Community Pink Moon Peace

For a woman raised in a very calm and quiet household, lord love me, i adore a little chaos. (Particularly if I have a quiet place to retreat to afterwards.)

When I was an exchange student and I went from having two fairly quiet siblings to having four fairly noisy siblings, while I missed home, I thrived.

And found a way to fit in. And continued to treasure the quiet moments.

Maybe because belonging to a group, my family and my church community, were so safe, I don’t mind watching the chaos swirl if it’s benign and building community.

I believe in community. I find it healing and inspiriting. It welcomes you home and kicks you out. It makes it possible to do things you can’t do alone. It’s a good thing.

and when laughter and hilarity ensue from learning about important things. hurrah. That happened for me yesterday. And because it’s the Season of the Pink Moon, there was an entire wonderful collision of holidays to celebrate… Making memories. Making sense. Making Community.

First Addition to the Village: Daycare

One of the first challenges in taking custody of a 4-year-old was in finding daycare. Lots of folks were quick to offer up recommendations – church and other private daycare programs that seemed ideal on the surface but that had stringent behavioral criteria for the children they cared for. Rules like “no biting”, “no bad language”, “no hitting” were amongst the offenses that could result in being asked to leave the program. While I might have previously agreed that these offenses in a preschooler were suspension worthy, now that I had my own child who came preprogrammed with these as his default settings, I couldn’t take the gamble that he wouldn’t express his true colors all day long.

So then who in the community do we turn to that will provide daycare to our less than perfect young ones? It didn’t seem that it was going to be the places that took care of our neighbor’s or colleague’s kids! Luckily, we found out that there are some AMAZING caregivers in publically funded Child Development Centers and Headstart programs providing nurturance, guidance, positive behavioral support and care to kids! I also don’t think that I could have found a more saavy and seasoned behavior manager who also managed to love our son at his most unlovable moments than I found in our beloved “Miss Danielle”. We talked a lot with Miss Danielle over the year – trying to figure out what set off tantrums, how to soothe anger, how to build friendships, what rewards motivated good behavior – and when it was time to graduate from preschool, Miss Danielle had tears in her eyes as she presented our son with a signed book about a Little Engine that Could.

Sometimes members of our village aren’t where we expect them to be. Miss Danielle was not in the cushy private daycare that caters to the kids of professionals and receives fabulous ratings on all measures. But boy were our preschool days better because of her presence with us! Where are you looking for your village? Who do you really want in your community? Are you stuck because the box in which you search is too limiting? Perhaps it’s time to expand or abandon your box. Who knows, maybe your “Miss Danielle” is just on the outside of yours too…

An Oasis of Calm and Mischief Gets Built

Ann: Hey Everybody! Say Hello to Maia… Maia! Talk to us about families and communities, will you?

Maia: When, in 1996, Hillary Clinton made it known to the world that It Takes a Village to raise a child, I had no idea how true those words would someday become to me. In my work as a child psychologist, I had observed many times how “others” in children’s lives had stepped up to be the difference in their world, so I guess I had an inkling of the importance of community in raising kids. However, it wasn’t until just about 3 years ago when the foster care agency dropped off an adorable, smart-as-a-whip, behavior-disordered, attachment-challenged, 4-year-old alien at my door that I really began to understand the place that the village has in helping to raise our children.

At the time my partner and I decided to adopt, we were already feeling pretty good about the community we had around us – family members (both biological and chose), friends, coworkers, church members – lots of good folks who were cheering us on in our pursuit of adding a child to our happy, coupled life. The ideal of community support seemed to be there and we were ready to take on whatever child was to come our way. We were ready, but the community that we thought would be there maybe wasn’t quite so ready for the challenges that came with the amazing child the universe had chosen for us.

As our default village started to be less present in our lives, our challenge, then, became to figure out how to surround ourselves and our new son with other people, a new community, a welcoming village; those folks who were willing to be an important part of our lives…to nurture him and us, to challenge us to be the best people we can be, and to help to hold us accountable to giving back to others as well. Little by little we have found the members of our new village. They have not always been those we would have predicted, but they are folks that we hold near and dear to us. I hope that in telling our story of creating our village, others who are also looking for a village will find hope and inspiration while creating their own…

Looking Back at Lunacy & Sabbath Peace

Riding in the back seat of the car with siblings is/was a rite of passage for many of us.

