Lammas Celebrations! Sabbath Peace! Oh, boy!

In-gatherings!

A friend reminded me that the ancient celebrations were more approximate. You didn’t stop to celebrate in the middle of the harvest. You didn’t grind the flour until the wheat was out of the field and threshed.

I love this celebration in the middle of the hot spell. Back home, there’s corn, tomatoes and blueberries. How much sweeter can summer get?

Out here? there are grandchildren, swimming pools and tomatoes. May in fact be sweeter.

And today, another beautiful summer Sabbath, spent with them. Full moons and hot summers. Sacred. Joyous. yeahhhhhhhh.

Hurrah! Peace be with you all.

Peace Challenges on a Quiet Sabbath Morning

Life has curve balls. Always. Sometimes, I guess we could have seen them coming, other times, we’re totally caught off guard.

But nonetheless, there are challenges. It’s not what we want to know. it’s not what we want to be facing. Sometimes we can share what’s going on and get support and other times we’re pretty much on our own.

In the midst of those things, we need to be tender with ourselves.

We might also want to consider that others are living confusing, challenging lives. Which means that the people getting on our last nerve may also be having problems, and that might cause us, if we’re to be generous and kind, to be a bit more tender with them. (And if not it confuses them!)

So, on this hot and sunny sabbath, I wish you wonder, contemplation and joy. And Peace. I wish us all Peace. Peace that is graced to us, Peace that we make. And, where I am, the Moon has been beautiful these last few nights and the pictures of garden bounty filling FaceBook are incredible. So as the Moon burgeons and swells, I hope you get great big gulping views of it! Summer Moons…. mmmmm. nothing more romantic.

Sweet Peace of the Road; Sabbath All the Time

I’m on retreat/vacation. Every day’s a Sabbath with me for a while. It’s a wonderful thing and I’m so grateful. I’m being a reading fool. Sometimes a cleaning fool, which IS shocking.

Also a traveling fool. Steve and I took off for Maine for a week and had a wonderful time at our cousins’. Quiet, lovely coastal visit. Lots of oysters. Plenty of lobster. So many books. So many quiet conversations. Piles of Peace and Quiet. Lovely sleeping in the cabin in the woods. Lovely being together. So many blessings it was hard to keep track, let alone count.

We’re good traveling buddies. Talk. Talk. Talk. It’s nice. It was particularly nice doing our night driving on the way home. It was an easy drive with Ms GPS telling me how to get hither thither and yon. So, just lots of comforting darkness. Not even a moon, as it was the dark of the Moon. Just Steve and me and the road.

It was an abundance of plenty. Rejoicing in the Peace.

Now I have a couple more things to do before starting the great writing… but there’s time. Blessed Sabbath to you all… May there be beautiful slow days in your life this summer.

And there was this…

Memories, Sabbath and Peace

The mind’s a funny thing. When I put that pillowcase in the yard sale, I was only thinking that it was time to clean things out a bit.

With all the family deaths, there is stuff in my house. I’ve held it close, reluctant to let them go — as if that meant they were here. Bah. Weird human mind.

But when I sorted, I did the “use not use” test and the “love and not love” test, and this was just a spare pillowcase.

It wasn’t until I saw someone hold it up that its significance (in my life) surfaced. I was standing next to my friend and told her, she said, “don’t take it back.” “No,” I said, “the memory is enough for the Peace!”

And it was. sometimes we have to pay attention so we can be present to the moments of Peace. And then sometimes they just sneak up on you. However they come, they’re sweet. Peace of a lovely Sabbath to you. That Thunder Moon seems more a drippy moon right now, doesn’t it?

Solstice Sweetness in the Thunder Moon

The clouds hung around all day. And just as I threw up my hands and said that’s all the preparation I’m going to do for the vigil tonight and I’m going to at least slip into the pool, it started to rain.

I listened carefully, it wasn’t rumbling, just raining. So off I trundled to the pool, and slipped in. It really is magical this swimming in the rain thing… It was still hot and the pool was still cool. The guard watched from under the overhang and i mostly floated. ahhhhhhhh.

Then back for the vigil with the two hundred. You’ve heard me on that.

And then out to the local ice-creamery to watch the end of the glorious sunset, a moon hanging in the sky with some planets to chat with and the rising of the fireflies.

I don’t know how much we accomplished on real Peace last night (although I have my suspicions…) but it was lovely to finish the evening in the company of a like-hearted friend rejoicing in the beauty of the earth and the blessings of the Solstice… claiming the sabbath for rejoicing in and being present to Mother Earth and her abundance.

