Peace and Honor in the Berry Moon

I guess I should look at the clock. Apparently it happened at 10:30… but whenever it happened, I went and stood.

We must allow ourselves to be moved by those who made that sacrifice, whatever our longing for Peace.

In their honor, we must do two things, I believe.

We must stand for Peace. We must look for new ways to deal with our world. Because hatred and fear are getting us no where. Technology makes our world smaller and smaller. But posturing politicians try to keep us in the same hateful cycles. We’re the ones who are going to have to break that. We’re going to have to reach out our hands to meet other hands reaching out. We’re going to have to push Peace up the pipeline.

And oh, my goodness, we must work for benefits for our soldiers. We love dead soldiers the way we love dead women. It’s the live ones that are problematic. (ooh, here’s tomorrow’s poem!) But too many of our soldiers are homeless and have health issues, both mental and physical that are inadequately treated. If we love our country, we must love these men and now increasing number of women.

Let our sad memories bear the fruits of peace under this beautiful Berry Moon… let us make memories for soldiers that are worthy of the sacrifice. It doesn’t matter where you enter in… but these young men and women dead and alive deserve our support… and our world deserves Peace.

Remembering the Dead & Longing for Peace

Memorial Day. Decoration Day.

A beautiful early summer day when we commemorate and honor our war dead.

I’ve been thinking a bit this morning about the cemeteries i’ve seen in Europe with row after row of white stones, or crosses and stars.

I don’t come from a military family. My father was a chemist. My uncle as well. They served at home, doing things I don’t much want to know about and raising victory gardens on the side.

Actually, writing the above, I realize that my two uncles on my mom’s side served in the war, but we never knew that side of the family well… so, i never heard stories, although my one uncle was on a bomber, i can see a picture of him with one of those leather hats…

But I never had connections to that world at all until I visited Europe when I was seventeen and i saw those cemeteries. I remember hearing that so many Brits died in Europe in WWI that there were more British men buried in France than in England. Rows and rows of mostly young men violently dead far away from home.

Those beautiful, carefully manicured monuments taught me of the enormity if not the ugliness of war. But you didn’t need to see the ugliness to mourn. And you can’t read history and think you had any better alternatives…

And still. All that young life, sacrificed… cut short. I think about the words to the song from Dido and Anaeus that I sang this year: Remember me but forget my fate.

And so we remember them. And if we honor them, really honor them, we’ll work for Peace.

Summer Memories, Sabbath Peace, Berry Moon

It’s a positively beautiful day.

It’s a day for breathing in the Beauty and all the promise and possibility in the beginning of this Berry Moon Season. Strawberries, soon! Swimming, soon! Memories abounding. New possibilities ahead.

It’s the Sabbath and a day for reflection. Today among other things, I’ll be remembering an old family friend. Part of my parents’ crowd… fewer and fewer beloved elders. (as I become one despite my shock and surprise!). Jack. loved steam engines. Did the best corn on the cob. Funny, corny jokes. could fix anything. His wife and my mom shared a birthday on December 24, so we always lunched together that day. Making family every way we could.

Hope your day is grand. Hope you find some sweet Summer Peace to indulge in and some memories to make. Sweet blessings of the Berry Moon be with you…

Peace of the Little Things

Yesterday was a day of plowing through this and that. And indeed this and that was accomplished. Since the day before had been a pretty big slog, it was a joy to get things done. Even the one thing I had to do again because I had deleted it from my computer.

Sigh. and Ah well. It actually was much better the second time around.

So much of the work i do is work that has no finish point, it often just morphs into the next thing. So when I can tick a lot of things right off the list, I’m in heaven.

So little, but so sweet. And maybe only so sweet in my life because it’s not every day, but I’ll take it.

And those conversations, those little snippets of catching up and loving each other. I’ll take that too! So much of life is not about grand gestures. So much of it is about the sweet little moments.

And for me, yesterday, the sweet little moments held me upright for the hard moments of letting go a friend who died. Her memorial was on Thursday evening and yesterday we interred her ashes. She was only 44. She left a daughter who is only 12. and a heartbroken mom. So hard, so hard. I’m so thankful that I have work I can do, ways I can support that are useful, words I can find even when words can’t get at the deepest of the sorrow. I am grateful that the Earth receives us at the end of our lives after having supported us through it. I am grateful that nature is so beautiful. and I’m very sad.

