This faith community seems very much like my forever shell, and this Valley seems like my forever beach.
Some of it is familiarity, some of it is skill, some of it perseverance and dedication, and some of it is just luck.
I am lucky to have found the tribe who makes Peace in ways that are familiar and complementary to mine.
Peace. Make it at home. It’s where you best know how to go about it. It’s where you’ll most easily recognize it.
Since we all make Peace differently, it’s important we find the tools that help us do the work. Sometimes they’re little things that fit in our hands, other times they rearrange the world.
Who we are and how we make Peace is really the question, isn’t it?
What is the discipline we use to develop our Peace-making muscles? What are the tools we need to help us? Who is our team?
How do we make Peace?
And more prosaically… how do we find pleasure in the small, strange things?
You need to understand from the start, that I am an admirer of slow food not a preparer of it! Although cooking more is on my agenda this year, I’m starting with cooking breakfast or soup in the crockpot. Let’s not rush into things! Nonetheless, soup is good food. Both the making of it and the eating it brings me Peace. Oh, and health. let’s not forget health.
I am neither a patient nor a precise person. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have friends who are! And whether I’m dining with them or simply delighting in their stories of good food made the old fashioned way, it makes me happy!
Some people will say they cook this way because they can’t afford to eat out, but that misses the point of cooking that way because they love cooking and eating what they cook. Whereas cooking for me is a white-knuckle affair, for them it’s an exhale into life.
I resent the time it takes; they revel. I have a friend who as her mom was dying, when her sister relieved her for a bit, came home took a shower, and then baked. A cake and cookies. It soothed her and gave her strength the way that writing does me. Familiar rituals bring order to our lives and good things to our families. Her sisters ate cookies and comfort as they gathered throughout the week. It was a bit of family/familiar comfort as their mom slowly departed her life.
That reveling is Peace. That healing is Peace. I can appreciate it without participating.It’s exactly like Peace-making. We all contribute differently. But we all benefit from the fruits of such labor — even if only visually.
Keep rolling that pasta, George! Pasta and Peace. I think it could be a thing.
