Oh, John Lennon. We miss you.
We miss your tender optimism. We miss your vision and hope.
Here we are, all these years later in dystopia rising.
Everyone’s learning to fight and shoot.
Not a lot of time to imagine when you’re avoiding a quick right hook or thinking you’re fighting off savage marauders. No time for joy. No time for hope. No time for Moons that promise and bring the flowers…
Imagine giving Peace a Chance. Imagine.
Can you hear the birds? Oh, that’s the sound of a changed season.
And if you sit really quietly, I think you can hear the earth creak into Spring.
It’s exactly that being present to signs of Hope and the willingness to be part of the Possibilities that makes Peace something that can happen.
It takes us all. It’s not enough if i listen or you do. It’s not enough if you sing or I do. We have to do this together. Let’s sing Peace into existence along with the natural world!
Fanciful? yes. Possible? who knows?
Peace. Spring. Ideas whose time has come.
We hear and we hear and we hear about things that are wrong with this world. And there are many things. Isn’t it time that we begin to create the things that are right with this world? Isn’t it time we be what is right with this world?
I’m still grappling with this notion of sacred honor… trying to understand what it means to me… thinking that perhaps it needs to mean something so that things change. I believe that we’re the change. And that people in parts of the world where change is much harder than here need to know that we believe that they’re the change.
Although it’s certainly easier for me to consider what the change might be here far away from some of the awful violence people are experiencing.
But if Spring can turn a white world into pink beauty, if the Moon can go from nothing to bursting, if we can begin again, then Lunacy is not impossible — and neither is Peace. Let us be Lunatics of Love and Hope and Peace. Let’s start now!
Dick Bonham, friend of mine, friend of my mother’s (and part of a mutual admiration society for one another’s art), and husband to a friend, did this beautiful piece.
Crow Moon is called that because the cawing crows are supposed to signify the end of Winter. (really, they could try a little harder to let Winter know it’s ok to let go!)
Art about the Moon in celebration of a Baby. Peace. Any questions?
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.
What if all of us at some point when the Moon were in the sky made the effort to look up and smile Peace and Love at the Moon?
Naïve, surely.
But it costs nothing and it hurts nothing, which is certainly not what we can say about the trying to war our way to Peace.
And it might change our mindset as we begin to have Peace on our hearts and our faces on a regular basis. It is exactly those times of being open and unguarded that we move forward in Peace, I think. And it might start us making constructive movement toward Peace in a world too frightened to let go of the hatred.
We might check our Moon calendar and see when the moon shines on Iraq or Syria and send our best Love. Or know when the Moon smiles at Nigeria and offer hope for a suffering people.
Peace begins where we are. And the Moon will be all the more radiant for our Hope and Love.
We read the newspapers and it’s enough to discourage one from trying. But I hope that we will read the newspapers and find ourselves renewed in purpose.
Things are not as they should be, could be. We have only a couple ways to go with that. And if it is ridiculous to keep moving toward wholeness, I say let’s move in the direction of both ridiculousness and wholeness… er… “walk this way!”
Whether you call the vision that leads you Hope or the Divine, right relationship is a goal worth working towards.
I don’t know who’s on your team, but I hope that you know. I don’t know what bit of insanity you feel best prepared to work on, but I hope that you know where your passion is.
And if that passion is inspired by ridiculous notions of what is right, I say dance by the light of the Moon and find yourself more inspiration and continued encouragement. Peace, a lunatic and so wise a goal. (And what the heck, laugh with your teammates as you go).
So much newness going on. It’s the new Cold Night Moon. It’s the Midwinter Solstice (6:03 pm). Blessed Dark! It’s still Chanukah! More light! It’s the Fourth Week of Advent: Peace on Earth! (And Hope! and Joy! and Love!) It’s also the Sabbath and I’m so taking a nap after services today!
(I’m going to start talking about the moon to get us ready. As we leave a year of living locally, we’re entering a year of Lunacy: by the end of the year, we’ll be looking for that orb in the sky and appreciating how the Moon works on our lives!
Although many people will be celebrating the return of the light, I will be lingering in the Dark… I celebrate its beauty and its calm. I’m not a naturally quiet person, so when the season turns dark, I’m encouraged to tunnel down into the Beauty and Silence.
Soon we’ll have snow and that will lighten the world considerably… but for now, shhh, the world is sleeping.
Peace to you, my friends. Peace on Earth! Wishing you Joy in this season of Sacred Holidays, whatever you celebrate. (and whatever you do, if you can find it in you, celebrate!)
Whether it’s a little boy laughing and flirting in a cafe or a grandmother with a lapful of love in sleepers reading her two boys a story, there are just times that the innocence fills your heart. And you know, the force for Peace is powerful.
But those two little boys in my friend’s lap face a far more uncertain world than the little in the cafe because they’re black and he is not.
That has to stop. We have to change that. We do. Because loving, giggly, happy boys deserve a chance… And the world deserves to know what gifts of wonder those little boys can become.
Sweet Sabbath Peace be with us. Wish me luck I’m preaching a difficult sermon on this today… For those celebrating the sacred season of Advent, I wish you Hope.
Yesterday was exhausting. There were too many articles about women’s being targeted for being good at what they do… and the responses’ ranging from lower pay to death-threats. In one article there was a nonchalant… oh two women had to move out of their house because they were being targeted for — talking about gaming. Seems it matters enough that one woman, who was supposed to speak at an event in Utah, cancelled when the University wouldn’t install metal detectors for her event even though someone had written a letter threatening to kill her and all the other feminists. I’d say “hunted down like dogs” but we don’t talk about our beloved pups that way. Women, meh. And those weren’t the only posts about women’s lives being endangered.
And then there were the articles about the children. One is dead, one has killed. They’re trying a 10-year-old boy as an adult — which is much better than getting him mental health services earlier in his life, eh… and finding out what provokes that kind of action in a child. Certainly, I know there are psychopaths with badly wired brains. But often, there are kids in trouble. Who knows what he is… But he didn’t get what he needed. No, I’m not excusing him. But I’m not excusing us either.
So, you read, you think. You try not to live in the rage. I know its value, but I know its cost as well.
I had meant to have my musing written before I went off to the theater last night. I just got involved doing other things… so that didn’t happen. Looking to balance myself a bit, I reminded myself about the artists I live among. There are so many who just open their hearts and minds to us… It’s quite magical. Songs, poetry, books, and plays. I’ve got to believe, if you look around, people like that are everywhere, people with their hearts leaking out, spilling out. Magic in the air, Change on the ground.
And then last night, one man, on the stage talking about climate change, but also talking about a moral imperative to act and his willingness to trust that we would stand with him; that people would do the right thing.
I’d just been talking to Dr. Jojo about this… a very smart woman had just written a sermon about people’s needing to act from their love and willingness… their needing to feel it… But I have to tell you, if I didn’t feel the imperative, whether I define that as the Goddess with her hand firmly shoving me out the door, or a simple understanding of what is wrong and a willingness to work for that not to be true… I think we have to get up off our collective asses. We have to vote in the voting booth and on the streets.
Peterson Toscano believed last evening and offered that, slyly, pointedly, inspirationally, laugh out loudly. We are so lucky. “Apocaloptimist!” oh, yes, Peacemaker, Hope Giver… let’s get up offa those things! The world waits for our strong hearts and gentle hands.
