What’s on your Song List for Peace?

We all have those favorite songs from the magical times in our lives.

They helped us stand up and do what was in front of us and sit down and enjoy what was right here, right now.

Joni Mitchell is on my list. She was background for the development one of the most important friendships in my life. She was background for my college years. I became more fully myself singing along with her songs.

And now she’s aging and oh, btw, she’s not quite 10 years older than i am.

But I love that high voice and pointed lyric.

Thanks for the Peace and all the wonderful memories I made while you were singing! May I be a Peacegiver too…

Snow Moon Peace Prayers

A couple marries. A young husband dies. A restaurant is shot up in Göteborg. The season changes, the Moon darkens and then, ever so slowly begins to grow again. Blessed to stand by the edge of the ocean, I open my heart…

To be aware. To be grateful. To be of use. To bring Peace. To be aware. To be grateful. To be of use. To bring Peace. To be aware. To be grateful. To be of use. To bring Peace.

Today, back in my life. I have the same prayer. and did I forget to mention, to be delighted.

Honoring Snow Moon Peace

“My Sacred Honor.”

I think that I take myself, my calling and my goals seriously and then I hear this phrase.

Do I consider myself to have Sacred Honor? And even if I can wring a quiet equivocating yes from myself, do I carry that as a central tenet of my work and being?

Or do I dismiss that as fanatical? Is it? Must it be so?

Do I underestimate the importance of what I do and believe if I don’t see this as Sacred Duty and that my Honor is dependent upon my steadfastness to the task? If I don’t do this work, am I daily spending those important moments in self-reflection?

How does it change how I work and speak about my Work if I accept that my remaining true not only to myself but to my Work and my Belief in that work — and in myself?

I think I’m going to have to poke at this a while… In the meantime, Peace be with us. And may we be Peace. We’re winding down, just a few days left in the Sugar Moon, soon the Pink moon will start spreading its carpet of blossoms across our lives. It’s important to be patient for the last few days of the boiling down to nectar of this Moon. Peace is sometimes called upon to be a Patient and exacting Peace.

Working with the Snow Moon Peace

Having been watching the weather in Sweden, I know it’s far warmer there than here — at the moment it’s about 35 degrees warmer. (it is a bit brrr-ish here at 0˚. I currently have heaters aimed at the cold water pipe in my sink and am flushing warm water down the toilet… neither of those pipes have insulation… sigh.) So it’s not unreasonable to hear that they’re going out into the woods to gather winter fuel.

Still, oddly, I find it difficult to imagine my loved ones in anything other than my weather, so I find it extraordinarily brave of them!

What they are, in fact, is far better attuned than I to the difference the seasons make in the woods and how best to take advantage of that… or rather, more rightly put, to live with that.

it’s hard, since i’m an indoor girl to be to aware of how the earth moves… and it’s good to have a circle that includes people who know the forest, know when the mushrooms crop up and the berries come, know when the forest offers what’s needed.

I’m both wildly interested and disinterested in the same moment… Sometimes I think it’s just laziness… others, i’m not sure…

So i return as I often do to the circle. To having those in my circle who know what I don’t. Who pay attention differently, who turn their heads in other directions… Those friends keep us more widely engaged.

And now I have the image of birch logs blazing merrily in their fireplace… and I think of their eating one of my favorite pastries through the Lenten season… as they presage the Sugar Moon in so many ways. (who’d expect the Northlands to lead us into the the Spring?) I love them, and I love that I’m invited to see life through their eyes.

We make Peace with the Earth, with the Seasons and with our lives in so many different ways. It’s only as we gather them together that Peace can be seen as the beautiful patchwork it’s meant to be…

Tempered Gratitude and Peace, llvl

It is good that there is a day in our lives when we say thank you. It’d be grand if we did this more frequently. And as so many of us say, there’s family, there are friends, there’s food (and some would add there’s football) what’s not to like about this holiday? I’m really looking forward to time with my nephew and his wife, visits to friends and a whole weekend that continues the celebration. Big bonus: I get to spend much of the weekend with my husband, which is not what we always get. I’m a happy and a lucky woman. While there are faces I miss at the table, I have family and friends I love and who love me in return. I have a job I have waited and prepared a lifetime to do, and I have you and a place to say what I think and feel and believe. Huge thanksgiving. Joy that races between quiet and explosive!

However, some people don’t have those luxuries. Even if they have food, they may not have family. Some are missing both comfort and sustenance. Somehow this day feels like another reminder of their loneliness. When we can, we should help here.

This year, I think it’s incumbent upon us to remember that the gratitude that is tied up in so many of our minds with a thankfulness for this country must be balanced by the realization how many people are excluded from the American Dream. And more than excluded, threatened. There’s been a lot of writing lately about how this current uproar in Ferguson is less about Blacks’ demanding visibility than it is about white outrage (again with the outrage) that society is changing and, in fact, there must be, even will be, parity. Black lives do matter. And so our gratitude must be tempered with awareness. And our gratitude must be the fuel for making a difference.

Our hearts must be both sorrowful and grateful. We’re plenty complex enough to hold that tension. Today let us feast. Tomorrow let us eat leftovers and consider how we might help. Celebration and action, longtime friends of Peace.

Time-out for Sabbath Peace, llvl

Things don’t always go smoothly as much as you’d like them too. Sometimes there are hiccups along the road to Peace.

So you take a spoonful of sugar and you exhale. Eventually the hiccups stop.

