Rocky Moments in the Flower Moon

It was one of those days. Nothing majorly wrong, but filled with rocky moments where nothing was particularly right.

We have these. They come around. And our job is to relax into them and deal with things as they come up.

I think the key to days such as these is the exhale. You force out the stale breath you didn’t know you were holding and fresh air streams in.

And in the Flower Moon, that air is often sweetly scented. Sure, it’s filled with allergens… but still… Lilacs!

There are often appropriate actions to take and you take them, because life has responsibilities and is sometimes very hard work. And if you deal with them as they come up, there are fewer treacherous rapids to run. I’m a big fan of letting only the big problems be a big deal, the little problems can be dealt with.

When we let the little things become big things we move our attention away from our Peace Goal. We also forget Possibility. I mastered this art for a while, but, in the long run, it’s not really an art I want to be good at. So, I stopped. I mess it up once in a while, and then i get back to getting on with moving toward Peace. Exhale and breathe in that fresh lilac scented air.

Peace be with you on this lovely morning.

Peace, Good Deeds, & a Flower Moon

It’s good to do things for one another. It’s good to gather together as a group and do things for one another. It gathers us into community and makes us feel good that we’re doing important things.

It’s also good when what we’re doing isn’t necessary because there is no healthcare. That makes me so sad. I believe so strongly in healthcare for everyone. Yes. I know it’s expensive. And everyone needs health care.

I don’t mind paying taxes so that our children aren’t the most endangered and the hungriest. In fact, I want that. I want our corporations stepping up and paying their fair share. I want rich people to do the same.

And in the meantime, I want people kicking in the money they have to send people to Key West before they die. It makes us feel good about ourselves. And the person that’s dying gets to have a little slice of life and make one last set of memories with her friends.

That means everything, doesn’t it…

There’s Peacemaking in this… And so we gather under the Flower Moon and watch Love and Friendship blossom between strangers helping one another down the road. It’s a good thing. Creating community is good work. Sometimes it’s hard work. Sometimes it just feels good to do what’s right.

Peace of Work Well Done

Ha! I just realized that rather than saying, as that ridiculous ruling does, that institutions are people too, that I wrote a musing saying that people are institutions!

But people change lives in the process of going about their daily work. Someone who serves your coffee with a smile changes your day.

So can we talk about why we can’t raise that minimum wage?

I love that this woman brightened mornings for so long, but did she want to — or did she have to because you don’t build up a great retirement on $2 an hour. Tips in central PA are probably not lavish for breakfast.

I know. Can’t I just clap for this woman’s wonderful service? She did such hard work for such a long time.

You know, once you start working on the web, it’s sometimes hard to pull things out.

I love that people do wonderful jobs. I’d just like if they’d be well and truly compensated for it. I’d like if our elders got some options. and if the people who make our lives sweeter got some acknowledgement in both cash and compliments. I’d like it if it weren’t often women in these situations…

And… all of that doesn’t change that she changed the world for many of us, who went in to get our breakfast served with a smile…

Lines of Peace this Sugar Moon Sabbath

Today is the 50th Commemoration, I can’t say anniversary, like it’s a happy thing, of Bloody Sunday.

It was a day about lines. Lines to keep people in boxes that they weren’t going to accept any more. Lines that people in power were clear should never be crossed. Lines that at last, at last, the media finally decided to cross to show what was going on. Lines that kept a nation of people comfortably allowing them to keep thinking of themselves as good people.

We should know our lines. What are the lines we believe never should be crossed? What are the lines that keep us from being fully who we are. Lines both protect and prohibit… it’s an odd thing, isn’t it? We ahve to consier if we’re willing to do the hard work to stand on those lines, to step up to those lines and stand in solidarity alongside others who believe and those who are unwilling to see or wake up.

So, looking at my latitude and longitude helps me consider lines. I live at 40.9˚N and 79.8˚W… What other intersection I live in I’ll need to consider. And meanwhile the Sugar Moon shines sweetly down on all of us, doesn’t it?

If you haven’t read the President’s speech from the bridge yesterday, you might want to. You might want to look up your own latitude and longitude. You might want to think about where your Peace Lines are, which ones you’ll never cross and which ones are holding you back… A blessed and lovely Sabbath to you, my friends!

New Peace under the Sugar Moon?

A friend of mine, an amateur but dedicated astrologer, says that we’re in the midst of a large breakdown of societal structures. And that things are spiraling.

Don’t believe in astrology?

Okay, let’s read the newspaper.

Same message.

Determined assaults on public food, healthcare and shelter. Facile racial and religious slurs and hate crimes.

What’s to be done? One response has been the purity movements we’re seeing. They’re causing death and mayhem.

If we remain lackadaisical about this, the purity movements will win and hate will become even more entrenched.

Celebrating diversity and building civilization on that is hard work, no way around it. And it’s necessary. We are the ones. Peace is waiting for us. And creation is under assault while we don’t act. Let us be Peace on Earth. Let us distill the sweetness still here under this Sugar Moon.

The Other Side of Moon Peace

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m amazed about what never crosses my mind.

So, wow… the dark side of the moon waxes and wanes.

NASA has gone to the trouble of putting together a time-lapsed video. It’s pretty cool.

Just as I never thought of the oh-not-so-dark side of the Moon, there are huge pieces of Peace I never considered either. The good news is that this means there are more steps we can take, there are more ways we can begin to make a difference.

