Staying Local for Peace and Life

You know it happens, so you shouldn’t be so surprised. But when the people on the shore behind you in Florida come from 6 miles away from your home in Pennsylvania… and you know someone in common… that’s a sweet coincidence. And ok, sorta weird.

And that’s life.

In addition to the wonderful weather, there’s wonderful family here. When you don’t see each other all the time, you work hard to create the family and then you reap the sweetness. And that’s life.

It’s hard to keep up with everyone you love. It’s hard to stay connected. It takes hard work.. But the effort makes all the difference. Then once in a while there are chance encounters that make you laugh out loud. Stay present to the moment. Count your blessings and just be overwhelmed with the sweetness. Make memories where and when you can. From such things Peace grows. And alongside it the realization that every bit of life is local. It’s all about your showing up!

Local Valentine Love and Peace, llvl

I’m very lucky, my SweetPea is a pretty smushy kinda guy, so my day started out with a Will You Be My Valentine call. Sigh.

But after years of being single, happily, blessedly single, here’s to my girlfriends who have always been the root of my life.

And now after more than a decade living in this little River Valley, let me lift a glass to the love of a community. As we’re talking at the UUCSV about our becoming The Valley Where No Child Goes Hungry, I’m getting the most wonderful responses from friends and acquaintances… a let’s do this rather than a WTH?????

And then there’s my readership from many other places, who write and say this is how I’m falling in love in my life, with my life. Hurrah!

And finally, because she’s changed a way of thinking about and talking about women’s bodies, here’s to Eve Ensler and more annual performances of the Vagina Monologues than we can imagine. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah.

Love is in the air, and in the ground, and in the water and in the sky. Let us rejoice and make Peace and Love!

Me and Thee and Peace, llvl

Do I know you well enough to think of you as sacred? Do I know myself well enough to think of myself as sacred. Can there be sacred other without sacred self? Am I sacred because I am also part of other? or Other?

A Friend (Quaker) and a Friend of my Heart wrote this in response to today’s musing: “Back in the day (1600’s) Quakers began using the terms “thee” and “thou” because they were the familiar/informal form of address. They refused to use the honorific/formal forms as a testimony to their belief that everyone is equal and certain people/classes do not deserve “higher” honor or formality when being addressed. They actually go thrown in jail for addressing hoity-toity people as “thee” and “thou.” (They wouldn’t bow to them either – gasp!). Even today, many Friends avoid using the terms “sir” and “maam”, and will instead simply use the term f/Friend instead.” (Thanks, Therese Miller).

Interesting that today if you’re not a King or Queen, sir and ma’am are simply sweet honorific caresses, acknowledgements of age… which of course seem like swear words to those of us, Us, who know that we’re really cook cats and nothing as stodgy as a person who might need an arm up!

Today for us to reclaim the second person familiar is to reclaim the intimate. Television and internet have seemingly eradicated the levels between us — and we ignore the status that privilege and wealth confer, pretending we’re going to get there soon. any day now, really, things will turn around.

But what if I see thee as my intimate, even if i don’t know thee? Am I not forced to care for thee, because i have said I know thee. What if we replaced the wink-wink-nudge-nudge of carnal knowingness with the dangerous, searing soulful knowledge of other. If I open myself to thee… I welcome thee and I dare thee to welcome me. I say Namaste.

In that intimacy, the seeds of Peace are sown. It’s precarious, but real. Peace. Namaste. I welcome thee to my heart.

A Present, Local, Peace Blessing, LLVL

If you’re going to count your blessings, you have to be where you are. You have to live centered in your life, your life has to have a location. You have to live locally.

Blessing counting is about real things, or should be. Not just gushy things, but the little things like warm socks on a cold day and the friend who cared enough to give them to you. (Ms Live Locally somehow missed the fact that it was going to be below zero degrees last night.) It’s not just about being aware that you can afford or beg or borrow enough to pay your fuel oil and the realization that there are others who can’t and who might need your help — and you might be able to give it.

It’s about recognizing and appreciating the beauty of the land around you and understanding your responsibility to it. It’s about celebrating your relationships and doing what’s necessary to nurture them.