And perhaps you take a break. Get outside and breathe in Autumn. Celebrate creation however you do that. Sit around with friends and laugh. Sit around on your own and read a book. Catch up on your craft. Put yourself on time-out for a little (self) reflection and reconsideration. ahhh.

Take a break from the work. Take a break from your Peace partners. All that work will be there tomorrow. Today, go ahead and cherish the Sabbath. Make it yours. Fill up.

Peace. Give yourself a piece of it. Tomorrow’s another day…

Disappointments in Peace, llvl

I’d been doing really hard work on my Five-Fold Goddess presentation with Kelly. When the conference was cancelled, it was really disappointing.This is work I’ve wanted to do for such a long time. And it’s not as if it were going easily… bah.

Now I’ll have to find a new venue, which means trying to decide what stays, what goes… To keep tasking the material and ourselves, what if any difference it makes. It’s part of the process of doing your work, I know that… It’s not just the moments of self-reflection that make our work hard, it’s the fact that the outside world bumps along and things don’t always go the way you’d like them to.

So… it also means dealing with the disappointment. They weren’t getting the registration they needed and they pulled the plug. A wise decision, certainly… but it put at least a temporary halt to the deep fun of working on this… and the urgency…

I’ve been away from the Goddess and that work for a long time. It was nice to have a reason to be back. Now I have to readjust. I can do that.

And I have to mourn a bit. And give myself a bit of Peace about my discouragement, before I go back to slogging away, and finding a way to open it to the world.

So here’s to the uncomfortable parts, because Peace is actually not a straightforward process or journey…

Peace Shadows, llvl

We don’t live at the equator, so the sun casts a shadow every day. I’m so caught by the notion of standing still occupying only my place in the world.

Maybe on this day, we could consider choosing the kind of shadow we choose to cast.

I’m happy to offer shade. I admit I can giggle helplessly when my shadow does silly things like crawl across a floor only to crawl up a wall. I’m not one of those people, but I’m entranced by people who can make their fingers fly in the lamplight, telling a story of faces or animals.

But in the face of the climate change march, it was easy to think about shadow as a stain… as something we leave behind with our passing, something we do without noticing. It was interesting to consider that…

I want to cast a shadow of Peace. As much as I can, I want to be conscious of, to be present to, the trail I leave. Peace. Doing it. Being it. Casting it across the world.

Moonlit Peace, llvl

Well, it was difficult with an evening like last evening not to have the musing turn back toward Paradise.

There we were, the temperature was perfect (and there were no bugs!); the food, amazing; the patio, filled with friends; the moon was up and the band was smokin’ and mellow by turns. Steve was playing again! His wrist is getting stronger. That would have been enough… but he’s not just playing he’s playin’ those drums. oh, such joy.

What a life of privilege I lead.

And I’m grateful for it, because all last night I thought about what I had to do this morning, and was uneasy. But I did it. I went and sat down at a table in the restaurant I often go to and told them that the racist jokes have to stop. The one guy looked at me and said, I wish you’d been here 5 minutes ago the guy just left. But it was really just that everyone laughed. And he told me he’d talk to the guy. (I don’t know if he knew i wrote a letter to the editor about it, and that it was in today’s paper.) The guy I was sitting beside looked at me only once, he obviously was not open at all… And I need to decide. Do I just not go back? Do I go back for a bit in case someone wants to talk to me? Do I go back and take my whole tribe of folk and just begin to own the place? I don’t know. I’ll finish shaking from this morning’s encounter and think about it later. I owe it to everyone I love to keep thinking about it. I owe it to them and myself to keep stepping up. You can’t make Peace by ignoring the ugliness and the folk who can’t have Peace.

And I’m grateful that I have such fine experiences to sustain me. So that I can do what I’m called to do… And I’m glad and lucky beyond belief that I have such a wild, weird, wonderful community. Growin’ up. it ain’t for sissies.

No Peace in Depression, llvl

As everyone, I’ve been thinking a lot about Robin Williams. Not so much about his comedy, but more about his life. He was hilarious… and manic. Whew. his picture’s probably beside the world. I always felt that when he played the genie, that he finally was released from the bodily confines and that had to be amazing for him.

He was so much more than his addictions and his depression. Everyone is. But in the end, he couldn’t access the support he needed. How very, very sad.

For many of us on FB and I’m sure everywhere else, it lead us to reflect on our encounters with depression… and every other mental illness and brain illness in the book. My lovely, loving WASPy family couldn’t/wouldn’t understand that Mental Illness is illness. So we didn’t talk about things. And when Mom got Dementia, that was another opportunity not to talk about things.

We lost so much. And because so few people were willing to get help either chemical or conversational, we lost even more. As the wacky, too emotional New York/California daughter, my ideas about therapy were sniffed at.

And let’s not even talk about the alcohol. It was easier not to know my mom’s side of the family… and not to talk about the alcohol… So there they are… dead from the silence and their deep pain. And when I say silence, i mean unwillingness to be present, to process, to reflect.

So… let’s get educated about Mental Illness… Let’s find our own therapists and help our friends get the help they need. I was pleased and grateful to see Laura Campbell’s clear and thoughtful piece on WNEP. All of us would do well to have the suicide prevention hotline’s # somewhere available. 1-800-273-TALK (8255) Depression is a widespread issue… and requires better care than advice about bootstraps. Deb Slade’s rainy day photo with a fallen blossom is a wistful accompaniment.

Silence in this case does not hold Peace.

Sacred Village

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Tag Archives: moments of self-reflection