Your Peace and Mine, llvl

I love Sweden. I fell in love in 1969 and that sweet love has never been dislodged from my heart. I have 45 years of friendships that have become “family” connections. The language has a special place in my soul and on my tongue. The countryside is gorgeous and people here know how to sit and just take that in. Summer is short, but vacations are long and so are the days. Swedes do what they can to enjoy every minute, and this year, summer cooperated with warm, sunny weather. I spent more time sitting and looking at scenery with a cup of tea or a glass of wine in my hand than I have since I left here four years ago.

The things they fret about with their social system are things we would be so happy to have. When I talk about what I’m working on with feeding hungry children, they look at me as if we’re barbaric. Children are fed and housed. There’s public transportation. They’re the world’s standard for low use of antibiotics in animals, both in pets and meat production. They don’t use dyes in food. Even their toilet paper isn’t bleached. There’s so much going for it, and I love how I feel when I’m here. And goodness knows, there are those friends.

There’s a place for me on many a sofa, but in the end, it’s a visitor’s place.

I have often fantasized about living here. Early in my life, I applied for a job as a secretary. (Boy, are they lucky they didn’t choose me, I was a lousy secretary in English.) Yesterday, with my friends off moving their kid to his new house, I checked to see how alive that fantasy was. You know… not very. I’m not only missing my husband, I’m missing his music and the community gathered around it. I miss my friends and the life we lead. I know the rhythms in this household very well, but they’re not mine. And I miss my work. I miss the joy of it, the challenge of it, and the pieces that make a difference.

Retreat and respite are lovely. I’m not looking forward to leaving, to opening my arms and letting these good friends step back. It’s so hard not knowing when I’ll get back. I know how privileged I am to have them at all. But it doesn’t make it easy to go, however excited I will be to have you all back in my life. I’m not really even anticipating coming home. But it has popped up in my mind, finally, that I will be going home and it will be fabulous.

In the meantime, I will keep enjoying Swedish Peace, drinking in every last jot of its beauty. I will also remember that it’s not my Peace — or perhaps that it’s not all my Peace. The full hearts of global citizenship have to be balanced with the knowing and the missing of friends and traditions… and you know me… food. Here’s to celebrating the Peace of each place and finding that Peace which calls our hearts most deeply. Here’s me, giving thanks.

Slow Sabbath Peace, llvl

Yesterday was a slow day for me. And today will probably be as well. I had one of those 24 hours things… and so I crept around the edges of the the exuberant life being celebrated in the rantala-sundberg house… and slept.

I’m not used to a house full of boys in the best of circumstances, but feeling lousy in the face of this coming and going meant that i just put my head down. An amazing thing, sleeping the day away.

Today, everyone’s off… Lorraine and Kjell are taking their younger son back for his second year of school. Older son’s taking the bus back home and I? am going to have this whole gray quiet Sunday to myself. Lungn o Ro… Peace and quiet! Gathering things together if my mind works…

Pretty darned lovely! Time to get ready for my last lovely week in Sweden.

Hope that your Sabbath is filled with slow and lovely times… and Peace.

Peace Traditions, llvl

It’s the little things. It’s the places you go and the people smiling across the table at you. At Taco Friday, it certainly isn’t the food, although that was fine. But it was sitting in the sun — at six-thirtyish at this point in August, it’s really still pretty high in the sky.

It’s the friends. And the fact that we’re doing it again. Just like we did four years ago… or six years ago or…

This is what makes the oh-so-mundane sacred. If you’re going to have traditions, you have to step up, show up, something up… and care for them and for the connections that make them sweet.

Peace takes tender overtures, but it also requires continuing to show up… and sometimes it’s right in front of your face!

Peace Thinking, again, llvl

It’s been interesting to look at my life that is so luxurious in love at the same time the world is blowing up in hatred. I don’t know how to bottle this feeling or calibrate it so that others could understand, I just know (believe?) that openness to intimate relationships lessens our openness to hatred. I know for me it heightens the need to participate in some ameliorating of the problems…

My friend, father Kerry, posted a picture today of a man receiving 450 lashes in Saudi Arabia for the crime of being gay. We shudder in horror, but don’t make sure our PA state government (and your state’s government?) pass simple non-discrimination bills that would provide safety in work and home. We watch in pity on Facebook as an 8th grader posts one of those index card videos talking about cutting himself or committing suicide because he’s being bullied for being gay, but aren’t actively involved in anti-bullying programs at home. Wonder how we pray with our lives… and what our prayers should be.

It’s hard to take these painful thoughts and mix them into my vacation thoughts. I needed this break, I’m not apologizing, even to myself, for having taken it. I can feel a natural ending as I begin to long to write and return to my work… although as was obvious from my progress yesterday, not too much… I love that Facebook keeps me aware of your lives if not actually in them. I cherish this precious time with friends here… and love that this Saturday’s moon will shine on us all.

