Patience and Peace, LLVL

If there’s anything Winter’s got to teach us, it’s Patience. Slow down. You’re going to anyway, you might as well accept it and go with the flow.

This “things take more time than I’m willing to admit” thing is a good lesson for me. I’m not altogether sure I can allow Winter to leak this into my brain, but it’s helpful. Things take more time in the winter.

You’ve got to dress more warmly and figuring out what’s going to keep you warm takes time. Your car is going to need attention, a bit of time to warm up and more time to scrape off the ice barnacles.

If you’re not prepared you’re going to be late. (or in ann’s case, later… sigh). Living in la vida local also means living in the moment, being self-reflective enough to understand what happens and how long it takes, and then planning for it.

Peace isn’t a hurried process, and you don’t know what important detail you will rush by when you’re slamming about trying to accomplish your end goals with no passing thoughts to the steps that get you there. not gonna work. Peace be with you, and the Patience to enjoy the journey. If your life is to be a prayer, then you’ll want to pay some attention to each part of it, won’t you…

Meeting Peace, Jauntily, LLVL

As I search, I am seen. So take that precious moment of self-reflection before you go. Love your mirror and let it love you.

But the search is delightful. Even when the truth and the Peace are disarming or dismaying.

Begin as you mean to go on, “they” always say. And “they” are not always wrong.

So grab your coat and grab your hat. No sense carrying your troubles, they’ll keep pace if they need to. But look for hope. And smile, smile, smile. You have a date with Peace. (and I seem to have show tunes stuck in my head. ah well, less fattening than sugar plums!)

Knowing, Being Known, Peace & LLVL

Well, it certainly hadn’t occurred to me that poking my head out my door and getting to know the neighborhood made me part of the neighborhood to be known.

Huh.

So, it is in my own best interest to have a good idea who I am even as I seek to know who you are and where I live. It’s an opportunity not just to deal with my gifts, flaws and foibles, but also to determine who I’m going to be. I believe that living your life deliberately helps you to become that person. Making a difference in the world makes a difference in who you are and how you think about things.

If I’m going to be Peace, I have to know it, really be on speaking terms with it. I have to embody it. I have to admit that it’s possible. I have to do that for me, because I want it to be true for you. You have to be careful when you start your writing; you don’t know what you’re stirring up. I guess if I’m going to live locally, I have to be part of the scene. I maybe even (oh, heaven forfend) get out now and again (despite the winter chill). To be comfortable being known, I’m going to want to know myself — and well. Because I’m just as happy knowing things about myself before you do. Time to use that mirror beside the door! Living la vida local. Living in the present!

Vulnerable Peace, LLVL

When you live where you live, and when that place is a small town, you have to get to know yourself, because other people will know you well — sometimes better than you want to know yourself.

But it’s never a great idea for someone else to know you better than you know yourself, so it behooves you to keep looking.

I’ve been tired, emotionally up against my physical boundaries. It’s a wonderful privilege to do the work that I do, but sometimes it’s very demanding. You can’t always tell the demands to take a hike. or rather, you can’t always tell all of the demands to take a hike. Sometimes when you’re a minister, people need you. So you show up.

But it’s important to pay attention. Sometimes you can pass things off… And when you can, you probably should. For a lot of reasons, but two big ones. Those you love need to know you trust them to be as big and powerful as they are. And you need to honor what’s too much.

I love sermonizing. (ya think?) This week I had set myself a high bar. I was headed toward a more researchy sermon than I normally do. But post Charlie-memorial and post Jean visits in the hospital, there really wasn’t any brain power left. I finished the sermon. sorta. And went to bed, because bed was what was needed.

The next morning, as the poem says, I watched the river. And something about that flow reminded me. I wasn’t alone in this. I certainly wasn’t alone in mourning Charlie. I wasn’t alone in my fears for Jean, now, thank goodness somewhat allayed. And I am not alone in my ability to chew up a bunch of ideas and get something out of it. And this is a crowd who trusts me to love them.

One of the places that people get ministry wrong, I think, is when we don’t trust them to love us back. And there’s that awful hubris where we think we’re the only people who can… you fill in your own blank. Ministers could be the only people who have that problem, but I’m not taking any bets. So I went to church said, I’m going to give you my premises and my research… see if you can help… lots of thinking happens in the heads of my community… so there was a lot to be said for that. And in the end… it was a great sermon, jointly preached. I was supported and they were grateful to be asked. And the next time? I’ll do my stuff…until I need help again.