You can’t count blessings if you’re not engaged. That’s not a passive thing. I think you can’t count your blessings if you’re not willing to be a blessing to be counted. Maybe you start with counting little blessings when you’re young, like a child at prayer: Bless Mommy, bless Daddy, bless Sisty and Bro, bless the dog, the cat, the chickens. But then you grow up and so should your blessings. You still count them but you get active about your love, you bless the challenges that allow you to test your strengths and ingenuity.

Life is hard, it’s true. But it is filled with things that soften those blows, and we must rejoice in them, and we must be them. Preachy, this morning, I guess. But Peace depends on the blessings we’re willing to see and be. And we depend on Peace and our work toward it to give our lives meaning.

Peace with the Past, LLVL

I’ve been batting clean-up at home. It’s been coming in waves. I do some things, get back on my feet and sink into my life. Which is busy and demanding and beloved. But tiring.

So when I get a moment again, I get rested and then I can consider what I want to do next to normalize what feels vastly un-normal. I am now the keeper of so much family goodness. But not all of it has yet found its way into final homes on my walls or in closets or…

But Saturday was one of those days to attack a pile. I had the time, I was in a good place. As did many of Deb’s friends, I brought home a bunch of clothes. Deb was much taller than I (to my eternal chagrin). So wearing her pants demands intervention. There I was intervening. zip, zip, zip. fix. fix. fix. complete assignment. moving through the pile and BAM. oh, right. these were Deb’s favorites. She wore them all the time. My sister. My sweet, sweet, no-longer-here sister.

So I had a decision to make. I could let them drag me down, tuck them on a shelf and never wear them again. I could throw them out. And forget recycling. Somethings the trash is the answer. And if I couldn’t wear them I didn’t want to see them on somebody else who bought them at the church yard sale. Or, I could take strength from wearing her favorite pants — put on the whole armor of Deb, if you’ll excuse the bad remake of a Bible verse. So, I chose. I’d wear them in pride. I’d step up and step out. They’re teal, after all. New memories to be made. New ways to count blessings.

So crisis averted i plowed on. Remember I put out a plea for coats for a friend. The woman who leads the yard sale obliged. As I was tucking them into the car I realized. They were Deb’s. I was going to have to learn this lesson. Let go. And really, deb would have been thrilled to know her stuff was headed to SD to keep people warm. And I reclaimed that very warm sweater I’d given away because really, it never gets that cold here. So there we are. Getting brave. Making Peace. Wearing the pants in the family.

Quiet Sabbath Peace, LLVL

The living la vida local part of sabbath for me is being present to where I am, being right here. It’s also about being deliberate and making space for sabbath, the calm, the quiet observation of it, in my life right here.

I’m trying to balance the quiet calm and moments of reflection with the digging out from under, steadily whittling away at what nags at me. I did some of that yesterday. I’ll do some more today.

I’m not always good at making space to really see the Beauty in where I am. I’m so lucky. My house is filled with beauty some of it inherited from my friends and family. Some of it chosen by the keen eye for line and color I inherited from my parents.

And often I let the clutter of my life and my mind obscure the Peace and the Beauty. Perhaps the sabbath is about re-membering, putting back together the Beauty of my life. That means allowing the dead to dance and the future to sparkle. It means being present, sinking into its peace and quiet. Peace and Quiet. Blessed Sabbath. Love. Peace. Beauty. and maybe popcorn. You decide. As for me, I always like popcorn and a good cup of tea… and Quiet. I like the quiet of the sabbath as well.

Talking about Peace, LLVL

One of the biggest barriers to Peace is isolation. How can we make Peace if we don’t know one another? or even acknowledge one another?

Locally, for me, that’s a fairly easy problem to address. I need to start saying hello to people on the street. I can own it. Become the mayor in the spiritual sense of it. (hmmm, maybe we should all be mayors of where we live, noticing what’s going on, doing what we can to address it.)

Maybe it’s more difficult in a large city, where people are forced to make their living on their wits and some folks take advantage of openness. But if there’s nothing they can take, because it’s being given away, maybe we won’t be so vulnerable. I knew a woman when i lived in NY, who always had a smile. She made Peace at the doors to shops, holding the doors for everyone, smiling at them, exchanging a kind word, even with the grumps of the universe.

