Music, BOLO, Peace

Oh, the silly way your brain works. I see my buddy on a high way billboard and think BOLO… but her music is so grand, it’s a good idea to be on the lookout because you want to catch her if you can.

She’s a great singer songwriter. Funny, generous, hot. She’s also an incredible performer. She totally owned a couple songs that she covered. She’s spoiled me for others on those, really. Listened to a young woman approach one of those songs the other day. I make allowances for her age, really I do, some songs it takes a long time to master, let alone own… but I kept hearing EG and kept thinking, go home, learn it, and then come back and try again.

It’s fun to have people you love be really, really good at what they do. It’s fun to introduce others to her music and have them be bewitched as well.

And it’s a bit sad, as her music in my mind is linked to another singer songwriter, a woman who died of cancer a few years ago. They sang together, these two very different women and just had the best time. An extra large time as EG would say. And while Ann Rabson was dying, EG Kight was being very sick with meningitis and encephalitis. At first they didn’t know if she’d die and then she didn’t know if she’d ever pick up a guitar again. Or sing. Or write songs. Or tour. But she is doing all those things and just touching heart after heart.

So, EG Kight BOLO… because I have to say, there’s Peace in the fun of her, Peace in the art of her, Peace in the friendship. And Hope. That’s a pretty heady combination and a great way to spend the weekend. Giving thanks. Counting Blessings. Aren’t I a lucky girl.

But why trust this, give her a listen and you’ll get lucky too!

The Moon! More Beauty! More Peace!

I have such a strong sense of home as I drive along that river, something deep within me responds. It’s gorgeous every day of the year and every time of the day.

But there’s something magical about the night. Add a full moon and that wide, flat river is content and so Peaceful — and so am I. I’m always amused/amazed that for someone as wedded to the indoors as I am, I have a visceral reaction to my river, my valley… and even, my moon!

On this last drive the reflection of the trees built another kingdom in the water — the moon was that bright. Add to the joy of home that childhood belief that there’s another world under the surface of the water that looks just like this one. I always wonder who lives there and what they do and how that’s different from the ways we live here. I know, I’m supposed to be a grown up, but it never stops me wondering. Maybe it’s more Peaceful. Maybe we should pay closer attention.

And, maybe, I should just enjoy it. And consider what I might learn about Peace in the moonlight along the Susquehanna. Enjoy the Moon tonight. It’s the last SuperMoon of 2015. Bask!

Local Theater Peace

We have a great theater professional group here in the Valley. We also have wonderful amateur theater.

Yesterday, I hustled to fit a production of “Dinner with Friends” into my busy Sunday schedule.

I’d heard great things, I don’t know if I’d have made the effort if it weren’t a member of my congo who was one of the four people.

It was excellent. It’s a strong, pointed and provocative play that made me laugh — when it didn’t make me cry. And the actors were wonderful — all the more so because they are friends, people i know doing things that interest them.

What a wonderful investment of time for me — and i hope for them. I hope they aren’t sitting around, lower lips poked out because it’s over… because it was that good, you hate to let go of the headiness of living in that alternate world.

But. the show closes. And they were excellent.

And the locals got a helluva show, and good friends got juicy roles. It was a great way to invest my Sabbath afternoon.

There’s Peace and Joy in that! Here’s to more. (and more about that soon!)

Busy Weekend (Sabbath) Peace!

What a rich weekend. Friday night at King Street Coffee House and great friends playing. Doing ceremony — a sad tribute to a lovely woman. An evening all about friends and listening to a dear friend who just gets better and better.

Today is jam-packed. Church (preceded by choir!). A friend in a play (and the reviews have been great.) And then more friends in another short road trip to hear EG Kight sing again.

A couple years ago EG Kight came very close to dying. And did not. But they didn’t know if she would ever sing again, let alone write, let alone tour. She’s back, her voice is better than ever, and although the touring is hard work, she packed a three hour show. Never less than her best.

And she is so encouraging. She’s played with one local musician before, and she brought him up. But she’d heard about a young man called him out of the audience and handed him her guitar. And then coaxed the best out of him and let him coax the best out of her. It was lovely. Such generosity.

So you know me. I’m a bide-at-home kinda girl. But once in a while, you have to make the effort to enjoy the bounty. And doesn’t that seem ridiculous.

I know this area is rich. But every area is. Feast and give thanks.

You can’t help but be at Peace when you’re sitting in a crowd listening to someone belting out the blues. (Most of the time I could even let the young talking kids in the front off my indignant that’s-no-way-to-listen-to-a-concert fuddiduddiness!) Music. Theater. Ceremony. Community. Faith. It’s a weekend worth celebrating and a Sabbath worth indulging, and making sacred. Oh, and there were moments of sublime beauty. It’s Peace if we give it a chance.

