Reflecting Peace

I’m polishing things at my house for two reasons. I just inherited a whole bunch of lovely family and putting them out and putting them away, it seemed better to put them away well shined and well loved. And then after a long time away at deb’s and a long time not living in my space, I’m trying to reclaim where I live. To make it mine again. (thankfully the human version of peeing on things is cleaning them!) And OK, three and four… I love silver, especially silver that’s been used for generations of MY family AND I have very few jobs that end, so I take great satisfaction in taking a mound of tarnished pieces and turning it into beauty. Take that!

So, when I can’t do anything else right now, I polish. Even though there’s still plenty of chaos on the surface, it’s slowly diminishing underneath. Things are being put away. An entire stack of books, stuck beside my fireplace for YEARS — vanished into a bookcase of all unlikely places.

And the silver and the wood and the glassware are slowly returning to their intended state as heirlooms mingle with my own chosen things. As I apply a little elbow grease to things I’ve been catching little glimpses of myself in the newly shining surfaces. It has reminded me that October and the coming celebration of Hallowmas is about that. About the quick glances that reveal deep truths. Catching my father’s profile in my grandmother’s silver pitcher. A glazed, teary-eyed look into the reflection on a dish that held candy on my Nana’s table. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? Moments of self-reflection. Moments of blessing counting. Moments of beauty.

Because the glimpses are only snatches, it’s easier to begin to piece together (Peace together) a picture. I can examine those pieces with curiosity and remembrance. I can let the grace seep in before I have to face the whole. All in all, i think it’s a good way to begin the process of examining our souls, bit by bit… and scrubbing the tarnish off as we go. Peace. slow, subtle Peace. and ooh, look, bright shiny things. who doesn’t like that?

Leonine Peace

Maybe I missed the point in this poem (she says now), maybe the point is that life and the living of it require incredible loyalty and bravery.

Maybe Leo popped out of my box, now as I begin to think about how to honor Deb, to talk about how brave she was in continuing to live when so much was lost to her. In continuing to fight the cancer against impossible odds.

I do know that, with my heart set always on Peace, I can overlook the importance of warriors and even Peace Keepers/Defenders. That was where I headed with this poem. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll have to head another way.

Thanks, Leo. You brought a lot to my life when you sprang out of your box to lie atop your pedestal in my china cabinet. I’ll keep trying to discern what, exactly, I might learn from you.

Peace of the Moment

Living in the moment. ack. According to most traditions, being present is what is asked of us. We are to delight in the moment. Pay attention heretics… it’s not all about the next life. Why would we have this life if we weren’t to enjoy it?

There are those glorious moments when it’s easy. Look. Life is grand!

But most of life is? Not that.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ‘way over yonder recently. Not so much the ‘way over yonder of death, but the ‘way over yonder of “if I can only finish this, life will exist on the other side.”

Hello! Lying to myself. Life is in the mess. In the packed dishes, mine and my sister’s mingling, in the paper on the floor, in the box spring that doesn’t go up the stairs.

It’s not about snapping and whining that life is too hard. It’s about opening and going through. Because, in fact, I have a box spring that doesn’t go up the stairs in my cozy little home. I have stuff. I had the most remarkable sister. I had a great family whose mementos surround me. I have great family who love and laugh and bicker. I have friends who pack my stuff, who move my stuff, who hold my hand, listen to me moan, weep with me. Life is right here.

If I fail to be grateful, I miss the point. I miss the Peace. … dammit. Once again, here we are, lookin’ for love in all the wrong places. It’s not about sitting on the mountain top, it’s about living in the muck. In the summer, I need to remember I love the feel of mud squishing between my toes. In the winter? I’ve got great boots. forward ho!

Present and accounted for. Until, of course, it gets hard. And then I can learn this lesson again.

The Peace Sabbath of In-Between

In between is where the magic and the mystery happens. I believe that. Things happen on the way to somewhere else. But no one ever tells you how long it takes to get through. If they did, would we believe them? If we believed them, would we go?

I’m a woman of chaos. Lots boiling around in my brain. Lots of people and events and stuff boiling around in my life. Because of that, I keep things pared down. I can eat the same foods. Sit in the same chair. I can even read the same book, over and over and over again. Small delightful snippets to remind me. Small delightful snippets to distract me. Very little noise it distracts me. (She married a drummer????????? ah, right they live separately.)

But closing down Deb’s house, deciding what will be kept and what will go away. Making space at my house. Deciding what will be kept and what will go away. Bringing what will be kept to my place. Trying to clean it up, figure it out, fit it all in. Trying to make life simple.

Trying to do this with half a brain… people with broken hearts don’t have lots of consistent brain power to rely on. (although, rejoice, i read part of a real book! a NEW book, no small delightful snippet. something I had to chew on.)

