Peace Lunacy

The full Moon is said to induce extreme folly. The Folly I’ve been caught by all these years is Peace. Or rather the process of living now as if Peace were perfectly possible.

The world needs us to be more daring than we’ve ever been — not about extreme sports and risks in the wild, but about exploring Peace and Justice. Those should be sacred words in our mouths and on our hearts.

Peace is a ridiculous idea — a ridiculous idea whose time has come.

The Full Moon shows us the way of serenity… Cold or not, she is present to us. Dangerous or not, she is also there. The wolves are outside our door… but they’re just wolves trying to survive too. Let’s find some balance… and the courage to be full Moon crazy about Peace.

Storms on the Peace Road, llvl

I don’t believe in Fate. I do believe in causation however. And right now in our world, we’re experiencing the side effects of our action and our inaction.

And what’s happening doesn’t speak well about us. We’ve agreed that certain things contribute to climate change, but haven’t demanded that those things be changed. We’ve agreed that racism is rampant, but haven’t worked to change our own hearts, and through that changed others’.

And so we see huge winter storms lashing the coasts and destroying islands in the middle of the Pacific and send an occasional check to the Red Cross. And we see riots in our streets because we continue to ignore the privileged violence that is enacted against our brothers and sisters of color.

These things won’t stop unless we have a change of heart. They won’t stop unless we decide to work to change other hearts. They won’t stop until we join hands with people all over our country all over our world and say, actually, it’s not going to be that way any more.

Peace on Earth, isn’t something sweet you write on Holiday Cards. It’s what we’re meant for. It’s what our world deserves. Justice. Peace. Joy. Are we ready? Are we committed? The world is waiting for our gentle but insistent hands.

Seeing Our Way to Peace, llvl

Woke up this morning with Ferguson on my heart, and this simple phrase going through my brain, these people are fighting for their lives. They are fighting to be seen as people by a world that finds it inconvenient that they exist.

“Here they stand, they can do no other…” and why should they?

I guess the bigger question is do we stand with them? Are we on their side or in their way? Are we on the side of right or are we impeding Justice?

And let’s not get confused by the looting question. Remember “We are Penn State?” yeah, violence and looting. Over football. Not over a child not only killed but left lying in the street as if he were trash.

Unless we see this for what it is, unless we see our unwillingness to embrace people as beloved not other, until we look at people at see only human, Peace cannot come and we’ll be the reason. Preaching here, gotta spend today redoing my sermon, don’t I?

What is Peace today? Struggling to decide whether gratitude today is just one more namby pamby sentiment… or whether it’s simply irrelevant to this conversation… yet still that was yesterday — but I may not let my thankfulness impede my vision, instead it must drive it. And maybe I must be grateful for a faith and an understanding that makes me uncomfortable and sorrowful… what is my work here? What is yours?

Peace and Welcome, llvl

I was busy having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day yesterday. (goodness I love Judith Viorst!) Mostly because I slipped. I know better. We all know better.

You see a conversation that looks rational but isn’t. And so you respond. What were you thinking? So then you get to be whiny about the conversation and really disgusted with yourself. Because you’re not going to make a difference. And particularly me, I’m not a rational builder of arguments. Too bad they weren’t teaching debate when i was in high school, i could have used the critical process encouragement!

Nonetheless.

There’s no parsing away people’s right to be themselves. You want to decry acts of violence, I’m with you. Let’s say no, and start saying yes to Peace. But really, it’s time to understand that the minute you start bleating about anyone’s right to be who they are, from whatever, culture, race, gender orientation, religion, you are immaterial to the discussion. That privilege is gone. Welcome to the cruise to nowhere, and it’s beyond me to care that you’re still pontificating.

Love. It’s what we have to work with. It’s what we have to work on. (and Justice, let’s not forget Justice. Divine Justice.) I’m tired of cleaning up after all y’all as you take away time and energy from the important questions. Do the children have enough to eat? Do they have clothes and shoes? Do they play well with others? Certainly those are the most important things, arent they? Cause if you think society works and gay marriage is going to upset that, you don’t know anything about gay marriage and less about kids at risk.