And Dance by the Light of the Moon

Ah the sky. It offers such delight. Eyebrows at twilight. Clouds at dawn. Stars. Oh, my. Stars. And then our beautiful Moon.

Writing about the Moon has helped me get out there to see it. To look up. Just to stand still and be in the night…

We live in this beautiful world. We need to observe it and appreciate it.

That’s the only thing that’s going to help us protect it.

Last night the strongest Hurricane ever made landfall. Extreme storms are part of global climate change. What are we going to do?

Peace is up to us. Do we want it? Maybe that’s what that cocked eyebrow was telling me.

Two Lands, One Heart, No Peace

It’s just the saddest story. A country that just cut itself in half. Closed down its borders. Never left a moment for people to come together with their families.

Love stories that continued. Love stories that ended. Children that never saw their parents.

Life decided by politics and who knows what else rather than by connection. Life that people continue to tightly control.

I confess I’d never thought about what that line in a country might mean. Well, maybe politically, but never in the sense of broken hearts and lives.

Such sadness. Such a longing for Peace thwarted by needs for power. I feel helpless — but I can tell the story and weave connections so that this cannot be ever again anywhere else. I can try.

Unexpected Peace

It helps to remain open. You never know what’s going to come along.

And when it comes, you must have left room for the miraculous, or you won’t recognize it.

It’s not all about love affairs, although this particular story was. It can be about jobs, or houses, or friendships, or new paths in our lives.

I think it helps to have a full life — and to appreciate what you have!

The practice of gratitude leaves openings; it allows you to see wonderful things when they happen along.

But being able to see isn’t enough. You have to be able to act, to dare.

Things don’t always work out well. But failure is simply information about better ways to try again. Hearts were meant to be risked (although let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with some calculations in those risks.)

But when they do work, the rewards are enormous. Love ensues. Joy does its happy dance. Peace gets its hopes raised. And people work together for both, which increases the odds tremendously, that someday there might be Peace. Both Peace or Magic require hard work and hopeful hearts.

Heirloom Peace

So often you say the word heirloom and you think big meaningful things (unless of course it’s summer and you think tomatoes or peppers!).

But the things i treasure the most are the little things. The tiny spatula, the two tined fork. Who cares if i never cook bacon, i’m ready should some fit come over me.

Tools and utensils, kitchen and householdm that were tools and utensils at my grandparents’ houses, at my parents’ house, at my sisters’ house, at my niece’s house, at a couple friends’ houses, that are now mine.

I put pepper on my eggs and I remember them. Sometimes it’s one by one, as with the pepper shaker. But sometimes that shakes loose a whole host of memories. And there they are sprinkled like the pepper on the surfaces of my life.

I have had a lot of loss, but I also have a lot of love to remember. And that’s a lucky, lovely thing. And I have silly things like grinders and bacon forks to spark the memories. Love. Peace. And oh, it’s a beautiful autumn morning…

Something Beautiful, Something Peace

“I will set my bow in the sky as a promise…” Of all the biblical pieces that have stuck, this is one. Every time I see one, I’m happy.

So to see this one, on this day…when my heart was feeling so many things — so many things that in fact I blew past my exit and took the long drive to the next exit. It was only as I was turned around, coming home, that I saw the promise.

And it was gorgeous, hidden there behind the curtain of rain.

Such a gift of beauty. And I often think of rainbows as summer pleasures part of the joy of thundershowers. Yet not an hour before, we’d had snow.

But you take Beauty and heart’s ease where you find it. You find the holy, the sacred, in the ordinary. You count those blessings when they’re there to be counted.

Peace comes in so many little gifts. Let us celebrate. Let us Peace.

Sweet/Bittersweet Peace

It’s what happens in small towns. Your life changes, people die, but life goes on in the place you once thought of as home.

Twice now, I’ve had the privilege of being in the homes of the people who bought the homes my family owned.

Yesterday I stood looking for the doorbell at what was once my sister’s home. It turns out they’d taken it down because it malfunctioned. But the fact was I didn’t know where the doorbell was because of course I never had used it. That almost derailed my ability to go in that house — thanks for the reminder, reality.

But once inside, it was all warmth and sweetness. The house does look great. It’s fine that it’s familiar. Or it was yesterday.

I could tell them the story of Jack and Jane — a great love story — who married in what is now their dining room. We could sit around the table that they obviously sit around a lot. and she’s as silly a decorator for seasons as Deb was.

They talked very seriously to me about their plans to love the house… as if I had to be assured they would do right by it and i told them how deb and nan and i all planned to rock on that porch with sippy cups in our old age… and laughed that I’d be over. They laughed too.

And so they were married.

And it was bittersweet. But, it’s the season of bittersweet isn’t it? And it is bright and glossy orange. And sacred, it seems.

And the sweetness is still there. And there is a great deal of Peace in that. (And did you see that Frosty Moon last night? It was beautiful.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

Tag Archives: peace