You can’t ever understand how an image hits one person one way and another another.
I look at this beautiful field and see a straight spine. You may well see something else.
But the straightness of it. The spaces between the bones, which means the comfort of it.
It’s enough to make an aging witchy woman straighten up and fly right.
Straight spines for Peace and forward. Heaven knows Peace needs us.
The fields lie dormant, doing what they’re good at. They’re a great reminder to rest and soak it in. Review the year that’s past. Rest up for the new. Exhale. Oh, that felt good.
It’s time to live off the fat of the land, trusting that the land will once more grow fat. But that’s a while from now. Now, we just have trust that Spring will come again. But we can’t hurry that. We can simply prepare.
The light is returning, but oh, so slowly. Let us practice Peace, right here and right now. Let us become proficient at it. Because the time is coming when our skills will be tested.
You and I are the fields which will bear fruit in the time ahead. Much does not work toward Peace. But we will not lose heart. Peace, my friends.
Okay, maybe there were a few too many metaphors in this short piece, but none the less, we must both practice Peace and bear its fruit… And rest. It won’t be the first time you’ve had to keep a few things in your mind!
Send me! Those of us eager to serve often go in a little earlier than we might. Sometimes we could have used a little extra study on the lay of the land… But there we are: Send me!
Volunteering to lead in the Peace struggle is a good thing nonetheless. Stepping out alone, sticking out, always desperately feared as a child, can be a thing of beauty.
Leading can offer others the opportunity to come on along. And when they do: change happens.
So there are deeper levels to think about here… but there’s also the wild wonderfulness of the corn erupting in the midst of a soybean field, doing what it does best. Whatever we do for laughter, whatever we do for Peace it’s a good thing! Be brave. Stand out in your field! Peace!
I know it’s what happens. You plant seeds in dirt and over time, they transform into plants. From nothingness into something astonishing.
And somehow it’s the first little nothings into somethings that I find the most amazing.
Life! That’s how it happens. Some marvelous alchemy and viola!
Peace happens that way too. If we’re willing to tend it and water it and weed it.
Let’s do that, shall we? Let’s plant Peace and watch it grow!
We spend too much time being busy. I was about to say we spend too much time working. But we’re just as involved in structured play and self-improvement. Busyness.
We’re sleep deprived, tired, and as a result, a little bit grumpy all the time.
I don’t believe you have to be at Peace to bring about Peace, but I do believe you have to at least know what it looks like. You need moments to help you understand and to give you something to strive toward.
What would it be like to have a few moments, just a few to start with, to yourself when you had no expectations of yourself, where you could just experience doing nothing.
I think a little personal Peace would be good for all of us; it would make us ready to do teh work for much bigger and more complex kinds of Peace.
Fields have a job to do and they’re pretty good at it. They grow things. Left to themselves they’ll grow whatever is right for the climate. Cultivated and coaxed, they’ll grow all sorts of wonderful and outlandish things. They are generous beyond what seems possible or even sensible.
Peace is like that too. When you sow seeds of Peace you have no idea how great the harvest might be. You just keep watering it with Love and tend and harvest what appears. And then you share it with the world.
We’d do well to learn about Peace from fields.
An empty mailbox beside an empty field. Ready. Waiting. Or is it
A stuffed mailbox beside a seeded field?
You can’t tell by looking. You have to explore. You have to ask. You have to prepare. You have to reach out.
Fields and mailboxes: both demand participation.
Except when delightful surprises surface. A volunteer flying seed can propagate in an empty field. A letter that you don’t expect can arrive. In both cases, the news can be either a pleasant or an unpleasant surprise.
But that’s the nature of life isn’t it.
However, you can make sure that people have pleasant surprises by mailing a lovely letter… or planting the seed for a beautiful flower or an interesting vegetable at the corner of a field.
Whether you’re the one who gives the gift or the one who receives it, both offer possibilities for Peace. Deepen those possibilities why don’t you? Let’s Peace!
We rise and fall with the seasons… but when we’re focused and involved, even during the off seasons, our project is only dormant, not dead. It’s important to give fields and dreams a time to lie fallow, and so necessary to put them back to work. Fields of dreams — it’s important that we have them.
And/but… it’s so easy to let go. Our dreams have seasons, but unless we truly renounce them, we need not to just let them molder. It’s a choice… to believe we’re worthy of our Peace dreams and they are worthy of our investment.
Pete, my friend who took today’s photo, sends me provocative choices as she decides what fields to send. And so does everyone in the group. 5 weeks into the project, there have been one or two curves each week. It’s a lovely challenge; I feel so privileged. Who gets to do this? lucky, lucky me!