What Peace Requires, llvl

Oh, it was a challenging evening. I went to see the film The Honor Diaries, which takes a relentless look at the notion of “honor” in tribal societies and the ways women (women’s bodies) pay the price for a family’s honor. It looked at honor violence, women being beaten, raped, disfigured; honor killings; and Female Genital Mutilation. I was in a hall filled with young women at a local college (and why weren’t young men required to be there?).

At the end of the film, which was attended by one of the women who was in the film’s roundtable, there was a Q&A. Part of the discussion about the film beforehand had been whether it was Islamaphobic. The speaker, a Muslim, is very clear, as are most of the women in the film, that they are working on civil rights, not (yet) on Reformation of Islam.

What is true is that many of the people there had to struggle with the notion that this was other… other than us. The violence in these countries is extreme and horrific. But it is supported by our lack of connection to people we understand to be completely different from us.

All that day, I’d been struggling with evidence of diminishing rights here in the states. Lack of access to birth control and abortion, rising rapes, death threats to young women taking what some men perceive as ‘their’ power. Comparable violence? No. but on the continuum? yes. And I believe the lack of focus on these problems is rooted in the same dismissal of women’s value. In those countries women are seen as having half the worth of a man. Here, at least financially, we’re pretty clear that we’re 78%. But any diminution of human value allows such atrocities to continue.

Women need to see this connection and be outraged. So do our Brothers, Fathers, Husbands, Friends.

So what does Peace need? The awareness that there is no Peace (and that we’re part of the problem). Justice. And a flat out commitment to bringing Peace through addressing (stopping!) the injustices.

It’s all very complicated. and so what?

Bits and Pieces of Peace, llvl

Noticing. We have to pay attention to what’s around us. If we don’t, we miss wonderful things. And not only big things, small wonderful things… As I say below, it’s finding that local shop that gives a good haircut or the place where they know how you like your sandwich fixed. It’s the little things that act as both a reminder and a goad. The reminder is that there are many things in life that are good and that those things add up to a good life. Then we can let those lovely little things act goads to preserve what is great and to make it better.

And the world needs little prompts so it continues to be wonderful, or maybe even starts being wonderful for everyone. Because let’s be clear, privilege makes things great for some, but not all of us. It’s up to those of us with privilege to keep widening the circle, inviting people in.

It’s easy, goodness knows, to whine about what’s wrong. We do that a lot. All of us. But if we put our minds — or is it our hearts — to it, it’s very easy to notice small things that make our lives lovely. It’s actually fairly easy to do little things to make it better. One of the things that makes life lovely for us is when it’s lovely for everyone.

That’s why a bunch of us are going out today to stand together and drink a little cider across the street from a group promoting a hateful point of view. We’re not protesting, we’re just witnessing to Peace and Community. A lot of us. Standing around. Chatting. Getting to know one another. Maybe even planning to do something more. Something that makes a bigger difference.

But if my friend Sonia and some of her friends who wear a headscarf feel better loved — and safer, let’s not forget safer — because we stood in the cold and the dark, then so much the better. Simply by being present, we’re working for Justice. If it’s this easy to do good, maybe we’ll do more…

If I want Peace, I have to be it. That simple. And I’ve got to invite other people along on the journey. Because Peace isn’t for the few.

Peace/No Peace, llvl

It seems odd… here am I in wonderland, looking out over the sea who hides her changes. The good news here is that the mackerel are coming back… or so we hope. But Fjällbacka, like my lovely little Lewisburg, is a small village and much that is wrong is very well hidden and all that is beautiful lies on the surface.

And at the same time, the world is exploding in roiling ugliness. People are gathering to turn away children. People are gathering to watch a war as if it were television. People are being shot from the sky. 300 lives ended, including some of the great minds working on AIDS. And those are only today’s headlines, there is so much we’re looking away from.

And so I pray. I pray for those who are warred upon, may their bodies be protected and their souls comforted. I pray for those who make war, may their hearts soften and their brains clear. I work to pray with each breath, to notice the beauty, to appreciate the love in this family and my life, to realize how precious life is and to be grateful.

I may not feel guilty for my time off, that would sully it. Cutting it short wouldn’t change what’s happening… I am not so powerful. So I must treasure this time — and all of you — and prepare myself for my return. I must make more good memories to savor and shore me up.