So, even though Sundays are work days for me, my work is the work of presence. and that’s the work of the sabbath… That’s why i stayed up last night moving things about so that I could spend time today just being present to poetry, to song, to community, to people’s adventures, to friends and family, to the empty spaces. Sabbath. even in the wilderness. Hoping that the wandering helps me find my way home to Peace and a peace-filled, memory-rich home. Other people wait for me to make my way back home, but memories are what I have of my sister… so I must celebrate them.

Trust and Peace

The notion of trust has been on my mind for so many reasons recently, many of them sweet. Deb’s last words to me were “Oh, Annie I trust you with everything.” I’ll take that. I’ll cherish that. That’s the sweetest Love in the hardest places.

But trust has limits… it breaks… we falter. Sometimes that enrages me — as when governmental bodies or large corporations spend a lot more resources sniffing out trust breakers than they save. But they love the notion that they’re “catching” the bad guys,” never mind when it’s at the expense of “the good guys.” Once you’re focused on the bad guys, there’s nothing left but waiting till the good guys show their true bad colors.

Purely anecdotal, but the only time I cheated in school is when elaborate procedures were put in place to keep me from cheating. on a typing test. Proud that I cheated? Nah, not so much. But still shaking my head over the stupidity? yep. And for a woman who spent and still spends a lot of time coloring within the lines, it was a daring slash of color. Even if it was on a course I paid for… and I actually, now that I remembered, pretty much half the time cheated for other people. Wow, talk about an old memory. Funny. It certainly made me untrustworthy in that course…

I watched a person with a debilitating illness be cross examined yesterday in an effort to catch her out. Someone who should have been able to understand the disease left with the words: I hope you feel better soon. There was a lot of effort put in to catching out someone they’ve been in relationship with for a long time. yep, that’s aggravating. (and don’t even get me started on the lack of accessible restrooms in the place where they bring people with neurological difficulties to be tested. really?????

I think trust is something we must work to have, even when people are untrustworthy. Otherwise we live in a closed and frightening world… because of a few who are out there to spoil our world. I believe that trust strengthens as we exercise it. I think perhaps it needs to be cherished and celebrated simply because it is elusive. We fail at things. If the penalties for failing are too high, we don’t get back on the horse. We shut down. We begin to believe we’re miserable people and act accordingly. And we certainly don’t apologize. (notice my nice justification for cheating above? As on bluster and self-excusing, Es on trustworthiness and apologies.)

But if we notice that trust like life is impermanent, can we see it as precious? If we understand that Peace is living into Peace not being at perfect Peace and there will be missteps and mistakes, can we be better at all of them — Peace, Life, Trust?

It’s worth exploring, don’t you think? Because is there anything I could have rather heard Deb say as she let me give her medicine and try and make her comfortable as she was dying? I can’t imagine what. The Love was all through those words, and spoken so many times… but the trust… oh, how sweet. I’ll live a lifetime on that. I’ll live a lifetime trying to live up to that.

Paradise, Peace and Ugly Reality

There I was, reveling in the beauty, focused on my own sweet task. The weather was unbelievable, out of season fabulous. The beach was clear and wide and clean. Impossible to tell there’d been a horrible hurricane just last year. And the water? September sweet. Warm and clean. No better place, it seemed, to lay my burden down.

And there was my cousin along with me. Her first step out into the world after a summer of back surgeries and setbacks remembering that she is a woman who travels. We have fun together, we laughed at the inconveniences. We both worked. (I worked, I read, it felt like old times. There was my brain, processing information, in what felt like forever. What was not to like?)

Well, of course, even in the midst of euphoria, reality intrudes. We’re not the only ones who came to this waterline. And not everyone came to worship.

Many came to gamble. Many came to party. Many came to work so that others can do those things. This is a town of gritty realities. I live tucked away a rural landscape where our gritty realities are spread out. Easily avoided. There’s no town square. Homeless people don’t “sleep rough in the woods.” They live right there, waking or sleeping. They panhandle.

People who gamble here do it on line, in the privacy of their homes. If they wander downstairs, dazed by their addictions or their losses, whose to see. Who’s to hear them through their thin walls, calling, begging for more money.

It was time to go home and start thinking about it all. Because that’s the irony, isn’t it. These things live side by side. We were finding Peace in this place because the price for sitting on the beach was right… and of course it was… because money was being made on folks whose seeking was so very different. But the magic of the water was there. The possibility of being present, there as well. All the tawdry tinsel in the world couldn’t change that. The couple in their 80s he in his wheelchair, she frail thing that she was, sat in the same spot every day, soaking in the wonder. The shoreline… so much happens there. Self-reflection… self-indulgence … immersion, in the water, and in the greater wonder.

Mountain Stream Peace

For me, there’s something about water running over rocks. I think I inherited this gene from my family. Dancing, skipping, burbling water surging through a canyon that continues to change as the waters rise and fall.

