Sacred Acts of Peace, LLVL

I sometimes need reminders that Life is a sacred endeavor. I’ve chosen to use capitals to help me remember things I might pay attention to and in the paying of attention, cherish.

If I hold my Work as sacred, not just routine, I pay attention and I do it. People might say, well, sure, you’re a minister, when you stand by a deathbed, that’s sacred. And that’s so true. but sometimes you’re frightened or tired or… and you need to remember…

But ministry is not made up of only sublime moments. There are the things that need slogging through as in any job.

And ministers lead very mundane lives as well. Someone has got to go to the store, wash the dishes, order the fuel oil. And as long as I’ve been doing it, I’ve noticed that the wash never gets done on its own, darnit.

All of those things can be done with reverence. I’m lucky enough to be able to buy fuel, the dishes I use are family heirlooms and I love fabric and clothes, so doing the wash helps me remember all the wonderful clothes I get to choose from when I go to the closet. (I’d say colors, but you know me, I only wear red and black! but hey, some of my red is wine colored!)

Today, I’ll trudge carefully through my snowy neighborhood to meet my friend at our local coffee house and we’ll work together on our separate jobs. Communion on a Monday morning.

By noticing life’s sweetness and allowing it to be important, I pay attention. And you may wonder, indeed I do, who am I to natter on about Peace, but if we don’t talk about it, don’t hold it as sacred, we don’t do the little things that begin to pile up into a sizable mound of acts that move us down the Peace Road.

So Peace, my friends. Consider which words and actions are sacred in your life. Consider elevating them in importance. See if you pay attention differently. Honor Peace. make it central in your life and begin to examine what isn’t leading toward that exalted end. Celebrate the Awe. It makes life so much more exciting.

Vulnerable Peace, LLVL

When you live where you live, and when that place is a small town, you have to get to know yourself, because other people will know you well — sometimes better than you want to know yourself.

But it’s never a great idea for someone else to know you better than you know yourself, so it behooves you to keep looking.

I’ve been tired, emotionally up against my physical boundaries. It’s a wonderful privilege to do the work that I do, but sometimes it’s very demanding. You can’t always tell the demands to take a hike. or rather, you can’t always tell all of the demands to take a hike. Sometimes when you’re a minister, people need you. So you show up.

But it’s important to pay attention. Sometimes you can pass things off… And when you can, you probably should. For a lot of reasons, but two big ones. Those you love need to know you trust them to be as big and powerful as they are. And you need to honor what’s too much.

I love sermonizing. (ya think?) This week I had set myself a high bar. I was headed toward a more researchy sermon than I normally do. But post Charlie-memorial and post Jean visits in the hospital, there really wasn’t any brain power left. I finished the sermon. sorta. And went to bed, because bed was what was needed.

The next morning, as the poem says, I watched the river. And something about that flow reminded me. I wasn’t alone in this. I certainly wasn’t alone in mourning Charlie. I wasn’t alone in my fears for Jean, now, thank goodness somewhat allayed. And I am not alone in my ability to chew up a bunch of ideas and get something out of it. And this is a crowd who trusts me to love them.

One of the places that people get ministry wrong, I think, is when we don’t trust them to love us back. And there’s that awful hubris where we think we’re the only people who can… you fill in your own blank. Ministers could be the only people who have that problem, but I’m not taking any bets. So I went to church said, I’m going to give you my premises and my research… see if you can help… lots of thinking happens in the heads of my community… so there was a lot to be said for that. And in the end… it was a great sermon, jointly preached. I was supported and they were grateful to be asked. And the next time? I’ll do my stuff…until I need help again.

Ah, the timeless, sacred river… encouraging me to show up and be present, facilitating the moments of reflection, forgiving (even encouraging) the vulnerability, and offering the Peace of being right where you are, in this place, in this moment of time. Living la vida local has lessons I hadn’t any notion I might want to learn. ah, that darned praying constantly thing.

Sabbath Peace, LLVL

Trying something new this year thanks to a friend’s wondering. When we were talking about this year’s LLVL adventure, Sarajane got excited about the weeks’ starting on Wednesday.

I hadn’t really thought about when I would change the pic, but I found this interesting. How would it change our thinking, if at all, if the rest days were the center of the week rather than the end? What if Tuesday became the day we finished things up at work and Wednesday was a new beginning.

What if we began to think about recalibrating our week with a period of rest in the middle?

Would it change things? Would we use the sabbath differently? Embrace it more fully?

