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!

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.)

Peace, Community, Sabbath, and a Full Moon

Gathered community. Gathered community knitted together — or more correctly, gathered community knitting itself together around relationship and commitment and family.

What is intimacy? What is family? what is celebration?

These are not daily conversational tidbits in our life… and yet what prepares us?

This wedding was presided over by two judges and a priestess. (sounds like a movie, no?)

Lots of stuff was swirling around the gathering… and we rode the waves. As I told you, I found myself in the catching position… and another new nephew, and another new nephew and another new niece… and zoom…

and on the Sabbath, we all rested. family tradition mimosas for brekkie. (over hotel waffes and birthday cake, goodness gracious, pleeze, may there be protein soon.) civilized coffee in a foo foo hotel. a little writing. a nap coming up.

And more family. wonderful kids who have wonderful kids.

Peace as a jigsaw with lots of little pieces… being slowly fitted together. leisure. no need to hurry. we’ve got most of this day.

Peace be with you. and catch tonight’s Full Flower Moon. I’ve got a date with my pillow.

Lazy Flower Moon Sabbath Peace

It’s chilly, but it’s a beautiful day out there! Blue, blue skies and all those budding bushes and trees.

And I’ve sort of written my way into an open day, so this afternoon’s going to entail some sitting around with a book. maybe a little walk. Some time to ponder the very sweet gift of love I received from so many yesterday! I could use a little peace and quiet after all that glorious frivolity…

No sense giving in to the allergies, they don’t seem to be going away! Might as well just ignore and appreciate what’s in front of me.

Spring’s beauty is fleeting. No sense missing it. And the Flower Moon and her Bounty comes but once a year!

Wishing you Peace on this lovely Sunday. Spread it around! Be at least as generous as Mother Nature!

Flower Moon Sabbath Peace

Spring Mornings. They’re really quite beautiful. Blue, blue skies that you can still see because the leaves haven’t come out to block the sky. Chilly temps that you know will warm. This is the weather that the Flower Moon brings along with the march of spring flowers.

Spring afternoons when you finally are excited about doing chores that by the end of the summer will annoy and bore you.

Sunday mornings, quiet before the dash to church and meetings. Well, except for the birdsong outside!

Sunday afternoons when a walk requires nothing more than grabbing a sweater before you walk out the door. When a pool of sunlight is just meant for dragging a chair into as you read the Sunday Papers.

It’s a sweet time of year. It’s still a little early to start gardens but just in time to ream about them. A day off means time to enjoy the wonder and beauty and be grateful for Nature’s abundance.

Sweet Sabbath Peace to you, my friends. Enjoy the day.

Gathered Sabbath Pink Moon Peace

I’ve been hanging out with dear friends at their new home. It’s a gorgeous Pink Moon kick-back spring weekend. Not too warm, not to cool.

I’m about an hour and a half south of where I live, so the daffodils, forsythia, and dogwood are well started.

We’ve listened to music, visited galleries and food markets, eaten: cuban food, local ice cream and my friend’s very good cooking. We’ve seen the sights: the parks, the libraries, hospitals, churches, college campuses and gorgeous old houses.

Tomorrow, I’ll preach, but after that, it’ll be a lot the same!

This is a sweet Sabbath weekend. And I’m drinking in the Peace of time with friends who are exploring new possibilities and new realities!

Sabbath Harmony and Peace for the Pink Moon

Today is Easter. Today is Passover. Today is still the Full Pink Moon. They’re promising us a beautiful Spring Day in my little River Valley. And if you’re lucky, the Bunny (THE Bunny) showed up at your house last night and left wild encouragement to be alive (that would be the egg part). And chocolate. he often leaves chocolate. It’s a Sabbath to remember.

So many celebrations colliding. So many different voices raised. My Hope, maybe even our hope, is that those raised voices, those songs of freedom and joy can find a harmony in these celebrations.

Because the world needs harmony. Harmony calls us to join in, to tune in. And there are so many places so many jagged horrible lines that have been drawn in hate and violence that we need that sweet harmony to defy those lines… and eventually erase them.

I experienced it the other day, a cold day, standing in a columbarium, singing a man’s favorite hymn with four other people. We’d never sung together. It was chilly and hard to catch the right note. yet we did. and five of us sang lustily away. A song of rebirth in a place of remembrance. And before the first verse had ended, we had found our harmony.