Ah, the timeless, sacred river… encouraging me to show up and be present, facilitating the moments of reflection, forgiving (even encouraging) the vulnerability, and offering the Peace of being right where you are, in this place, in this moment of time. Living la vida local has lessons I hadn’t any notion I might want to learn. ah, that darned praying constantly thing.

HNY, LLVL, Peace

Whew! there are a whole buncho assignments! Is it possible to have a happy year, to live la vida local and to keep stretching out toward Peace?

I guess I think that the openness to the new (built on the old), the decision to pay attention leads us down the road toward Peace. Provided, of course that we agree that others in the world are invited to walk those paths with us.

Consciousness. Wonder. Love. Determination. All supremely difficult and challenging; all consummately simple. So, reflect a little. Determine to fill 2014 to the brim with wonderful memories. Commit to laughing a lot, a lot, a lot. And crying once in a while. Dream deeply. Resign yourself to the constant starting over a little smarter a little saner. Keep going down that Peace Road.

It could be a great year. Many more people might have what they need and the space to become who they’re meant to be. We could claim that space because the likelihood is if you’re reading me, you have a great many options. And then we could start expanding that space for others.

Want to resolve something? Resolve that you’ll be as kind as you’re meant to be. As generous. As observant. As happy. And then make it so. You’re already a wonder! Peace in 2014.

(and how about Deb’s opening photo? Pretty great, eh? Here’s to Deb Slade and her challenges to appreciate the beauty where we are.)

Stories for Peace

The Dark is the time of Sacred Stories. We are asked to recall and recite the stories that make sense in our lives, the stories that make sense of our lives. Every time we tell them, a layer is added. The meaning deepens in the telling and so do our connections to the stories.

We have choices about the stories we tell. We have choices about how we tell the stories, what is it we want them to teach us. We even have choices about the way our stories evolve, because we can make choices about how we live our lives.

When I started this year, I decided to let a new storyline emerge. I wanted to explore Peace in my life. Writing about Peace every day, no matter how obliquely has turned me into a Peace-Considerer and is moving me toward Peace-maker. Choosing to capitalize Peace and other nouns that lead toward it, while choosing to take power away from unpeaceful nouns by keeping them lowercase has had impact, on me, if not on others. The capital (particularly from someone who is capital challenged) is a small, lingering caress. I pay attention to the Peaceful details of the stories I tell.

And oh they matter, those stories. I’m trying to collect them about a friend of mine, who died a week ago. He was a wacky, wonderful guy with a sly sense of humor and a penchant for collecting things and people and stories. and awful jokes. There are so many Charlie-stories worth telling. Telling them well, next week when we have the memorial will help those stories settle into our collective hearts and become part of our history.

Telling Charlie stories will ease our sorrow and shape our shared future and perhaps our individual ones as well. That’s what stories do, the bring the past into the present and offer a path into the future. And if you make your stories stories of Peace, you will build a future of Peace. The more people in your stories, the more people on your Peace road. So observe so you can collect those stories, practice so you can tell them and listen to what you say so you know what to tweak and what to do next. Which ones exhort you to show up? Which make you reflect? Which count the blessings of sweet memories made from your feats of derring-do and your moments of collective lolling about.

Tell the stories that make you happy, make you laugh. Tell the stories that remind you that your heart bruises. Remind yourself of big work completed and little times enjoyed. Tell the stories that help you remember what you stumble over. Remember what you’re proud of. Tell the stories of how Love grows, and Hope and Joy. Tell them simply or embellish the heck out of them. But most of all? Enjoy each and every one of them. Peace, my friends… Happy Story-telling!

Accepting Peace

Choosing one’s own path to Peace is a challenge.

For many of us, I fear, we make our choices as we recognize that whatever place we’re in is not one that fosters Peace in us rather than catching sight of a vision that dazzles and attracts. No not everyone, but many.

Sadly, few of us are skilled in divining what we do want or daring to ask for it — let alone pursue it. It’s too easy to frame our choices against what is wrong with the world we’re leaving rather than what is right with the world we’re choosing.

Neither is it easy stepping out of the status quo. This is a big and powerful river headed in one direction, so swimming to an edge and finding another branch of that stream or climbing out on the land to search out a trail requires quite a bit of determination.

I don’t know if it’s possible to do such a thing freely, without defensiveness. Not choosing what our family, friends, lover choose makes them question their choices. Who likes that?

I do know, for our health and sanity as well as for the future of our relationships, we need to find that sweet, easy conviction about our decisions.

Watching a couple exchanges recently allowed me to look back and wince at my own movement from my theological/socialspiritual roots and consider how lurching a process that was. A good friend said to me then, “Annie, clarify what you DO believe, you can’t just NOT believe.” It was great (if painful at the time) advice. And life is so much easier since adjusting the mantle I’ve chosen to sit comfortably on my shoulders.

