The Peace of a January Fool

Are we willing to count the world well lost for Peace? Are we willing to embrace the absurd notion that society can be based in love and tolerance? People say it’s a foolish and simplistic notion that we can live in Peace. OK. It’s not that I’m unwilling to address the complex issues, but I am unwilling to allow the complexity to overwhelm the possibilities of Peace. Because Peace is what we are called to, or so I believe.

Far more is possible than we know. Let’s risk it. Joy is more present than we allow. Let’s live it. Let us be fools for Peace, risking being thought absurd to bring about change on earth, for the earth and all its peoples. As a notion, it’s perhaps a little grandiose… but it’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, and the beginning of a President and Vice President’s next four years. Whether you voted for them or not, I would hope you would join me in wishing them well, and in wishing that they dedicate themselves to their country’s well-being and a Peaceful, prosperous world. May that be so for all the world’s leaders.

My friend Blair Monie used this in his sermon yesterday morning. Here we are: more fools for Peace: “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way. Because I heard the voice saying: do something for others.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Widening and Narrowing Circles

This summer I was off to Peace Camp: ThinkPeace Workshops for Girls. It was astonishing. and I still haven’t distilled everything into a drink I can share. So many wonderful ideas. So many wonderful Girls! And Women! And such wonderful Work. yah. more later! Heaven on a stick for a Peace Sister. (Yes, there’s pondering about Peace Camp for Women!)

But what’s caught at my heart today is the notion of how your circles both enlarge and focus when you begin to look in a different direction. It’s been about a year that Sacred Village has been a public entity rather than a closely shared dream. Goodness knows, thanks to my beloved Web Guy, I’ve owned Sacred Village for years. (Dreams deferred can be just that! And sometimes dreams take a while to take substance. Don’t give up!)

As part of my attempt to put myself out there, I did what you’re supposed to do. I got a twitter account. I started friending people. I started posting. An early lucky follow was Kelly at ThinkPeace. Almost immediately “We Belonged to a Mut-u-allll Admiration Society.” Love, love, love, that woman her partner Liz and their work! I watched in amazement the work The girls and they were doing. I wrote a poem to support their work in Million Bones Project. Eventually, I held my breath and sent my plea… “Can I come to camp?” Yes! Delight ensued.

So off I went. Wow! And there as the teacher of the week was (drum roll, please) the fabulous and lovely Jeanne Demers author of The Ruby Books.

She works with Girls to help them find their Voices. We all started stories. (Yo, TP Girls anyone finish yours?) She’s a beautiful wonderful soul! (funny too!). At the end of the week, the girls started working at their World Girls, doing their research and building connections to girls a world away.

Now Jeanne has moved to Austin (cause that’s how hip she is!) and she’s gotten a job with the Girls Empowerment Network in Austin (GENaustin). She’s going to be wandering into school after school starting clubGEN. Girls will be speaking out all over Austin. The Girls of Austin couldn’t have a better gift. Girls! Leadership! Peace! Empowering and putting to words the connections between those things. What a wonderful, wonderful thing!

I can’t wait until the next time our paths cross. Because now that they have, you know they will again. Sing Hey! for a wonderful new friend and a woman doing her Work! My dear friends, meet a dear friend: Jeanne Demers (Cool Aunt, Great Woman).

Being Nice

Day after day we hear horrible stories of what goes on in high schools and how students cope with bullying. The cyber world, which I celebrate as it keeps me in touch with almost-lost high school friends and newly-minted grandchildren, is not always put to work for the good.

I read, aghast, about the way twitter and FB are used to isolate and terrify kids. I wonder whether Twitterverse isn’t the island that William Golding talked about in Lord of the Flies. When I read that book in college in the 70s I rolled my eyes, secure in my knowledge of humanity’s basic goodness. There’s nothing quite like privilege, is there? After all, I’d been growing up during the 60s in the years of the most heinous race riots and somehow still believed that clapping for Tinkerbelle was what it took.

Years later, I still cling to my Pollyanna worldview. I believe, when encouraged, we move toward the best in us. (it was only slightly discouraging when referencing pollyanna to have one group of information about Eleanor Porter’s 1915 novel and the other bit about “disambiguation” which is a synonym for my preternatural cheery optimism.) Once more with feeling “Let’s all look on the bright side of life…”

But looking away doesn’t help anything, especially our bullied and frightened kids. So it was a lovely thing to read about a 17 yo kid in Osseo MN taking to Twitter to shut down the mean girls and boys in his school who were using social media to terrorize and traumatize. Kudos for Kevin Curwick (and his parents who raised a great kid!). A cute, popular kid, leading the kindness brigade. Or as he says, OsseoNiceThings — goodness gracious are we going to rehabilitate the word nice, make it more than icky-sweet? He just set about noticing kids and posting what was great about them. Day after day, tweet after tweet. A young man doing his kindness reps. And Hurrah! for the kids at other schools are doing the same thing to combat bullying. If we’re going to trend and hashtag, let’s do it for the good. Hop on that bus, my dears.