Maybe we’ll do better on big P Peace today…

A Thunder Moon Sabbath to Remember

The Thunder Moon is really rattling. Every day it seems, we have a thunder boomer.

And last night the sweetest rain to sleep by. zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Today is Father’s Day… may your memories be sweet and may you make new ones as sweet and juicy as this season’s berries.

Today’s the solstice, giving us a whole sweep of bright and shiny days with long hours of sun (over 15!) well, sun behind the clouds, because that’s what’s going on here! May we be illuminated… May we use the light to look clearly at what is going on in our world. May the beauty we see empower us and keep us strong in the face of the work to be done.

And there’s a lot of work to be done.

Today in my valley we will commemorate the nine who died in Charleston. We will pause and weep. We will decide what if anything we’re going to do to make a difference here. Or at least have a start at it. Let us remember those who died for no reason other than hatred. Our family has lost children. It’s awful. I can’t imagine losing children — or anyone — simply because they existed. To have them targeted and executed. Assassinated. May we be moved to act against the hate — and act in ways that make a difference.

Peace was never more urgent; never more confusing. Let us Peace.

A Berry Moon Sabbath & a Need for Peace

It’s been a very intense weekend. And it’s not over yet. Pant, Pant…

But all of it has been wonderful, even the hard bits. No reason to think that it won’t continue to be the same. Although goodness me… what a journey.

Lucky that this afternoon, I’ll be gathering with a whole bunch of people from a whole bunch of tradition at the local amusement park. The sweetest little park in the world. There we’ll be: Jews, Muslims, UUs, and Christians sharing a potluck and going on silly rides.

There will be work for us to do some other time. But at the moment we’ll be celebrating being neighborly. What could be sweeter? And I’m sure my friend Sonia’s bringing something amazing to eat! 🙂 She always does! And there will be 50+ other people contributing, so look out world! here’s hoping there are some Berries for the Berry Moon! I can’t think of a better Sabbath (well, unless I got to just go back to bed and not move for a couple days!) But what a fun and silly blessing this will be.

And as I’m recounting the abundance of my life today, I’m still seeing two young homeless families on an early morning train… they had each other, and mamas looking out for babies, but not a lot else. We’re a nation that says we care about our children. And yet we don’t. We have homeless babies and homeless mamas. That’s no way to get to Peace. And Peace is where we need to go.

Peace, Sabbath, Berry Moon

Is a Peace volcano a metaphor completely in conflict with itself? But if all those languages, all those Peace words have gone underground, don’t they need to find a way to surface?

What would that mean?

All of which is a lot of thought for a sweet early summer Sabbath morning in the Berry Moon. Mother Earth is at her beautiful, abundant best this morning.

This is a day packed full of community and beauty. It’s already started with my morning walk. Both Sarajane and I were moving slowly, so we wound up sitting on some neighbor’s chairs down by the river. There were ducks and eagles and herons and fish… and a beautiful deer at the water’s edge across the river. And silence. there was a lot of silence. Ah….

And today there is a Good Neighbor gathering in a local park in celebration of two wonderful community leaders. This is the first ever celebration as Doug and Margie Sturm died last year. There will be food and music and lots of laughter.

What could be sweeter?

and as for the volcano… i don’t think the world will go on as it has… and maybe reclaiming language and difference can oddly be a thing which draws us together. We’ll keep thinking about Peace, shall we? and the notion however silly or mystical that there’s a huge bunch of molten Peace at the center of the Earth? Peace be with you on this sweet Sabbath morning. Enjoy your day…

Eating Sabbath Peace in the Berry Moon!

The sweetness of summer foods. Every year when summer comes, I wonder about spending a year eating in season… not buying anything “fresh” at the supermarket.

We used to do that. They certainly were better about that in Sweden. Salads were almost always cabbage based… cabbages that had been stored in cold cellars alongside the carrots — and they were great!

And what makes that worthwhile is the wonder of how good the food tastes when you eat the first fresh spinach, the first fresh strawberry. oh… yum… The bounty of Mother Earth is extraordinary!

Explosions of tastes and food eaten in comfy outdoor places. I like picnics but i like lunch on the porch with no ants as well!

Lovely slow meals, it’s a great way to observe the Sabbath! Hope yours is Peaceful and Joyful and filled with flavor.

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…

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