On Bringing the Peace You Can

It’s really about presence and showing up, isn’t it? And doing the best you can.

You seek to say the things you know will bring them comfort. You work to be as grounded as you can be, as open-hearted, open-souled… open minded, because even here, where it’s about the very stuff of life, there’s so much that’s going on around and as part of it… as you can be.

Even when you have spiritual comfort to offer, it’s often your ability to be comfortable where you are, to be with friends and strangers alike, to let people know they are seen and in the deepest sense of the word, loved.

It’s such a privilege to do this sacred work… and you bump along, sometimes doing it better than others. Doing your best… and showing up. Hoping you can help this family in the midst of what is so hard, hoping there can be Peace and dignity… hoping that you’re helping to create a memory they will always grieve but maybe not regret the way it went.

I knew and liked the woman who died yesterday. It was a hard death for her. She labored to let go. Don’t let ’em fool you, death, is rarely easy. I knew her husband a little, enough that he trusted me. and the same with her mother. Her poor daughter, poor sweet Katy, I had seen only as a baby. This woman was never as proud of anything in her life as of her daughter and of being Katy’s mom.

But there you are struggling for your own grounding in the midst of people you know and those you don’t at the doorway of something huge. Life-not-this-Life.

I believe Peace really lies in open hands and open hearts. I believe it also lies in Presence. And so, I’ll keep trying to show up. I’m grateful to be called and give thanks when i can be of service. And it’s hard work.

Blessings, Peace, Love.

Making Sabbath Peace Where You Are

Well, here we are, with the day we have. At least one tradition commands us to be glad in that. To be grateful, right here, right now, for what we have.

It’s so easy to judge the day not worthy. To tot up all the little parts and judge them as less than great means that you’re not paying attention to the things that are working.

Peg Streep has written about the fact that humans actually do better when they subtract the blessings, and imagine how life would be without that… and that as we add things back in we realize that life is better than we had suspected.

I get stuck on the wonder of things — look at this. Look at that. Be amazed, not just content. Fill up today. Start the hard work tomorrow.

As for those invasive plants… consider, at least consider Peace… and what that might look like.

Today, take the day off and be glad and grateful for what’s in your life. Come at it any way that works for you… But take a Peace Pause that refreshes. Tomorrow we can get back to tinkering with the better-making! Sabbath Peace with you, my friend. What will you do with it? It’s the very last day of the Flower Moon, better revel!

Honoring Flower Moon Beauty & Peace

I guess I’ve just spent too much time wandering around the neighborhood recently looking at all the amazing flowers. The Flower Moon is more than doing her job this year, calling beauty into the world. So when I saw the ravaged poppy I was sad.

Sad at first, because who does that. Ok, squirrels, but they’re squirrels and they just tear things apart. But this was ripped off at the stem and discarded. I can even accept, although they’re not yours, plucking a flower to enjoy. But this was not that.

I have a lot of poppy memories. I live with a lot my mother’s poppy paintings. Our wedding ketubah is passionate with them. And I have smiled at fields and gardens of them in a lot of places in the world.

My reaction about this, however, somehow took me right to the “In Flanders Field the poppies grow…” that sad, evocative WWI poem… There it was, a brilliant splash of red lying broken in the street. As we do with flowers, so we do with people.

I don’t want to make peace with that, I want, rather, to call for and make Peace. No more ruined flowers. No more ruined lives. Let there be Peace on Earth. Let us understand that Life is sacred. Let’s start that now.

Peace Withheld by Violent Measure

It suited the mine bosses for the different ethnic factions not to get along. No chance of a union’s forming if you can’t stand the cut of another man’s lineage. And so they did everything they could to fan the flames of dissent.

Living was hard scrabble and just plain hard in these mining towns. All the Flower Moon blooming in the world can’t pretty up the effects of mining on a small town. And now it’s hard scrabble because towns built up around a

Now you ride by little pretty little streams and there are warning signs posted about the ruination of those streams and the dangerously high rates of mine acid. The mountains are sheared off. Greenery is only slowly, after 40-50 years, returning to the hills…

People are so slow to learn. We didn’t “know” mining was bad. at the same time we were clear cutting the trees. We didn’t know that water couldn’t deal with the stuff put into… and we didn’t much care when people downstream sickened and died.