This place is not just beautiful, it’s dangerous. It seems a ludicrous statement on a fall day when 8 inches of water cavort by you. But two years ago this stream rose 20 feet to eat that bridge. Every year some crazy college kids assume they can run the spring run off and too often one or two of them don’t make it. It is not just still water that runs deep.

The space in the canyon not taken by water and rock is filled with trees and sweet, sweet air. Air that tastes like a benison after what we’ve been breathing down in the valleys. Air that we should fret over as the frackers peer over our shoulders.

To many times in the last year, I have taken my grief to this stream and it has eased my burden. Back and back again, I’ll go this fall, because my heart will be heavy a long time. I’m thinking that Steve and I need to go, drum in his hand and simply sit to watch the leaves change and the water run. He’ll find the rhythm the creek dances to… maybe I’ll find some words. Maybe I’ll just find the silence broken only by the hawks who scream overhead. I’ll be present and the prayer the creek offers will soothe my soul.

This valley is beautiful in every season. Even when the water roils and rises, Peace runs through that valley and caresses me on its journey downstream. Over time perhaps it will tumble smooth the shards of my heart and I will focus more on the dancing memories and less on the painful grief… But the seasons come and the seasons go in this Valley and my heart will fill. The creek and my beloved will see to that.

Trudging Peace

Every Tuesday I have breakfast with my friend Turrie. I’ve told you stories before about the little drive-in along the river. Today, in an effort to get my life looking a bit like normal and tend to my health, I decided to walk. As always, I was late, stride, stride, striding along.

On the way back I found myself fiercely concentrating… and I’m not sure I can tell you on what. A moment of self reflection perhaps? Or considering that I needed some dish detergent? But back I came, head down, chewing on something or the other, things to do, things I’ve done, broken hearts, you know, the usual.

I got home to a message from Turrie… did you see the eagle? Um, no, I hadn’t. I’d been so busy trudging and stomping through life, that I’d neglected to notice a very large and beautiful bird about 20 yards away.

You gotta look up. Mr. or Ms. Eagle would have lifted my heart, if I’d been willing to see him. Here I was, thank you, Oscar Wilde, living out the poem I’d just written. Life imitating art… (I know, audacious, eh, to consider my little musing art…) but not the uplifting part of it.

So, in my walking about today, I’ll try and get my head up off my feet… and perhaps cut myself a break… we’re not always ready to look up or out, but it’s a healthy reminder that we miss beauty when we’re stuck… Luckily the eagle lives here and I’ll unstick eventually!

It has been my pleasure to serve as your reminder of missed opportunities. Just remember, as our parents might have told us “do what I say, not what i do!”

Soft-serve Peace

Every summer our kids come to visit. We are so lucky. Me particularly. Not having had kids myself and now getting to add the soft blessing of Grannianni to my list of nicknames is priceless. I’m awkward at the grandmother thing, there are things you learn as a mom, that makes this transition easy. So, I struggle a bit…

But one thing my mom taught me, that I can put to good use with the littles, is the sense of occasion and the building of traditions. And the soft-serve ice-cream place is one of those places. It is magical on a warm summer evening. To sit out under the trees, while the kids are playing and to watch the fireflies light up the soybean field next door, is just lovely. To sit there with a friend or with my Sweet Pea… equally grand.

We don’t do it often, and that makes it even sweeter. But we layer the memories on the same way the soft ice cream piles up in a cup. And then no matter where we eat soft ice cream, it’s piled with the memories of the place where we hold hands to watch the fireflies or our children and our grandchildren. Sacred ground, indeed!

And here in the country, the ice cream reflects the season… strawberry, peach, pumpkin, each in its own seasonally appointed time… and right after pumpkin, it closes down for the season, not to open again until after Easter. Being the country, Easter is proclaimed on their sign. Everyone in the neighborhood now puzzles to figure out how the resurrection, bunnies, eggs and ice cream are related. But they are somehow, and that’s the way it is.

That’s a lot of delight for a small cone to impart! But even a small cone is big enough to carry the memories.

Peace Ethics

Few of us spend enough time in reflection these days. We’re constantly distracted by noise and music. Work has changed so much that very little of it allows much less encourages thoughtful musing. It’s hard to think about what’s important when we’re spending so much time worrying about what needs to be accomplished.

But if we don’t spend time focusing on what’s important to us, on what we value, we’re unlikely to spend our days living into those values. We will to the best of our abilities, but expediencies are seductive.

But it’s never to late to move our lives closer to our values. It’s never to late to push deeper into those values and beliefs. We’re happier when we do. We’re better agents for Peace and Justice. We make a bigger impact on our lives and on the people coming along after us.

Our lives are so full, doing what’s needed next… still we must seek the balance — for our health and for our world. It matters. and it’s damned hard.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Tag Archives: moments of self-reflection