Space for Peace

Carving out space in our lives and in our homes in which we can be reflective and creative is so important to our well-being and health.

Plenty of businesses and creative endeavors start at the kitchen table, but it’s better if there’s a corner of the room or the garage where our work can stand idle. The need to set up and clean up in addition to working is sometimes too great a challenge — It may not leave enough time for the creation…

And when work stands so that we can consider it, feel what it’s trying to become, the work gets better. Neither Contemplation nor Creation are particularly neat activities.

Even when the work is standing there, beckoning and some times accusing, it can be hard enough to get to. But it’s far easier to starve our creativity and deny ourselves our time to reflect if that work isn’t there.

Whatever it is, it’s good to have space. It’s good to have the discipline. It’s good to have the self confidence to help your children understand that no, this is yours, just as you help them create a space that is there’s.

Make rules about working. And stick to it. I don’t know where my mythical child came from, but if you have a child, help them make space for their creativity and commit to working on it. People who tinker are people who create. When you have space dedicated to your creativity, you take yourself more seriously. And when you do that, you get better at your art — or your silence — or whatever it is you need your space to do.

Making space for creativity and reflection is making space for you to be the best you. It’s making space for your own Peace and for your contribution to Peace in your wider world. That matters a lot! You have something to give Peace. The world needs your gift and it needs Peace.

Capricious April Peace

If you’re going to love April, and why wouldn’t you, you’re going to have to put up with her wild mood fluctuations. I think of her as a young month. She’s always trying things out.

The seasons are still bickering — and April’s watching the way her skirts float in the breeze.

Everyone seems to be heartily tired of Winter, poor old dear, but she and Spring are still playing. She’ll sleep soon. I know Spring beguiled us in the month of March with warm weather. Everyone went out and and got their seeds started.

April doesn’t seem to care.

For me, April is a wonderful example of the need to be here now. She is what she is. And she is filled with Beauty. It is, it’s true, a Beauty all her own. But, oh! the Flowers! Let us rejoice in her wild mood swings and make Peace with her particular Beauty.

Might as well. She’s not going anywhere. I, however, am off on the hunt for the fields of grape hyacinth.

Voting for Peace, Voting Peace

In this country, scarcely more than a third of us vote. There are all sorts of reasons for it — some are merely excuses — but we don’t use what we have available to us. And of course some people go out of their way to ensure that people don’t get the chance to vote.

Voting must be easy. Voting must be encouraged.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had Peace as our goal? That when we entered the voting booth (and even before, as we prepared to enter the voting booth), we pondered on Peace… considering who cared about it, who would work for it. Not just peace and quiet. Peace. Equality. Justice.

What would this world look like if we were to care about Peace. I can tell you it’s going to have to come from the bottom up. Peace isn’t sexy, it’s not a big fund raiser. Yet what a difference it would make in our lives. Some of those differences, we can’t even imagine. We’ve never lived with Peace, Equality, and Justice. To many have lived with inequality and injustice and as Marley told us: “no Justice, no Peace!”

It all swirls around, doesn’t it. What we have before us to do. Some days it feels my hopes for Peace are so ridiculous, so unreachable. Other days, I can see the edges that have to be mended and think oh, here’s a fix for this one little piece.

But what matters, i think, is that I keep my eye on it, that I encourage my heart and maybe yours. And voting really matters. It matters that we vote. It matters that we vote for Peace.

It’s not simply about the Presidency, it’s voting for all the little offices that make our country work. The town councils and school boards, the director of parks and rec, the municipal services board — these all make a difference.

Voting for them makes a difference, it starts building Peace at a fundamental level (when we do it right). Running for those positions also makes a difference. Both the voting and the running require good preparation. What does Peace look like? How can I help in bringing that about?

So, my friends, vote and vote well. Vote for Peace. Get the Peace of having voted for Peace. It matters, don’t waste it. Every vote matters. Every day, Peace for Everyday Peace.

The Spices of Peace

What does Peace taste like do you suppose?

I’m sure it tastes like many things… so many more things than we know… and it’s p to us to learn what Peace tastes like in our mouths.

Peace is an adventure. I’ve always felt it was about sharing food — but then I tend to like adventures in eating. But I hadn’t really considered that it was the different spices.

Thinking about this makes me consider that I need to go down and throw out all the spices in my house and start again with a very few. It might be time to explore what peace could taste like. To learn a dish from where each of my friends live… or their families came from. You learn so much about one another.

And to learn that spices are precious, to be used, not acquired and stored improperly on shelves for years and year…

Oh, I think there are a mountain of metaphors here, if I’m willing to ponder…

But what if Peace were spicy and delicious, not bland and middle of the road? What if it weren’t the lowest common denominator, but the highest art? What if our goals for Peace were grand?

Things to consider! Peace, my friends.

Peace on the Water

Today’s picture really is worth a thousand words. Thanks, Deb Slade!

It’s a cold and blustery day. April reminds us that she can be as capricious as May. But Peace is as beautiful as it gets today and every day. Everyday Peace. Every day, Peace.

The Peace of Finishing A Day

These days, most of us have complex lives. There are too few projects that are completed.