It’s a challenge to keep asking ourselves “what do I want” and looking for real answers. Not self-indulgent ones, not the preferencing of me over you… but the deep answer that allows me to be me in relationship, perhaps even consideration, with all others, because I know and take responsibility for who I am and what I believe. And then, finally, I take Joy in it. And in that Joy I find the fuel to move toward Peace.

Self-reflection’s a bitch, isn’t it? But oh, so worth it.

Acting Thanksgiving, Acting Peace

I’m an applied theologian. I care less about what you believe than what you do with what you believe. I think often in active verbs, noticing, becoming aware, deciding, giving… sometimes rejecting. Always celebrating, always seeking.

Don’t get me wrong, applied theology isn’t all there is, not by a long shot. But it’s what I’m good at. You’d better be reading, You’d better be reflecting.

But when it comes to thanksgiving, you’ll do well to consider how to make your thankfulness dance. If you’re totting up your treasures, do it because you want to put that love to work in the world.

It’s time. There is so much need in this world and you are the answer. And you need to put your skills and your love to work in the world.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday filled with so much that’s good. Eat the wonderful food. Enjoy being with your family. Reflect on the wealth of your life. Give thanks. And then move into your generosity. It is the best part of who you are.

The more generous we can be, each and every one of us and all of us together, the closer we are to tearing down the walls between us, the closer we are to Peace.

Winter Peace

It is cold outside, I have to acknowledge that. But I’ve decided not to fret about it this year. It’s not going to be too cold. It’s not going to be too hot. It’s going to be life. I live in the Northeast. We have winter. It rains. It sleets. It snows. It’s cold and windy. It is what it is. Because you know what? Life gets cut short. And then there’s no time to spend together.

And if we spend our time together wishing our way our time together, we’re not having time together. I spent a lot of time last year working on improving my relationship to the dark and searching for the mystery. I think I’ll spend a lot of time this winter looking for (and finding!) the beauty.

I’m going to buy marvelous potions and lotions and slather myself in them.

I’m going to wrap up against the cold and take long walks. I’ve got the gear. Why not try it out?

I’m going to hope for snow and be glad to shovel.

I’m going to light candles in my house and keep the tea and oranges coming. I’ll keep my house clean and cozy.

And I’m going to give up wanting the clock to move in anything other than its stately progression. I’m going to work to be present and self-reflective. Because this is the time I have with you. This is the time I have with me.

So Winter is going to be all about Peace for me. It’s going to be about wonder and the sacred, sacred Dark. It’s going to be more work on living my life as a prayer of thanksgiving. I hope it will be for you as well. Because it certainly is beautiful. And this is our time.

Finding the Peace

— Even in the missteps. At some point you need to let those things go. Ah, but the stories? They remain…

I’m still polishing my way, silver spoon by silver salver to Peace in the china cupboard and in my home. I suppose I could just let all this go, or continue to let the air have its way with the silver. But the beginning to recall stories is the beginning of the healing. Perhaps I’m not yet ready to remember the wonderful trip to Alaska… oh, the pain… I can’t yet unpack the suitcase of Deb’s clothes that I took, but even though six of the original nine of us in this three story family are gone, I can, through the help of these things, begin, at least, to recall the folks on the ground floor…

So there are things and the removing of the tarnish unveils the stories. And I am restored even as the house is. And in the beautifying and putting away, I am calmed and soothed as ragged memories are no longer assaulting me from piles all over the floor, impeding my progress from room to room. I’m not sure if I’m making memories by doing this, or simply making room for memories.

I can’t imagine how thoroughly nettled my grandmother must have been. I wonder, had it been me — playing either roll, Gram or Sam — if I’d have been able to refrain from resilvering. Probably not, because I know, even as a child, when that urn sat in sullen condemnation in our cellar closet, i longed to restore it.

Hey! I’m an extrovert. I LIKE bright shiny things. And stories. I do love the stories. And many’s the day I sat with Grandma Helen, taking things out and putting things back into the china closet, to touch, revere, tell the stories of their family provenance, and then at the end, to set the table with. Even though I never cook, I still love setting a fine table. (maybe I need a great delivery service! oh and a million bucks — after all, the food should fit the plate, no?

But there was Sammy full of bright ideas… that ultimately weren’t. I’ve been there. It’s nice to know I inherited the oopsie gene. And all the hard work in the world doesn’t put the silver back on the urn. Ah well, silver to polish, blessings to count… a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Tag Archives: moments of self-reflection