But acknowledging someone’s humanity to their face predisposes them to less crankiness and who knows what…

maybe Peace. or the start of Peace. Maybe hellos are just the first light caress, blessing, of Love which leads to Peace. My little town is quaint with lovely architecture. It’s often recognized as one of the most beautiful towns… but what if it were beautiful because it was friendly, because people said hello and talked about what mattered, and what didn’t?

Clouds for Peace, LLVL

Today’s clouds are more cotton batting and last night’s fog is today’s ice slick, so please be careful. That’ll teach us to be so disdainful of dry, frigid weather!

But clouds… wonderful, wonderful clouds. Mystery, grandeur, fun… they have it all going on. I live in a river valley, so there are hills (we call them mountains, they’re very old mountains, so let’s not hurt their feelings by pointing out that their majesty does not come from their height.) that the clouds can amass against. Our climate is right for thunderstorms so clouds can build and build and build. And some days it’s so clear that the contrails of planes are all you see, as they turn the sky into a windowpane print.

Clouds are great for metaphor, and they’re lovely just as is, without any import at all. Clouds, with or without meaning sauce. My mom painted clouds a lot. She also painted their shadows. I think, I’ve said, it took her paintings to teach me about cloud shadows. And, of course, my father the scientist would be explaining about the cold air meeting the warm air as he was exclaiming about the beauty and the bounty!

But there’s something about the grandeur of the sky that captures our attention and soothes our souls. Each locale has their own clouds as true to the area as our terrain. Local beauties!

But these particular clouds, drifting across a Pennsylvania field remind me of Love peeping out and Peace overflowing. I like the science of clouds and I’m happy to have it exist right alongside their lovely metaphors. Let’s hear it for Mother Nature! Watch where you’re walking, but don’t neglect to look up, the Divine might be smiling at you… Here’s looking at you, kid!

Balancing Sabbath Peace, LLVL

Another mysterious Sabbath morning. Foggy. Here in the Valley, we’ve gone from bitter cold to flood warnings. Winter is harsh, even when beautiful.

I’m working once again with balance. A friend wrote last week after one of my musings about the difficulty of being perceived as capable, the curse of the competent as someone has said. Here, you’re competent do it all.

But doing it all doesn’t nurture community. It makes a martyr out of you and it’s hubris to think you can or should do it all. So those who are competent need to speak up. We also need to lower the bar on what people do. If someone else does something they don’t need to do it to our standards, they need to do it to their own. Part of being an elder (OMG, ME????? sigh, yes.) is handing over the wisdom, so you can concentrate on those things you’re good at. It’s not about doing everything, it’s about being you.

Those who are willing to let others shoulder the work. sorry. Your turn. Your community. Your turn. and your benefit as things become yours…

Balance. on a sweet Sabbath. Figuring it out. Getting it right. Getting it wrong. Trying again. All for the sake of community, Love and Peace.

Insistent Peace, LLVL

So, here’s the deal with this living la vida local, it’s not all sweetness and life.

Even in my beautiful little river valley, things are wrong. I may not be responsible for fixing everything, although I would judge that I’m responsible for fixing what I can and for thinking about fixing. (Because there’s certainly no Peace if people are hungry.) But I am responsible for calling out what I see — both the Beauty and the warts, the privilege and the lack of it. Here we are, in it.

I haven’t had a lot of writing assignments this week, although I haven’t written for the paper lately… sigh. so I’d written ahead a bit on my dailies, feeling pretty satisfied. But that lil angel had other ideas. I hope she’s going to show up occasionally… (notice she’s a she today? wonder how that will keep changing…)

This poem fell out of a lunch with the guy who’s been my biggest co-conspirator on the Love Flows. He’s the logistics end of the dreaming. So when I said, flood relief, he said here’s how. When we started thinking food, he’s now thinking BOLD and LARGE and occasionally I think about logistics. While we’re thinking about about what we do next, no reason not to throw some money in the pot if you have some. We’re building up resources for the next assault against hunger. Hopefully we’ll get to work on the website next week. Living la vida local is loco… lots of demands on a priestess’s time… but the donate button works. Or donate where you are. And stay tuned. Priestesses reflect, but it’s not all they do.

Lliving in the neighborhood, dancing around the village helps you see, and seeing confers the need to speak, and speaking pushes one to gather others around to make a difference. It’s a Peace Dance, and we’re all invited. And for the moment I’m not going to worry about the fact that I’m channeling info from a stone angel.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Tag Archives: love