Blessings and Peace be with us all.

Serendipitous Peace, llvl

What are the odds. On the right street, at the right time. Just two minutes either way and my friends from six hours away would never have seen us walking into the parking lot behind the house. The two couples had met four years ago when Bengt and Titti came north to Lorraine and Kjell’s stuga to meet Steve and me. So much fun.

I hadn’t told any friends on the other side of Sweden I was coming. The travel is too much. Sweden is, after all a big country… and after the train problems I just described, It’s not as easy as it should be! And it all seemed pretty safe. It was not as if I was going to run into anyone, right?

But there we were. Off all the towns on all the streets, they had to have had lunch at that restaurant and finished at exactly the right time. Lorraine and I were just coming home from sending home a package and there they were. We jumped around a bit, hugged a lot and took them home for tea and coffee. We jammed a weekend’s worth of catching up on four years into an hour. We laughed. We cried. We hugged some more. And they got into their car and drove away.

It could not have been a sweeter encounter. And how serendipitous. Forty-five years of love, running into itself on a small street in a small town far away. This woman knew and loved my family and in that odd way of Exchange Students she is my family. Sometimes Peace is the sweetest of surprises!

Regular Peace, llvl

It’s nice, after lots of wonderful visits, to have some slow and “normal” days. Normal, at least, in their lives. Normal in the times I have been with them. Nothing sweeter or more intimate than to live beyond guest-hood and be invited into the life where projects are completed, trips to the hardware store are undertaken, where life is at is…

Looking at Deb Slade’s photo made me realize that they live one block from the river and one block from downtown. I live two blocks from the river and one block from downtown. Beauty and convenience at our fingertips… So their normal is somewhat familiar, although their two young men, one who’s arrived home and one who comes home on Friday are not MY normal. But fun and wonderful men, nonetheless… and somehow while I’ve been back and forth and away all these years, are grown ups! All my friends’ children have grown up. Imagine. And here we are, making new memories, making family!

The sweetness of life is in many things. These tiny things, the treasure of having these tiny moments, with dear friends. The connection with you all.

(It’s also in big things. I just found out that I have had a workshop accepted for a conference this fall. I’ll be exploring the Five Fold Goddess of Peace with Kelly Himmsl Arthur of Thinkpeace Workshops for Girls. Oh my!)

Time to inhale and exhale, with lots of tiny, unimportant places to go.

Infrastructure and Peace, llvl

Train Travel – Day 2: Apparently, it’s not just the little corner of the world I’m inhabiting that’s having train problems. I heard from a FB friend that she got to add an extra 3 hours and different modes of travel to get home because there was a fire on the trains and the lines shorted out.

Now it’s true it’s the season of Stormy Weather… but it’s also true that there’s lots of infrastructure that isn’t being addressed… Train travel makes so much sense. It carries large numbers of us from here to there without anybody sitting down in their individual cars and smogging up the place…

But if they don’t work and you can’t rely on them… that’s a sad thing.

We need good infrastructure. And quite frankly trains make life so much easier. When my Swedish sisters were at my wedding, the guy running the space wanted to know if Sweden was a modern country. What do you mean, they wondered. It was his opinion if they still rode trains, it wasn’t modern. (well, we joked yesterday, that perhaps he was right…) we were all confused. Nothing more modern than a country that takes its people from one place without lots of smog.

But the system needs maintenance and repair and certain elements of the government think it costs too much. And don’t get confused, they’re not replacing roads… The air and the water in Sweden is so clear. It needs to be protected. Our air and water need to be improved. Taxes help!

So we had two very slow days getting from here to there after a fabulous weekend with family. And in between, they blew us to a lovely hotel because they messed up. But Lorraine’s son who was coming home last night was left standing for ours in a closed train station after the train stopped running. Eventually, his dad made a three-hour round trip to pick him up… And at last, we’re (all but one) safe and sound under their roof again.

I think I’ll leave a day or two early so I catch my train home! I was, as I say in the musing, much relieved when people were kind and considerate… and that was helped because the train line’s people were polite and effective… but still we have to believe in ourselves enough to invest. enough to demand investment…

Peace is expensive. And we must bear the cost. Waking Up and Stepping Up required…

And today is Tuesday… so a wonderful new picture will arrive from Deb Slade.

Farther from Peace, llvl

Yesterday, as you know, I waxed eloquent about your sweet support on social media about my friend’s kid. It was lovely for me, and his mom felt held as well. I’m sure that will support the entire family as they figure out how to move forward. Because of course there was more to the story… But love and safety? So important.

So there I am, swimming in a haze of well-being, and we hugged the family good-bye in Båstad and got on the train North. It was a little late, but oh, well.