And while we’re cheering, let’s hear it for the kids who are participating in Lady Gaga’s Kindness Campaign and for Office Depot and their president Patrick Schwartzenegger’s support and Cyndi Lauper’s “Give a Damn” campaign. It’s good to see people with klout taking a lead on this issue.

Makes me wonder what you’re doing for the good about bullying. Wander over to our FB page, like us, and tell me what you’re up to.

In the meantime give it up for Kevin. Thanks to him, at least in Osseo, MN, we’re no longer listening to the sound of one hand clapping, we’re listening to a rousing round of applause from every student in his school. (Although someone might want to know if was using his cell in school, but that’s the principal’s problem! I’m just happy someone’s doing what’s right. ) So, while I’ll keep working for change, I’m going to keep clapping for Tinkerbelle. Sometimes the light just shines brighter. I do believe the more you focus on what is right, the more we move toward that. But we should stop once in a while to see who’s not in the parade with us and invite them to come along. Go Kevin!

Lost and Found

In my line of work, I spend a lot of time driving to places I don’t know. For some reason, I’ve never invested in a GPS. And so I wind up, from time to time, lost.

There are times when that is more frightening than others. When I’m going to a wedding, I always leave lots of time for the drive before the lots of time I need to prepare to go on with the wedding. But still, it can get a bit shaky, especially when couples have found the perfect place to marry which is back of beyond and outside of cell coverage. And of course even if one had cell coverage, if you’re in farmland alongside a herd o’ cows, what do you say about where you are?

But other times, I’m just not clear where I am and how to get to where I’m going from where I am.

If I had a GPS, she would tell me to turn around and go back to something that felt like an intersection. I suppose that might have its charm.

But what’s really quite wonderful in those “hmmmmm” moments is to find a place to stop and ask.

People like being helpful. It’s really a mitzvah to give them a chance. If you’re pleasant, and ask specifically for what you need, people will do their best to help you get where you need to go. And if they can’t help you, they will go out of their way to find someone who can help you. At the end of the exchange, everyone feels good about themselves and the other.

In London, when I was one of a gaggle of young American women, uncertain how to get to whatever our next destination was, I stopped a home-bound gentleman (complete with bowler, bumpershoot and newspaper) and asked for directions. He turned around and walked 4 blocks out of his way to get us sorted out. We were all smiling and grateful at the end of that exchange. (And this is the trip where I had a street name but no address for a cousin, and walked into a green grocer and asked if he knew of a red-headed american who lived in the area… “ginger-‘aired?” he asked. “Two doors down.” And that’s how my cousin Nancy and her young family wound up with 5 extra mouths to feed on a Sunday Evening.” Luck? Maybe. Kindess, absolutely!)

It’s almost always worked that way — well, except for once, but that’s another story, and all’s well that ends well with that story, as well. I do get anxious. But if I can calm my anxiety, I tend to have a great time and a wonderful exchange.

Which is not to say that I don’t like it when the directions work and the street and road signs you need are actually visible…

But the kindness of strangers is, thank you Blanche DuBois, a commodity on which one can gratefully rely. Pretty cool, eh?

Compassion

“Compassion is an unstable emotion, it needs to be translated into action or it withers.”

It wasn’t until I wrote the tag line for this morning’s musing that I realized how many of us these days are confusing posting to FaceBook with standing for the right. It’s a lovely, but wrongheaded notion…

There is no substitute for doing the kind deed or offering the kind word.

And the world is in need of kindness…

Susan Sontag, you wonderful woman, thank you for your words of wisdom throughout the years. I miss your voice.

Living the good life

I understand, believe me I do, that our differing beliefs lead us to different conclusions about what happens at the end of what we know as life.

Having written that sentence, I’m a bit stymied about how to phrase the but… and i don’t know that it is a but. Maybe it’s just a different sentence altogether.

Life is meant to be lived to the fullest. Enjoyed. Cared for. And by living to the fullest, I don’t mean lived at someone else’s expense, or even at the expense of your own sense of self or spiritual well-being. I mean experienced, embraced. I mean using our passions to change the world into a paradise on earth. Not by your rules but by Love’s.

Making it different

Just like that, lives can be changed.

Little Anthony has some developmental disabilities. Among them, he needs a hearing aid. But once he started reading comics, he decided that he didn’t want to wear his aid because no super-heroes wear them. Distraught, having tried lots of other things, his Mom wrote to Marvel and said, “help!” They responded by creating Blue Ear a new Super Hero with hearing loss. Now Anthony can pursue his dream of helping people and hear what’s going on around him.

Here are people with a lot of influence, but who with a small act of kindness changed the life of not only this little boy, but of a lot of kids out there with special needs. You know they’ll think differently about their Super Heroes and how they’ll do good forever. Go watch this video! And smile!

And then keep thinking about how you might make a difference!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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