Whatever your tradition, whenever you take it, giving yourself a day of relaxation and reflection once a week is a good idea. Holding that day as sacred, understanding it as a responsibility to yourself is a great gift. There’s Peace in the looking at life and breathing deeply. Peace in the moving forward with all that play and silence within you.

Wild Chaos, Sweet Order, Sacred Peace

All very important words. Too many people think that the first two terms are in opposition with each other. But when they’re in cahoots with each other, they really work. (maybe they should be called Sweet Chaos and Wild Order!) But I say in my musing that I believe that Peace teeter-totters between the two. My guess is that the sweet spot is always moving!

Peace isn’t orderly. or should I say, Peace isn’t only orderly, it needs creativity to explode all the preconceptions of what Peace might be. But Peace isn’t only chaos. It helps to establish a foundation for Peace. You want your foundations to be well-crafted if they’re going to last. The Practical and the Possible need to keep talking to one another.

They need, in fact, to find one another beautiful.

Too often, they get shoved and maneuvered into taking sides and made to fight with one another. Only one can be “good.” Dualism. Pah! Sacred Peace requires the best of each of us. And it demands a pretty healthy sense of humor. If you’re more gifted in Chaos or Order, look for Peace Accomplices. You can’t make Peace on your own. It takes two to Tango… It takes two to Peace… and so many more! But find the balance and enjoy the ride! It’s good work. It’s good play. It’s Peacemaking!

Stories for Peace

The Dark is the time of Sacred Stories. We are asked to recall and recite the stories that make sense in our lives, the stories that make sense of our lives. Every time we tell them, a layer is added. The meaning deepens in the telling and so do our connections to the stories.

We have choices about the stories we tell. We have choices about how we tell the stories, what is it we want them to teach us. We even have choices about the way our stories evolve, because we can make choices about how we live our lives.

When I started this year, I decided to let a new storyline emerge. I wanted to explore Peace in my life. Writing about Peace every day, no matter how obliquely has turned me into a Peace-Considerer and is moving me toward Peace-maker. Choosing to capitalize Peace and other nouns that lead toward it, while choosing to take power away from unpeaceful nouns by keeping them lowercase has had impact, on me, if not on others. The capital (particularly from someone who is capital challenged) is a small, lingering caress. I pay attention to the Peaceful details of the stories I tell.

And oh they matter, those stories. I’m trying to collect them about a friend of mine, who died a week ago. He was a wacky, wonderful guy with a sly sense of humor and a penchant for collecting things and people and stories. and awful jokes. There are so many Charlie-stories worth telling. Telling them well, next week when we have the memorial will help those stories settle into our collective hearts and become part of our history.

Telling Charlie stories will ease our sorrow and shape our shared future and perhaps our individual ones as well. That’s what stories do, the bring the past into the present and offer a path into the future. And if you make your stories stories of Peace, you will build a future of Peace. The more people in your stories, the more people on your Peace road. So observe so you can collect those stories, practice so you can tell them and listen to what you say so you know what to tweak and what to do next. Which ones exhort you to show up? Which make you reflect? Which count the blessings of sweet memories made from your feats of derring-do and your moments of collective lolling about.

Tell the stories that make you happy, make you laugh. Tell the stories that remind you that your heart bruises. Remind yourself of big work completed and little times enjoyed. Tell the stories that help you remember what you stumble over. Remember what you’re proud of. Tell the stories of how Love grows, and Hope and Joy. Tell them simply or embellish the heck out of them. But most of all? Enjoy each and every one of them. Peace, my friends… Happy Story-telling!

The Peace of Christmas Come and Gone

This is a hard day for me. First Christmas without Deb. The reality of so many wonderful family Christmases, the remembrance of family gathered last night, and the beauty of family close by and far away, my dearly Beloved and my dearly beloved… and the sweet sadness of a woman missing, calls not made, hugs and kisses not given, conversations stilled.

I miss her. Terribly. I think about my friend without her husband. My nieces without their father. Our church without our Charlie. And my friends who have lost and lost. The loss is always true, always there, a small payment for the joy of having loved, but still… On a day when there is Hope, it is Hope despite the breaking hearts… and the Love which you all share with me.

There is so much that has been beautiful about this year. I am grateful for my Peace Path, for Love Flows, for my writing… and for all of you. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve, the people who trust me and the ones I trust. Broken-heartedness doesn’t render me unable to serve and it doesn’t touch the Laughter. Thanks be for that.