For many people, back in the day (whichever day that was), it was a Sabbath occupation. Once services were over, whatever tradition you were, you got in the car and went to grandma’s… or auntie’s… or…

It wasn’t so funny then, especially if you were smushed on the hump because you just happened to be the third (and therefore the shortest) child, but what’s funny is how universal the complaints.

I suggest you throw your offspring (no matter their age) in the back of the car immediately and go off for a drive. Everyone should have such childhood torment and delight… it makes for a lot of fun when you’re grown up..

It’s going to be bitterly cold, so please be careful. Peace be with you all… The Snow Moon is bringing those arctic winds and icy drifts. brrrrrrrrr.

Growing Family Peace, llvl

We never spent a lot of time together growing up — for whatever reasons. I’m sure part of it (and I inherited this from her) my grandmother didn’t deal well with chaos. Too many evans/bennett kids in one place = chaos!

It took family losses to bring us together. Death, divorce, more death. The more it happened, the more insistent we became that we gather.

And so we have, in whatever groups can get there… we usually eat… depending where we are, we might drink champagne… and we always laugh… We have a wedding coming soon, what joy… and then we wait a while while the kids grow up a bit… but still we gather.

I wish i knew how to bring the California families into this… and how to spend more time with the California families… life, it is what it is. sigh. But what it is is sweet — at least from time to time when we can make it happen. Let’s all make memories while we can…

Love, it’s what we need. And when faces we love look back at us with faces that are very like ours, it’s pretty wonderful. I had to wait 50 some years to get it, but i’ll claim this as mine — and as wonderful. Peace sometimes looks just like you, and isn’t that grand!

Enough Peace, llvl

My sister-in-law’s email tag is that if you’re lucky enough to live by the river, you’re lucky enough.

Yesterday was a lovely living example of that. We sat in this lovely room with windows, eating leftovers and being family. Blended family, the best, right? all of us together. with turkey. and cranberry. and pie.

Yay!

Even when there’s work to do, you have to savor the Peace that’s there. We were lucky enough. We were very lucky.

Hurrah for Peace.

Peace of All Souls, llvl

Today we learned that a fourth child is dead of gunshot wounds in the last we know of high school shooting. The only way to make Peace with that is to change laws about guns and our ho-hum relationship to violence. Are you voting on Tuesday for someone who will listen to your wishes around safety? Are you learning what you need to know about this issue? Are you engaging people in discussions? You might want to.

And I don’t know what we do for children like Jaylen, who somehow find themselves so alienated that this looks like an option. Because that poor broken child is lost as well. His family is as devastated as the families of the other children.

And today, we remember our beloved Dead. I learned so much about Day of the Dead about commemorating the dead when I lived in the Bay Area. All over the world, people have celebrated this time as a time to remember. And yet so much of American culture is around forgetting the pain. Any of us who have ever tried that know it doesn’t work…

And why would I forget? Why would I forget people who brought joy and beauty into my life? Why would you? Re-membering, calling them back into your heart once a year is a reminder that your life has been enriched. It is a way to proudly acknowledge that your life has been blessed by these wonderful people. It is a prayer of thanksgiving. It is another way of making family and creating community. So today, on this day of all souls, I will spend time with your memories and I will give rejoice and give thanks and sigh for those things we will never do again. And it will be a worthy use of my time. It will be a splendid exercise in Peace because you are among those who taught me the beauty of relationship.

Family Peace Sabbath, llvl

I watched a joyful reunion yesterday, and the message was: you only have the time you have and you’d better make it good time.

Obviously, it’s a message that resonates for me. We did great family weekend stuff growing up. But I watch myself not spending enough time with the people I love. (This working weekend thing does interfere. But at least Steve and I both work weekends.)

It’s so easy to be busy, to shoot off in our own directions, but time spent getting to know each other and enjoy one another’s company is crucial, i believe, to our development and sense of self-worth. So grab those folks and hang out. Creating family: sweet, sweet, sweet (and occasionally crazy!).