It was an amazing thing. We need to do more of that.

So let us sing! of all those wonderful things. Even as we remember the pain and those who struggle. Let us find some harmony. Let us offer a bit of Peace. Blessed be, my friends, blessed be.

United for Sabbath Peace

The other day I posted an article on FB which was somewhat more pointed than those I usually post. So, yes, mea culpa. And I believed it. It was a harsh review of a man who had tweeted smack about a well known little girl. He played base ball for a local university and got lost his spot on the team as a result. The lovely little girl, wrote forgiving the player and asked that he be reinstated, saying she was sure he didn’t mean it. The University president, bless his heart, stood firm. Some people felt the president was mean. Many of us did not. This article spoke about why the guy deserved his penalty. He’s a grown up whose tweet unintended or not savaged this little girl. He’s not the point in this — she is. He created the problem. He’s not a victim.

What followed was a storm of incivility. It started out well. Someone posted and explained why they were happy to see the post. A person who must follow them, because he’s unknown to me, wrote to complain that this was an isolated incident of stupidity and hatred. And that it was time for people to get over complaining about racism and sexism. I disagreed. He called me names. (He didn’t particularly hurt my feelings, since it was a very childish reaction. He didn’t quite call me a poopoohead, but the response was at that level.)

The original responder took exception not only to his response but to his style of response and very civilly but pointedly addressed what he had to say. And so it escalated. Eventually, more civil responses pushed him to remove his posts.

This exemplar showed everything good and bad about social media. Too many people are not paying attention to what’s happening in the world and are willfully ignorant of the problems people face. Too many people think that one responds to things they disagree with by dismissing another’s opinion or name calling. But, some people are willing to look in the mirror at themselves and at society’s unwillingness to face its problems. And they speak up in sane and respectful language.

This is wonderfully reassuring. So on this Pink Moon Sabbath, let us call for a cessation of the petty interactions and a deepening of understanding of the divides that limit our movement forward as a society. Let us be present to what’s going on. Let us be Peace-makers and Community-builders. Peace needs us. And we could stand a sabbath break to reflect and relax. Hope your day is lovely…

Needed: Pink Moon Sabbath Peace

The world needs a Peace that’s pregnant with possibilities. It needs a Peace that holds that Life is sacred and stops for a moment just to be present to it.

This weekend, which is the weekend of the first Sabbaths in the Pink Moon is just such a weekend to contemplate that Peace. Spring is, snow notwithstanding, burgeoning. This is a moment in time where everything seems possible.

Maybe we need to take a pause, relax and refresh ourselves… and as the song says: start all over again.

Right now, we’re watching one jihadist who grew from a basketball-loving kid — but there are thousands of them. The fault is not just in them, it is in a world that fosters that need for structured hate.

In moments when I feel most hopeless when I see what’s going on “over there,” I have to remember that some of that started here. I can’t do much about over there. I can do something, no matter how small about over here. Because today it’s Minneapolis, tomorrow it could be the Susquehanna Valley. Despair has made itself at home in a lot of people. And lest we point fingers at one religious group, let us remember our white supremacy groups of which my home state has so many. It’s the same hate, it just dresses differently.

We then, are the answer, the antidote, we and the inspiration of this beautiful spreading Spring and a new Moon of Possibilities. Let us pray… and then let us get to work!

Sugar Moon Sabbath Wonder and Peace

Wherever you go, there is beauty.

For me, part of writing daily is to remember this. My musings are a spiritual practice of observing what’s right here in front of me.

The act of observation offers a deep reminder to appreciate — whether it’s an appreciation of the possibilities that lie at the heart of dysfunction or, like today, simply the simple awareness of the sight and sound of birds, on the wing and on the ground.

March is often a damp and chilly month — and every single day of it — just as every frigid day of February — is worth appreciation. No other day is like this one. The moon changes every day, and even if we were to look at the same time every day the Crescent Moon changes by degree and position and of course by when it rises and sets… it’s all pretty astonishing, isn’t it?

It’s a Sabbath today, let us enjoy both the day and the wonder.

Wishing you the Peace of a wonderful day.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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