselessly in the crossfire of people’s hatred.

And in honoring them, all we can do is work to make it different. Many have chosen to pull in and brace in fear. But it is better that we reach out in celebration of all the possibilities.

May there be Peace on Earth. May it begin with each of us.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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