We didn’t believe that others deserved a chance at the bounty we had… we didn’t really at that point consider lots of these workers human. And that still goes on. I’ve decided to go to a workshop to see what i can do about my part in all this… It’s time to turn this around. Past time, really, but now is the time we have to make Peace. The Beauty tries to tell us what Peace might look like… time to take it seriously. It’s only making space for those moments of self reflection that will help us understand how we stand in the way of Peace and how we might contribute to it, consciously, consistently… Peace.

Rocky Moments in the Flower Moon

It was one of those days. Nothing majorly wrong, but filled with rocky moments where nothing was particularly right.

We have these. They come around. And our job is to relax into them and deal with things as they come up.

I think the key to days such as these is the exhale. You force out the stale breath you didn’t know you were holding and fresh air streams in.

And in the Flower Moon, that air is often sweetly scented. Sure, it’s filled with allergens… but still… Lilacs!

There are often appropriate actions to take and you take them, because life has responsibilities and is sometimes very hard work. And if you deal with them as they come up, there are fewer treacherous rapids to run. I’m a big fan of letting only the big problems be a big deal, the little problems can be dealt with.

When we let the little things become big things we move our attention away from our Peace Goal. We also forget Possibility. I mastered this art for a while, but, in the long run, it’s not really an art I want to be good at. So, I stopped. I mess it up once in a while, and then i get back to getting on with moving toward Peace. Exhale and breathe in that fresh lilac scented air.

Peace be with you on this lovely morning.

Flower Moon Rainbows of Peace

Is it a bad thing that I love thinking up goofy titles? I figure if I’m writing at 8:30 in the morning, you’ll just have to put up with my giggling.

But really, the changing seasons make differences we don’t expect… and in my case don’t remember from year to year… I know the Flower Moon doesn’t bring the flowers, it’s called that because the changing Sun makes it warm and bountiful and spring rains delight.

It was such a lovely thing to have rainbows appear on my Mother’s paintings. Around Mother’s Day, we might add. It was crazy making, because at first i couldn’t understand whether or not it was something I’d missed and how was that possible? And then, it moved to another painting… and another rainbow. wow. (I can only blame the allergens for my slow understanding.)

But then I realized, right it’s summer. The sun is higher and it’s pouring through my pretty crystal hanging in my window. It happens every year. And every year I am surprised by Joy.

And that? is a good thing. Joy is out there. Peace is out there. I believe that. I try to live that. And I’m thrilled when I’m surprised by it.

Violet Peace in the Flower Moon

I’m not a cook. I assemble things once in a while. But that daily food to table thing? bad at that.

So it’s ridiculous that I should be making violet simple syrup. And of course I don’t follow directions well. so mine won’t be as violety as it should be… nor as purple.

But it was such a delightful notion. And even the failed first batch was sweetly subtly tasty… I know this because i poured it with the melted leftovers of morello cherry jam all over my french toast.

The Flower Moon. Enjoy what’s here. Be present. Nature is so outrageously beautiful. Today our walk was punctuated with strong lovely spikes of iris demanding attention. “Hello! We’re here!” Well, yes you are…

Time to pull together what we’ve learned from the Flower Moon, synthesize it for next year when the spiral changes and we learn something new.

But in the meantime? Sweet, sweet Violet Peace to us all…

Right. Trust the Peace of the Flower Moon.

We’ve had gorgeous nights outside in this Flower Moon. Warm and relaxed and beautiful. Windows are open… or at least occasionally, because of course the trees are also enjoying the Flower Moon which means I’m still doing that hunker down inside thing.

We’re looking for rain today, so maybe it will wash all the pollen away. We can live in hope, right?

But the open window thing? It let’s in noises. So there I was on Saturday night and i started hearing this annoying beeping, sounding like a car unlocking. but it continued. I looked outside, didn’t see anything and went to bed, only to be awakened in the middle of the night crying.