Somehow, I think we need to recapture the sense of finishing our work with the day.

Probably that means learning to set realistic goals for what we’ll accomplish and actually accomplishing that. (remember, I said realistic!) It means putting aside the distractions, (Yes, Ann, I’m talking to you about FaceBook) and doing the things you say you want to. Look at FB then. And then go to bed, knowing you’ve done what you said you were going to do.

You’ve planned well. You’ve done your day of work. You’ve made inroads on your projects. You dealt with the stupid stuff that came up. There’s always stupid stuff. And then, like the Sun in this picture, dig the hole wide enough to drag your flaming, trailing scarf in behind you and settle in for the evening.

As the Swedish say, Tack för idag, slut för idag. Thanks for today, finished for the day. Or maybe it’s the other way around. but still. Done. Thanks for sharing it with me. I’m going to retire.

Finishing Peace. It’s something we ought to let ourselves experience. Will there be more to do tomorrow. Of course. But as Christian scripture says, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:34) What’s that mean? You have enough to contend with today. Deal with that. and then? Go to bed!

Make a task discrete. Finish it. and then. Have a little fun. Enjoy your friends. Go to bed free of your worry for tomorrow. We really need to learn to plan. (We really need to learn to yse social media for fun and profit, rather than avoidance.) Peace!

Slothful Peace

Some people think sloth is a vice, but nonsense. There are times when sloth is the only answer. And then it’s up to you to make an art form of it.

When the stones are sun-warmed and the breezes are blowing? What better thing to do but appreciate the gift?

Days like this are rare. Say thank you. Appreciate it. Live into it.

Settle in for some Sun-warmed, slothful Peace.

Peace of the Sun-warmed stones to you, my dears.

Working Truck Peace

When you live in a city, as I did for 30 years, you tend to forget about working trucks.

Oh, you run into them now and again at farmer’s markets, but they’re hidden behind the stands. When you live in cities, particularly California cities, people drive small cars, taking pride in their eco-consciousness. And good for them.

But then I moved back home — to the country no less. It happened to be at a time where gas guzzlers as they call them were popular, so it was a bit of a surprise to go from a place that had plug in stations for electric cars at the very front of their rapid transit stations to a town where the college kids drove Hummers.

That took a bit of closing my jaw. So expensive. So wasteful.

But on my daily commute (in my little gas conscious car), there were farm trucks galore. Working trucks, taking care of working farmer’s work. No one cared whether these were dusty, because of course they were. In fact, it’s probably a badge of courage, or at least usefulness for these trucks to be dusty. They’re workin’ trucks. They’re strong and big because the tasks their built for are heavy and cumbersome.

When you live in a city, you forget about farms. Well except those 2 acre beauties that produce your heirloom tomatoes. Working family farms with a variety of crops for human and animal consumption, crops for canning and freezing by large plants, animals for food and dairy.

Farming is hard work. And their tools have to be tough as well. Work Trucks. They’re a thing. A good thing. And when you ride or drive in them, they of the great bench front seat, it’s easy enough to feel their attitude, even take it on a bit.

Working Trucks. Farms. We owe them a debt of gratitude for all they produce. A Peace all its own. A cock of the hat and a casual wave to all in the name of Peace.

Peace Migrations

You never know where you’re going to go when you start writing.

I love the Snow Geese so I am always happy to see them in the fields. Such explosive beauty! They are majestic whether settled to sleep on land, paddling on the river or rising to fly in formation.

Normally, it would be enough for me in a musing to remember that. They bring such joy.

But the other Sunday Katie Hays read one of her poems, i think it was called “Conversion.” She talked about a migrating bird, hiding in the thicket. And I thought of all the exiles. All those people with no place to lay their heads or their babies. No containers for their lives.

It makes my heart break.

These geese are travelers who make their home on the road, in the sky on the rivers? how do you determine that?

But the exiles are running from what they once loved that is no longer safe. Their welcome is very uncertain. The geese know these fields, this river, these air currents. The immigrants do not.

Let us offer them all safe journey and safe places to rest at night. Let us offer them safe homes. “For we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.”

So, my friends the lovely Peace of the Snow Geese to you. And traveling Peace to those who are far from home. And welcome to those who would no longer be strangers. And I pray with you who would like this to be a migration that takes you safely home.

Working Water Peace

When I think about water, it’s usually about having a tall, cool drink of it — or getting into it to float or swim (hot for the first, cool for the second!)

I rarely think about it’s importance to our commerce and manufacturing. Much of our country was built on water energy. Across the world, in lands where it’s abundant much still is.

I love looking at water, but living beside it, i don’t often remember how precious it is and how cavalierly we treat it. It is not an endless resource. It cannot clean itself as quickly as we despoil it.

We cannot live without this wonder. It gives us life. You’d think we’d be willing to do the same — but we are a greedy bunch it seems.

First best action? Give up bottled water. Get involved in your municipal water works to insure that your town is both cosseting its water supply and giving its constituency good water to drink.

Learn something about it. Share a glass with a friend — not just because you’re thirsty, but because it is precious.

Water. Wars have been fought over it. Shouldn’t Peace be made with it?

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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