But, an hour in, we found out there was an accident on the track and we’d have to get off and take a bus. As you can imagine it took a little bit to get the buses together to get a train full of people seated. It was Sunday, the last day of the national vacation. And eventually, the buses came and everyone got sorted out.

But the sorting out process reminded me why we struggle with conflicts. This was so little. There would be buses for everyone. We were all inconvenienced. By the time this happened, we had already missed our train. And that’s what is, we miss the train.

But people went crazy. “I paid good money for this.” (um, we all did.) “I have missed my train connection.” (um, we all did.) “I have someplace I have to be tomorrow. It’s very important.” (um, we all have someplace to be, and if it’s really important, you don’t take the last bus on the Sunday vacation ends…)

But it wasn’t just the posturing. it was the chaos and the shouting. All I could think was people in Palestine are having their houses bombed. (apparently the Israelis will tell you, we’re bombing your house in 10 minutes. Get out.) People ran over small children and old people to find their place on the bus. Hello, this is Sweden, there will be plenty of buses, it will just take time. It wasn’t really scary, but you paid attention. And there was lots of eye-rolling over the more blatant shows of spleen.

But, it was a bus and train connections. And there was such ill-will. How can we hope to solve real problems if, at the first personal inconvenience, we turn into a mob… (and yes, the train station would have done well to have some personnel there, but still.) Did I step up and organize people into lines? no. Actually considered it, but my swedish is not all that fluent…

We all got on the buses. We had to spend the night in G-burg in a lovely hotel with lovely, lovely, lovely mangled (big iron) sheets and a great breakfast buffet. We went out for dinner and had a beer. And talked. Because that’s what Lorraine and I do. I was grateful to not be alone… but it was just one more lovely day on my amazing summer adventure!

All we are saying… is please, could you please, give Peace a chance? and relax. My aunt used to say: What would you do if you had real problems? One only has to look to the evening news to figure that out.

Swedish Sabbath Peace, llvl

This morning there is indeed Sabbath Peace in our hearts. Lorraine’s son called her about 11 last evening. He’d just seen his aunt’s post on Facebook. Her son was missing. He’d fought with his parents and stormed off. He was drinking, they knew that. He can’t drink on the medications he’s on, they knew that. He hadn’t shown up the evening before for an 11 o’clock meet at a concert.

What to do, what to do? They called. They posted on FB. People shared. His sister and her friends shared. The rest of us just hoped and prayed and willed best outcomes. But people came forward to comfort and to reassure. It’s happened to me, I’ve had that fear; yet it was ok.

Most of the time it is ok… but sometimes it isn’t. But there you were, willing to take a moment to think about a young man you’ll never meet and a frantic mom and dad. To hold your friend who holds her friends. Community, with the loosest of connections, but stepping up to be community.

So today, because of where I am and because of who you are, I’m counting blessings and giving thanks. For all the places we miss the mark, there are plenty where the arrow flies true. Thanks for being those well aimed friends. Love, it’s for everyone. Peace lies in our hands, which today were very capable. We must remember how capable we are!

Giggling Peace, llvl

One of the fun things about visiting Lorraine is realizing I’m still a teenager in side. When I first came to Sweden, back in 1969, we would sit at this cafe on the square in our little town and laugh. Swedes are many things, but boisterous is not part of the national character in the normal course of the day. (Remember that at the same time I was laughing out loud, I was also learning to curtsey as I walked by my elders — if you can imagine that!)

So Lorraine and I were always having to catch ourselves up from being giddy 17-year-old American girls and trying to fit in — because at seventeen, who wants to do anything other than fit in?

But there we were, laughing through the train (because for some reason our train door didn’t open, so we had to walk through two cars to get to our seats. And laughter doesn’t stop because you walk through a door — even when the door says: Quiet!

And of course being icily told to be quiet just meant that we were going to choke on our giggles. There are times to be serious, and I have a lot of them, but even in the serious times, I’m often laughing! Because even in the worst of situations there’s stuff that’s just funny.

I like that I still can be reprimanded for having too much fun. (And really, the train was 15 minutes away from leaving the station, and it’s a train not a library and we did quiet down!) I also like that I no longer can be made to feel uncomfortable because I’m laughing out loud.

Peace… it’s in the loud, boisterous moments as well as the tender quiet ones!

And as I said as I put my message out today, it’s odd that I can feel like a giggly teenager and still have someone rush to help me with my suitcases, because, oh, right, I’m gray-haired! Although, in my defense, I’m well able to handle my suitcases, even if i insist in taking too much stuff wherever I go!

Peace, my friends, I wish you light giggles and deep belly laughs (although not in the quiet car!) I wish you happy times with dear, dear friends. Keep making new memories and keep holding the old ones sacred. Inviting people into that sweet space is a wonderful way to spread Peace, bit by bit!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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