I’ll take the Peace of the little things in the Beauty of the Berry Moon. They soothe the heart.

Save the World for Peace

This is the Berry Moon. it’s the Moon of growing things. The Moon of that first harvested sweetness.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, where they’re already harvesting sweetness, they’re using water they don’t have for households to produce berries for people everywhere.

And out on the coast, an oil line has burst and degorged into the sea. the beautiful, beautiful sea.

And CEOs get to say sorry and think that is a response.

Big business, fragile Earth. it’s a bad mixture. And Peace is definitely the casualty. What are we going to do? I have no idea… But you can’t unsee this… and you have to keep asking yourself questions…

Growing Peace in the Berry Moon

Oh, the gardens are busy right now. Lewisburg is one of those towns where people garden. More and more towns are those where people are growing food and flowers.

Everywhere you look things are poking their heads out of the soil, testing, tasting, how about now? Yep, now seems to be the time. The Berry Moon is trying to live up to her name as her brother the Sun coaxes things along.

But we live in the privileged lands… Even our lowered amounts of rain are enough to keep our gardens juicy. In May we can hope that the unseasonably warm 90˚ weather isn’t the harbinger of 100˚ weather in July and August.

Our job is not simply to celebrate the bounty; it’s also to push for its protection.

As I write this another oil spill has devastated the coast of California. 100,000 gallons lost, as if the loss of oil is the problem rather than the damage done to the coastline. And oh, have we noticed that all the people cleaning up the spill are people we say we don’t want here… the people willing to do the hard work of cleaning up? There are so many things wrong with this picture, it’s hard to know where to pull the first string.

But taste something fresh from the garden and remember why we’re called to work for our beloved planet. “Oh, Earth Mother, I’m standing on you…” May we live in peace.

This and That Peace

I don’t know that what I’m working at has a lot to do with the Berry Moon, although if you saw it go down yesterday evening, you were thrilled. Jupiter was bright and beautiful and the tiny, tiny sliver of moon was orange… ahhhhhh.

But there’s a lot going on out here in the world, and much of what’s touching my life right now is sad. People are having a hard time, and my job, or at least part of my job, is showing up when life is hard for others.

And this kind of job is challenging because it seems that things come in waves. You boogie along and everything’s great and then all of sudden people need you to talk to them about hard things. Life and death things. Because that’s a big part of what ministers do. I’ve always done that with people, but now it’s official.

It’s an incredible privilege to be with people in the midst of their challenges. And it’s hard work. Presence is something to practice. And when they’re people you know, that you’re with on a regular basis, it can be very challenging.

And the day after a young woman died, my friend’s kids had a baby. The circle, the cycle, of Life is sweet. Life giveth and Life taketh away…

And we find a way to make Peace, not only with the journey but also with the beginnings and endings.

To Live in Peace

Is it fleeing? Is it invasion?

Whatever it is, as hordes of people flee war torn countries, how is there a peaceful coming together of different cultures? (Sadly this is not one of those columns with an answer.)

I can imagine, if not understand, the desperation that causes you to flee your homeland. I can imagine that what you’re looking for is a safe landing place to be again the person you were.

That becomes so difficult, however, when you and an entire colony of people like, you, thank heavens there are people like you, arrive in a place that is so foreign with an established culture that is inimical to yours.

And then when you are the host country with a long established and beloved country what do you do when people show up and want to establish their country in the midst of yours?

And when chauvinism is a piece of where you come from and how can it not be, how do you mediate that to make space? Is the history of conquering nations illustrative here? Because that has pretty much been a disaster in terms of culture and acculturation?

When things are one way, and then they’re not, and everyone is uncomfortable and the way forward doesn’t seem clear, what does Peace look like? Is there a way for us all to fold into one another? Does Pollyanna’s “can’t we all just get along” cry have any use, or is she (I) just hopelessly optimistic and naive?

But whatever the answer is, it’s not letting would be immigrants drown or starve off shore or on the other side of a border wall. It’s not in killing those who think differently than you in the country in which you’re seeking safe haven. But shouldn’t there, in the vast gulf between those two places, be some way — or a lot of ways — forward?

It is so very hard to think about, isn’t it? But in the hard work, shouldn’t there be possibility?

Peace be with us all…

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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