Peace is a great thing to have at home.

Sadly Seeking Peace, llvl

It always seems unthinkable when a child dies. All that promise suddenly disappearing from life. The laughter, the scents, the quirky mind, the strengths and the foibles — all gone in an instant.

A million whys, a thousand: well how did it happens can’t change the sad reality — can’t help us escape which is really what we’re wanting.

I’ve been thinking about child death a lot recently: the news reeks with it. I’m too familiar with this — too many dead children in my life. Too many dead children in the world that has become immured to the sight and forgotten the individual horror in these mass killings…

And then a chance encounter in the back yard with my senior high neighbor whose friend had just died with that agonizing burden of a friend, recently seen, now gone. Asking the hows and the whys but really, just wanting his friend back.

As a minister, I need to call those in my community whose hearts are breaking, the parents, the kids — oh the kids. Making dates to enfold and love. Standing steady for those who have collapsed in grief… Thinking gratefully that I have been so filled up from this summer that I can stand firmly in love for them. This is their tragedy not mine…

But inside, as a sister, oh, I missed my sister as I recall receiving my father’s call about my nephew and making the call about my niece. Sweet and Holy One, can I really have had to tell my sister and her husband their only remaining child was dead? And we were the ones who always called each other when bad news broke.

Please, my dears, say nothing other than oh, I’m so sorry, Oh, your poor hearts, O your blessed child. Release the I don’t know how you bear its because they have no choice… They don’t know how they bear it either. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Call your family together, gather with your neighbors, immerse yourselves in Love, because Life is so damned precious and so damned fleeting. Peace eludes us in these moments. Hope is too far away. Only Love can keep our hearts beating in one common humanity of grief and eventually acceptance and then the far off healing of a grievous scar. Let us tend to one another and let us weep… Each child in each vida local, precious and needed. Each parent’s loving heart…

Your Peace and Mine, llvl

I love Sweden. I fell in love in 1969 and that sweet love has never been dislodged from my heart. I have 45 years of friendships that have become “family” connections. The language has a special place in my soul and on my tongue. The countryside is gorgeous and people here know how to sit and just take that in. Summer is short, but vacations are long and so are the days. Swedes do what they can to enjoy every minute, and this year, summer cooperated with warm, sunny weather. I spent more time sitting and looking at scenery with a cup of tea or a glass of wine in my hand than I have since I left here four years ago.

The things they fret about with their social system are things we would be so happy to have. When I talk about what I’m working on with feeding hungry children, they look at me as if we’re barbaric. Children are fed and housed. There’s public transportation. They’re the world’s standard for low use of antibiotics in animals, both in pets and meat production. They don’t use dyes in food. Even their toilet paper isn’t bleached. There’s so much going for it, and I love how I feel when I’m here. And goodness knows, there are those friends.

There’s a place for me on many a sofa, but in the end, it’s a visitor’s place.

I have often fantasized about living here. Early in my life, I applied for a job as a secretary. (Boy, are they lucky they didn’t choose me, I was a lousy secretary in English.) Yesterday, with my friends off moving their kid to his new house, I checked to see how alive that fantasy was. You know… not very. I’m not only missing my husband, I’m missing his music and the community gathered around it. I miss my friends and the life we lead. I know the rhythms in this household very well, but they’re not mine. And I miss my work. I miss the joy of it, the challenge of it, and the pieces that make a difference.

Retreat and respite are lovely. I’m not looking forward to leaving, to opening my arms and letting these good friends step back. It’s so hard not knowing when I’ll get back. I know how privileged I am to have them at all. But it doesn’t make it easy to go, however excited I will be to have you all back in my life. I’m not really even anticipating coming home. But it has popped up in my mind, finally, that I will be going home and it will be fabulous.

In the meantime, I will keep enjoying Swedish Peace, drinking in every last jot of its beauty. I will also remember that it’s not my Peace — or perhaps that it’s not all my Peace. The full hearts of global citizenship have to be balanced with the knowing and the missing of friends and traditions… and you know me… food. Here’s to celebrating the Peace of each place and finding that Peace which calls our hearts most deeply. Here’s me, giving thanks.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Tag Archives: creating family