All I could imagine is that my sweet neighborhood had been invaded by Not. In. My. Back. Yarders… devastating. How has it come to this? Seem unlikely? My friend Sarajane just informed me that a Catholic church in SF, in an effort to deter people with no homes from sleeping on the relative safety of their porch have installed an intermittent sprinkler system.

Why welcome people when you can let them know what your church really thinks. And what the heck, why not waste water in a state where people don’t have enough to drink and the people you’re watering have no access to public showers. What a nice thing, eh?

But when I woke up yesterday, I realized: Smoke detectors and batteries gone bad. I changed a couple and now I realize. oh, right, they all go bad at this time of year. And when I say I realize, I mean I stumbled to the basement to pull the battery out in the middle of the night last night. I changed that battery this morning! And I’ve run out of 9 volts. Drug store, here I come. (and thank goodness for the local socialist book store that recycles those batteries.)

It’s the little things, but it would be nice if my first thought wasn’t about people who can’t seem to care about humanity. Mistrust is not particularly Peace-building. Being present to your life is a good thing.

I’d better work on those things AND change the batteries. Peaceful morning, everyone. and check your smoke detectors and your battery supply. And if a church in your neighborhood is not being church, write to them and say “Fie, for shame.”

Mothering, Sabbath, & Flower Moon Peace

My friend Peg Streep writes painfully and movingly about Mean Mothers — Those who couldn’t do, or didn’t do, what was needed for their children. There’s a lot of work to be done to heal those children’s wounds.

A sad truth is that when we recognize what’s missing in a child’s life, too few of us step in to make that difference. And those of us lucky to have had what we needed keep finding mothers everywhere to nurture and guide us and we’re more adept, perhaps, at letting that Love in. And some, but not all of us, gather ourselves and take ourselves off to the psychologists and do the work to realize we’re well worth the efforts of mothering and mother ourselves. And I’m grateful for all of those who break the pattern…

But most Mothers struggle along and get it as right as they can. Most learn how to Mother their own and the neighbor children or their students as they cross their field of vision. They do the best they can…

And so, for all the presents and the halloween costumes and moments learning what they had to teach us, thanks Moms.

I wish that more of us subscribed to Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation. Would that more of us would “Arise then women of this day…” and grab back the responsibilities for Peace.

In the meantime I wish you Peace with your memories and your realities and joy when it’s appropriate. Missing my own blood relatives who mothered me, Being grateful for my other Mothers. Beyond grateful for the young women and men who have allowed me a glimpse of what’s expected of me and allowed me to love them. My Husband introduced me to his two beautiful daughters who were so well mothered by Shirley and who are such great mothers in turn. I am incredibly inconsistent and still full of wonder that there’s a place for me in that circle.

I’m a lucky woman, and that’s plenty to keep me going on this beautiful warm and sunny Sabbath as the Flower Moon rides into it’s last week of beauty. (I’m watching those lilies of the valley every day.)

Kids are OK in Flower Moon!

Oh, it was such a sweet morning and the kids were amazing.

I’ve never spent a lot of time with kids. Don’t have my own, lived across the country from too many of the kids in the family when they were growing up. Always had friends around who had kids they’d share and there was always the neighborhood… But direct kid interface, not so much.

And now, boom, i’m the minister at a small town church and we got kids! 100 members: 50 kids. My colleague Sara who does the education piece is fabulous. No other word. Fabulous. The people who teach with her? Fabulous. So I get all the bennies of watching these kids grow and folding them into my arms now and again. And they’re pretty puppy like, so they love being enfolded. How sweet is that?

So they’re off to learn more about who they are and what their tradition is and how they might grow into it. (I reminded them when they left that in our country, our tradition started here, so they come from the source! or maybe they come from the roots and are off to visit the place where the tree grew… also grew! They’ll make a whole bunch of memories. They’ll create family and community for themselves when they’re stuffed into that big ol’ van. Laughing all the way and learning whatever comes. Oh, may they see the possibility. The Flower Moon is compressing, time to make sense of things!

But the kids. The bright, funny, interested, loving kids and the two great parents who are hauling them along. Those kids. They’re more than okay. And I am at Peace with that and more than a little in Love.

Sacred Village

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