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.

Peace Where You Find It

Oh, it was a magical day yesterday. The weather was perfect. Not right for the season, perhaps, but exactly right for what I wanted to do. Which was sit at the shoreline and perhaps, perhaps, to dive into the waves.

I ran away (and ran into people who had stayed with the fabulous artist who makes these mandalas) and had a chance to stop and a moment to reflect. My cousin and I could mourn together. We did that. We also laughed together and told stories and ate food both wonderful and ridiculous.

And in thinking about how perfect it was right here in this moment… I thought about how perfect it is right there where I live. That love and life is where you find it and where you make it. Yesterday was a gift… but today is reality. and Peace lives in both places… if only I’m willing to treasure it and build on it…

Wading in Peace

For me there is nothing like going to the ocean. This morning, the big sky bowl slowly filled up with light and beauty. Gorgeous. And walking at water’s edge… transformative. Once again, I wonder, is it the vastness of the sky and the ocean that makes problems real but somehow also puts them in a softer perspective?

The sea comes in over my feet and covers over, fills in, those holes in my soul, for just a little bit, until my heart can heal and scar tissue can hold me together again. And I guess I don’t need to spend too much time wondering why, I just need to accept the blessing. Simple. There it is. Take it in. Receive it.

Peace at the Edge

I’m running away to the Ocean for a couple of days, looking for Peace… for respite… for heart’s ease. I find the ceaseless in and out of the waves soothing. Oddly, this morning I’m thinking about what a strange Peace choice the Ocean is… because its power to take away is as great as its power to soothe. Power, raw, relentless and elemental.

And yet, even in heartbreak, perhaps it’s good to remember that we are small and somewhat insignificant. That our lives pale beside the grandeur of the sea.

And then, because my brain doesn’t stop… or at least continues to work in fits and starts… i think, how could we, tiny specks on the face of eternity, have managed to leave large continents of gunk in the middle of vast and dangerous beauty? Ah, a poem for another day.

But later today, I will set my feet in sand and let all those positive ions, fused with happy memories of family beach time, wash over me. I will wallow in the love of family and friends (whether close by or distant) and in the vast emptiness of the sea, and I will try to come to grips with the notion that Deb, my beloved vital Deb is really gone.

Old Friends, Sabbath, Peace

Open hands. Open heart. Love. Loss. Letting go.

For me, part of coping with the grief is culling. Culling my sister’s possessions for those that are too her to release, at least right now. Culling the heirlooms and helping them get to the right people. Culling my stuff to make room for the mementos.

Culling… Paring. Paring down to the essentials. Who am I? What do I need? What don’t I need.

Interestingly for me, culling comes to letting go of books. If i haven’t looked at them in 5 years, i probably don’t need them. If they’re romances… sure keep around a few for those moments when mindlessness is needed… but a few is the operative word. Reference books are confusing, what if I need them… and you’ve not used them.

But feng shui would tell me, let go, make room for something new. New thoughts, new directions (new mindlessness!).

And then find something sweet and read and read and read. There’s a good Sabbath occupation. And nothing like a good book to settle my mind. Nothing like the sound of two people sitting and reading to remind me of one thing I know Peace to be. Let it go to build it up… Peace. Peace and quiet. Nice. Open hands. Open heart.

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.

Fall Fair Peace

I live in a beautiful, agricultural valley and count myself lucky to do so. Every fall, (except the fall of the devastating Hurricane Lee) my hometown hosts a Fair. Everything good and bad that fairs have, this fair has in abundance.

It’s Fall, after all, and fall is all about the abundance. People compete: they knit, and stitch and sew. They can and bake and grow. They raise livestock large and small. They show their pet chickens, dogs, bunnies and burros. This year you didn’t see horses as big as houses because those horses went to live on my classmates farm. Lady and Duke are lazin’ it up, retired from show biz. Folks get on their tractors, ancient and new, and drag large weights around to burn out their engines… huh? There are rides. Sadly there are side shows. There are bands. You can win the ugliest plush toys in the world if only your aim is good enough and your money lasts. People guess your weight (you want to see that person at the beginning of your trip by the vendors). People guess your age (you want to avoid them altogether.).

And then you eat. You taste the first cider of the season and eat something fried that later you really wish you hadn’t. You have food that you eat every year at Fair. You consider all sorts of odd foods, but you avoid the fudge/bacon. ‘Cause what the heck it’s Fair week. You walk for hours! Kids are bedazzled and so are the adults. You always see someone you went to high school with even if you lived a half hour away, because EVERYONE comes to Fair. You run into people from where live now which is also a half hour away, staying with the theme above.

You remember that food is grown, not just processed. And that that is an earthy messy process. You realize that some families are making a portion of their living from the food that’s grown. Others are proudly showing of skills that have kept their families fed for generations. Other people are making cakes that look like spaghetti and meatballs, and you can only figure they have too much time on their hands.

Fair. It’s a great way to celebrate the Fall… and Fall is worth celebrating! Fall, Peace!

Happy, Grateful Peace

or is that Peaceful Happy Gratitude? It’s all so confusing… but the video said…. which video? this one… that by identifying actual points of gratitude and then letting people know about your gratitude, particularly the people to whom and for whom you are grateful makes you a happier person. It makes people who are the least happier far more happy than it makes people who are already pretty happy. Maybe they’re already pretty grateful… and maybe they tell people how much they love them and why.

But telling people how much you love them and why is probably a pretty darned wonderful thing to do always and forever. Because even if it didn’t make you happy, it would make them happy… and that would be reason enough to do so, don’t you think?

So right now, I’m grateful for two things. I’m really grateful to those of you who take the time to read my writing and to comment on it. It makes me work harder and think a bit deeper. It humbles me when you write to say it pushed you to think differently about something. Thank you so much.

And I’m also grateful to and for my sister. More and more I realize how much she took care of me and how much she let me take care of her and that makes me so incredibly grateful… even now, when I’m being very sad and grieving… it softens and opens my heart…

For what are you grateful? To whom are you grateful? Why? Tell them. And then? get back to me and tell me how it made you feel… Giving thanks! Feeling Joy. Celebrating Peace.

Foggy Peace

Luckily for me (and for you if you’re following me!) the world is willing to remind me why we keep working for the good. There is so much in life that is challenging, desperate and sad… that serves as a reminder of the many ways we can we work to make life better.

At the same time, there is Beauty that reminds us to pay attention. No matter how cynical we get about the “system” there is beauty to pull us back. Whatever else we pray/acknowledge/express… Thank you should be our first prayer and our last of the day. Giving thanks for what is opens us to see more Beauty. Seeing the Beauty and drinking it in fuels us for the work to be done… If Gratitude is not one of the direct routes to Peace, it certainly smooths the path.

Every time I cross it, or watch it, or sense it, I’m grateful for this incredible river.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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