Beautiful Fall Peace

Autumn: warm days, cool nights. Color: blue skies, startling red, orange, gold leaves.

This part of fall, when the pumpkin fields are full, when the leaves turn, before the rains come is so invigorating and wonderful.

Time to take advantage of this sacred season! (hint, they’re all sacred!)

I realized this morning as I was waking, how little I knew about my parents’ honeymoon, how little I thought to ask about them and their early days. Children are self centered little monsters aren’t we? and Parents are probably not as forthcoming as they might be. Great time to wonder, eh? Long after the parents are gone without even my sister to call and say, huh. i didn’t know about this. Life. you never know what you’re going to want to know.

But looking back, i think, well no wonder Fall was a big deal at our house. First, it’s beautiful and my artist Mom and appreciative Dad would have loved the color. But second, it reminded them of a very sweet time in their life.

But however you came to appreciate Autumn, I wish you the Peace of beautiful days and a glorious Frosty Moon in a black and starry sky.

Not So Perfect A Peace

And we’ll take it.

The perfection of something is the perspective we bring to it.

Yesterday was a day with a lot of wonderful facets. The weather, the scenery, the friends, the family. And if I’m counting, my religious community. I like us. A lot. It was all that a sabbath can be. I even got to read.

So the day was just grand. And it carried the sweet emotional residue of the day before.

The day was made more precious by the reminder of what had been lost in Selena’s life.

So, when we see sweetness, we have to notice it, and then embrace it. And then sit down with a piece of apple pie and a glass of cider to celebrate.

Peace is where we find it. And when we see it, then we can begin to help others find the Peace that allows them to breathe in the sweetness…

Peace on the Cusp

Today the Old Moon ends and the New Moon rises. Bye and large the harvest is finished. In Canada, tomorrow will be thanksgiving, which is much more in sync with the actual harvest.

Here in Pennsylvania, the leaves are taking their own sweet time to make decisions about changing. There are just the slightest hints of color starting. However, I just looked at the thermometer and for the first time i saw that the temps had dipped into the 30s.

No, Ann, really, time to dismantle the porch that gets no light (and by light I mean warmth) this year.

But I stood outside a barn yesterday (it was a wedding, relax, I wasn’t being rugged!) and looked down across the empty field toward the river. The late afternoon light was all Autumn, and everything was golden in the light. The air was clean.

The world had moved on even though many of us still clung to last season’s warmth. The Beauty on the cusp of changing Moon and changing season was lavish. Open your hands and hearts and let go. And what the heck, take the Sabbath to revel in it, why don’t you?

Notice the Beauty, my friends. We can’t move on to Peace, if we’re holding on to the joys and privileges of last season.

A Voice, A Foreign Life, Peace

My world could not be more different from the world of the Inuit on the Hudson Bay of almost a century ago.

So going to 100 year old what passed for a documentary then and expecting to do much more than observe from a distance is usually unrealistic.

But Tanya Tagaq and her musicians totally changed that. Tagaq is Inuit. She has studied the music and has lived in the climate. She has both in her ears and her body and her soul. And last night, she opened them to us.

It was inspiring and transformative. It moved past the film maker’s insistence that the Inuit are charming and hapless. It made everything that happened in the film beautiful and infused it with wonder.

She sees her voice as a whole body instrument. She sees all of life as one. She was the wind. She was the dying seal. She was Nanook and his family.

And we were invited to see the Peace of that very hard and beautiful life.

What a blessing.

Sky, Love, Peace

I am, and always have been, a concrete priestess. I’m not terribly comfortable with many things present in the out-of-doors… like bugs and slithering things.

But when you finally get me out there I have a great time. Because hey! Mother Earth. Nature.

And when Nature is at her most glorious, you have to just go with it, right?

I’m so glad i worked as hard as i did to get there on Sunday. And that I pried my beloved out his… oh, I’ll just stay home. Because this was the finest symphony of skies.

We live on this earth. we should be paying closer attention. I should be paying closer attention. It’s the explosive beauty of these moments that helps us grasp the importance of caring for creation.

This is the world we have and it’s wondrous. Why wouldn’t we take care of it? Why wouldn’t we spend a lot of our lives, pointing and gasping and saying, well, will you look at that? We should spend less time saying, well, would you look at that, gimme it its’ mine or oh, ho hum. another beautiful day, mountain, lake…

Peace. We need to be about the business of peace. Because a world this beautiful deserves nothing less.