There’s more value than I ever dreamed possible in seeing the other side… I’ve never had huge urges to do things (climb mountains for instance) just because they were there. But perhaps Peace cares more about what is needed than what I want… or you want. It simply wants to manifest — and it needs our help. So come on, my fellow bears and chickens… let us go over the mountains and cross the roads… Peace awaits. And NASA just blew the I’m too lazy, I don’t wanna excuse outta the sky… Strength of resolve, strength of character, strength of purpose are needed to be about this hard and delicate work. And Love. I think it needs Love.

Snow Moon, Groundhog Lunacy, Peace Anniversaries

Well big surprise, Phil saw his shadow. But since we found out it was just Phil looking for love, once he figured out which doors to knock on, it’s no big surprise that we’ll have to burrow in for another six weeks. Boy’s gotta build up his strength…

Once again I have been deceived by the snow Moon who promised big snow Love, but delivered rain instead. Ah well, I got a workout in shoveling out my steps… Some wonderful person blew the rest of the (not as much as promised) snow away. Hurrah for neighbors. And good for me. I have to build up my strength as well so I get to keep having a fabulous life.

This is my day of days. It’s a day of great memories. It’s a day when I’ve made important promises and today I get to celebrate keeping them. I committed to being a Priestess. I have kept that vow. I came home to be with and care for my parents. I kept that promise and did the same for my sister. I made my promises to Steve and I have kept those vow.s Makes me very happy. Yesterday I celebrated Priestess stuff. I remember my family every day and since Steve plays tonight then we’ll celebrate with his music and tomorrow have a more private hurrah.

I’ve been building Peace in my life. I thank the many of you who hold me to those expectations of creating the Peace in my own life and working in the community to center our work on creating space for people to experience Peace and get on board the Peace Train.

But I invite you to join me in the happy dance for Peace… Celebrate, celebrate! dance to the music! (it’s hard work, but someone has to do it!)

Cold Snow Moon Lunacy and Peace

What is it about bright, cold, sunshiny days that spark us to flurries of good work?

I don’t know, but i’ll take it!

I tend to work on many projects which is a mixed blessing. I love it, but whoo, sometimes i get a bit confused and a bit distracted!

But then there’s a day like yesterday and I’m off!

Hard sometimes to keep all the plates spinning at once, or in the image i used in the musing, to keep the right spices in the right soups and to keep them on simmer rather than boil!

And yet, who knows what magic can happen in the midst of the luncacy…

You have to be open. But you also need to be deliberate and occasionally careful… you need some structure to support the wildness.

So… Play to your strengths. Plan. Get your ingredients laid out in their appropriate groups. Then turn on some great chants or a loud and defiant aria; and go wild. Lunacy and Magic are not happenstantial occurrences! They’re very hard work

Create! It’s what you were born to do… It can lead to astonishing feats of Peace. what more could you ask?

Peace in the Midst of Snow Moon?

Bah. Since I wrote yesterday about my thought that humans are now often the deep impediment to other people’s eating, I’ve been trying out the truth of that statement in my mouth.

Sadly, it tastes like truth. It sounds like truth.

I don’t know what it is about metaphor that allows me to see differently, but it does.

I’ve known underemployment and low wages are a major cause of food insecurity in this valley, but I’ve never understood it quite this clearly.

People need living wages. They need to be able to care for their children. Children need to eat if they’re going to be happy kids and productive adults. It all feels pretty straightforward to me…

If people in capitals are not going to change, we’re going to have to use our Peace shovels and make a difference. There’s a lot of snow. The more of us digging, the more who will join us, the more power and strength we add to the task. What if we were the avalanche rather than the greed and stupidity? What if we made Peace what people wanted to do? It can only happen if we step up and do the hard work. Let the politicians see what matters to us. In the meantime, let us feed the hungry. Let us sit shoulder to shoulder around the fire because we have invited people into our abundance. We can make it so.

Spiraling toward Peace, llvl

Whether I’m writing or plotting a campaign, I find the way is never straightforward. Much of the time it takes to accomplish something is not the actual writing (or doing), it’s what’s needed to allow things to assemble themselves.

Really — aren’t brains remarkable? To think of little thought molecules flying apart and then reassembling while we wait (and — sometimes — wait and wait). Then there’s the need for that oh-so-important red pencil, because, really, just because one paragraph flows from the next doesn’t mean that you don’t have a detour on your hands.

And it doesn’t seem to matter how much attention I’ve put into things beforehand. I can travel around with a project on my heart for a week or so, and still find that nothing is straightforward… Ideas and projects seem to have minds of their own! And part of the realization is that the way is never straight, there’s no one direct line between here and there.

Maybe the process is simply one of making Peace with the slow and meandering nature of project-making, of allowing myself to be informed by the information I gather and the need that’s trying to express itself. I’m certainly grateful for the opportunity… but it does take time, which sometimes makes me grumpy.

And discipline… I never thought I’d be great at the discipline part, but I guess I simply didn’t have anything I cared about enough to hone a craft. But even daily and weekly repetition of the craft doesn’t eliminate or even dwindle the amount of time a project needs to become what you want it to be and what it wants to be. I find the words teach me. I may think I have a clear idea where a story’s going and then it picks up and moves. Then I have a lot of work to do to discern whether I’m getting closer or farther away from the heart of the matter.

The vision of a spiral does help, to consider on working downward and inward on ever tighter circles, coming constantly closer to the heart of the work is an image that sustains — but really… sometimes I long for work that I can just get out of the way. I guess I should take up ironing! I’m not sure how ironing will contribute to world Peace, however…

So I guess I’ll walk the Peace spiral, do the hard work, and be grateful. Not everyone has the possibility, the privilege, of waking up and doing what you love. I do. And I give thanks. Peace be with you on the crooked, meandering spiral of life.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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