In the meantime, I am also wildly grateful for those who do their work so that the world may be better…saner… safer… I pray that we may make it more Peaceful, more Just.

Peace: Fantasy and Reality, llvl

The picture Deb took this week has really rocked me. I look at it and see another possibility… another world. It stirs a childhood fantasy to life that there was/is another possibility for life just beyond the cupboard door (or the station wall, or, or, or…)

Now it may be that I live in that fantasy… look at the projects I invest in, Love Flows, Peace… all ridiculous pipe dreams, but are they. They’re pipe dreams we choose to invest in. If we live la vida local and really choose to make a peaceful difference where we live, if we promote Justice, which I talk about all to infrequently, but which is the heart of Peace, then we can start Peace in our little corner of the world and let it spread. And what really, if we decided to make this the Valley with No Hungry Children? What if we just changed our world? We can do that. If each of us takes a neighbor’s hand, life can be different.

And, for me, it’s that fantasy that reminds me. I believe the role of fantasy is not so much to take us away from the real but to remind us what could also be true. I’m particular about what I read… I’m not giving into despair and cynicism. I like my read to be a good one, but I’m not interested in people’s pulling things apart because there are plot malfunctions. I’m longing for the dream. Let us dream dreams. Let us see visions. And then, let’s make this a much sweeter world…

Rainy Day Peace

My corner (or perhaps my center) of PA has been a little dry. We’re three inches short for the year. Which is odd, since March and April are often very wet months (April showers and all that.) Between the dry spell here and some conversations about the California drought — and very scary fires — Water and its lack have been on my mind. All of which is balanced, in a horrible kind of way, with the heavy storms the MidWest has been having.

But I might have looked at the weather before I wrote the poem. Here we were with a front about to stall over us. It rained so hard last night that I kept being awakened by the pummeling rain… I’m so unused to the sound.

But water. We really would do well to remember that it’s a sacred resource and must be treated with respect and reverence. We don’t need long showers to wake up, we don’t have to use a hose when a broom would do. We don’t need to plant flowers that don’t grow easily in our climate. It’s hard; it’s not what we’re used to — and the reverence is what our planet needs.

We all need to learn to share. It seems like we’ve forgotten this kindergarten staple. But your neighbor has pretty much the same needs that you do, and having more money doesn’t make you more deserving. How does the saying go — the rain falls on the just and the unjust? The universe doesn’t care, we’re all deserving of the bath and the blessing!

So, let’s think about water and how we use it. In many many parts of the world just access to Water is Peace.

Creating a Peaceful Vida Local

It’s important to stop and take stock now and again about where we are and remember the places and experiences that got us here. At some point, we left those places and experiences behind. Sometimes we left with regret, simply because there was somewhere else we felt called to be.

Sometimes we left with urgency, needing to leave a toxic environment.

Sometimes we left because we were finished.

In the last two the leaving often brings with it sadness and confusion. Why are things over? What do I want?

There are plenty of times after leaving that we must huddle and heal. Throwing ourselves out there too quickly can convince you that you want to sit on the couch forever. But after a while we need to get up. And then sometimes we must wander in the wilderness until we find our new home. We’re not necessarily well-equipped to figure out what a new home needs to look like, especially when we’re grieving our old one. so there’s often stumbling involved. We need to find the shift in ourselves from “not this!” to “what I’m looking for…” If we’re hurting, in the beginning we may just be looking for community. And that’s fine. And the fact is we may try on a couple communities in the search, which can be painful for both the searchers and the communities that aren’t “just right.” It’s not an easy journey, just a worthwhile one. And we need to bless that journey of discovery.

But then, it’s best if we find and create a new nesting place, a new vida local. While I believe that you have to work to change communities, you can’t be working to change communities that have no interest in your desires. Ah, it’s a challenge.

In the long run, however, I believe we need communities and communities need new blood and new possibilities. Wherever we go, we need to create our new community. I am firmly convinced that it is our job to bend the arc of the world toward Peace toward Justice and toward Inclusive Community. So l invite us all, at the point where our grieving begins to move us back toward life, to find our new communities and to step up to Peacemaking. The rewards are enormous and help that broken heart to heal.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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