The Peace of an Eclipse with Friends

I beg forbearance. I may be burbling about this for a long time. The eclipse was gorgeous.

Hanging out by the fire with friends, lovely. Hanging out by the fire with my beloved? oh we don’t do that often enough!

And the sky was unbelievable.

Everywhere else people were complaining about the sky’s being overcast, but in this little circle of field surrounded by trees, the clouds — whispy ones at that — would dance in and dance back out. Leaving nothing but a heavy, heavy Milky Way and that beautiful orb that looked nothing like the Moon (nothing!) hanging in the sky like some foreign celestial body.

I could burble for a long time about this. I probably will. Forewarned is forearmed… have topics ready to talk about if you run into me and don’t want to hear about the Moon, the Moon, the Moon!

Why I wonder, when I do something like last night, plopped in a field around a fire, don’t i do that more often. Steve and I both love it so much — although I’m sure he missed a drum in his hands. It was lovely and filled with Peace. it was a perfect moment in my life.

Perfect and filled with Peace. I wish us all many such moments. They give us fuel to walk the Peace Path.

The Peace of a Sabbath Lunar Eclipse

The weather gods may relent. There may be glimpses of this lunar event.

It’s a perfect Sabbath endeavor, now that I think about it. Nothing to do but be present. And watch the fire crackle while you wait. It’s late, because, hey it’s the moon, but it’s a great way to spend time with the family…

And in that time I’ll think great thoughts of Peace. I hope you will too. We’ll watch the Earth cover the moon, and go home to dream sweet dreams of Peace. And in the morning, let us get up and see what we can do about all that needs to be done.

I hope you get to bask in the wonder of tonight’s eclipse. It’s not that often that it happens… What a galaxy we live in!

Peace be with us all.

The Peace of the Red Moon

If this isn’t true, don’t tell me. Because it’s too wonderful! It makes me so happy.

To imagine the Moon catching all the sunsets and sunrises of the Earth and reflecting it back.

To imagine it capturing all that Beauty and casting it back to inspire us.

We, like the Moon, can reflect. We have a little more choice than the Moon. But hey. Let’s reflect Peace. Today. Tomorrow. Every day.

Because Peace is what the world needs. And we’re here able to do the work.

And you have a choice. There are (actually!!!) people walking around saying the Red Moon is a sign of the end times. Really, is that what you think? Well you go right ahead. I’m now seeing sunrises and sunsets. Thank you, scientist!

Peace. What if there were a Peace Eclipse. What if we allowed the world to see what it might look like if we were People at Peace? (and I guess I have tomorrow’s musing, don’t I?

And Dance by the Light of the Moon. Peace!

Every day is what it is. And that’s grand. And yet, and yet. Some days are better than others.

These warm days with chilly nights are just delightful. It’s warm, but not too warm. Cool, but not too cool.

If there were ever to be a night or two to dance under the moon, these would be they!

Humans do well in this weather.

And the Moon is beautiful. It’s closer than it often is and that makes it appear larger on the horizon. And soon, and soon, we’re going to have an eclipse of this big and beautiful Super Moon.

Not only is it rare, there’s not to be another until 2030, I’ll be 78!

It’s also perfectly lovely weather to wrap up and go out to watch the eclipse. And there are no bugs because they don’t like the cool weather.

It doesn’t get much better than this folks, not for Lunar Beauty.

And the Peace of this Moon shines on me and shines on you and shines on everyone all over the world. May we sing songs of Peace and send them out across the planet. Peace be with us. Peace be with us all.

Creek Peace. Gets Me Every Time.

There are just some places in the world that push that pause button for you. For me, and in fact, for anyone in my family, World’s End does that for me. Mother Nature got this one right!

The trees, which, I learned yesterday, were replanted by the CCC after the area was clear-cut in the early 1900s, keep the air so fresh, so clean.

This was a large inland sea at one long, long ago point. People still find fossils.

Me? I find Peace. Every time. I also connect to a deep treasure trove of familial memories, laced with favorite people, favorite small communities who were all part of this place. It is sacred to me for so many reasons.

There is Love here for me. Love for the land. Love for the amazing water which is so fragile. Love for the picnic food that has offered communion of the sweetest sort, time after time. And Peace. there is always Peace. Every. Single. Time.

I hope there is a place in the world where you can stand quietly, simply being present with your sibling or your beloved or alone and know that Peace is. Love is. Life is.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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