And the Christmas question… can we allow (can I?) — despite aching hearts and broken promises and tattered dreams — Christmas to come? Come with a renewal of hope and faith in Possibility. Come with the enjoyment of family and friends. Come with its own urgency to Peace. Come with healing on its wings?

I hope so. And till it does, as it does, Deb, I miss you so much. And I fantasize, because we know nothing, that they keep Christmas in heaven (may there be a heaven) and you, at last, at last, at last, have your kids and your husband around the Tree and parents checking in… all hearts mended, all problems solved. And you’ll know we’re coming along some day…

And so, I will pick up the living room and put up the tree. And Steve and I will call the kids and celebrate… For I believe in Christmas and I’ll keep Christmas Day. And it will keep me until my heart is healed because I have kept it with you… and the many people I have loved… living and dead. Peace be with us all.

Expect Advent Peace

What if we just did that? What if we just expected it to be Peaceful and then acted as if it had happened? How would the world change?

This isn’t like wishing for a pony for Christmas, this is expecting that you will care for all ponies because ponies are needful.

This is an expectation of yourself that you will be Peace. In Advent, in the sacred season of coming into being… This is an unwillingness to expect any less, not only of yourself but of others and then loving yourself and your neighbors when we fail and encouraging us all to try again.

Expect Peace. The world needs you to ask the very best from it, to not settle from less. Part of expectation is going back again and again and again, and asking for more. Advent: Hope. Love. Joy. Peace. The hard work of Advent is expecting all of that. C’mon, I have great expectations of us.

Silent Joy in Advent Peace

Wordless Wonder can override the noisiest chaos. Oh, you have to be open to it, no doubt about that. And usually you have to stop and make a little bubble around yourself for wonder to grow.

I believe one of the most needed pieces of the Christmas story — and the whole world regardless of tradition can learn from this — is that the world can stop and wonder at Mystery. And that we do well to do that.

Silencing the criticism and the indifference and the, let’s be clear, bullshit, makes a place for wonder.

Wonder’s an important building block for growth and for Peace. So, shhhhhhhhh. see what you might be missing. Go look and see what’s hiding in the Peace and Quiet in this season of the Sacred Dark. This may be the work you’re born for!

Elate, Joy, Advent, Sabbath, Peace

Well that’s a mouthful! But a fun one!

The third candle is Joy. Part of life’s journey is enjoyment. Are you quick to smile at a baby or laugh at a joke? It’s amazing how much better a day is when we make the effort to be joyful. People respond to joy. Life is short, let us live into it.

May I take joy in the dailiness of life, revel in its opportunities and in the people I encounter. May I be filled with wonder and amazement at life’s beauty and bounty. Blessed be.

And the today’s verb is to elate. To be elated. To allow the Joy of this Holiday season to move you to gratitude, certainly, but also to full on appreciation of, elation in the moment.

Here the white stuff makes me incredibly happy! Last night I got to go out and walk in Winter Wonderland. It was gorgeous. This morning I’m far more elated now that the snow is off the car and I believe it will pull out of the parking spot! But really, enjoy it! It’s the Sabbath so you might give yourself the chance to lean into the feelings of happiness. Thank Mother Nature for the snow and the beauty. And then allow yourself to feel it! Elation! ahhhhhhhhhhh!

Encourage Love during Advent Peace

To encourage the Love. Is there anything more important that we can do in this world?

And the sacred season of Advent is built for exactly this possibility. Of all the holidays I left behind as I became Post-Christian, Advent is the one that has most called to me across our differences. I have been unable to release the feeling — don’t you hear Leonard Bernstein’s “Something’s coming, something Good — I don’t know when…”

For that to happen, we have to make space in our lives, our hearts, our souls. We have to encourage it. I started writing about Peace in these musings a year ago. My sense that it is possible has only grown — and I haven’t even left Dodge! I know more people for whom this is a concern. I know more people who are not like me and we are forging conversations and even doing good work. Little Dreams are taking root, and growing.

It’s got to happen where we are — here where I am, there where you are. And as it spreads. As we relax into Love, we relax into Peace. We start naming it, we start letting it be important. We start doing things that are not, perhaps, on the surface about Peace, but which create Peace in their wake. Because we’re caring for people. We’re feeding them. We’re fighting pollution in their name. We’re standing up against ecological disaster. We’re each doing the things we do, and widening our scope a little. Perhaps even gentling our touch.

There’s something that each of us can do to encourage Love. One of the great things about it is that it’s habit forming. If we’re kind. If we’re generous. If we’re thoughtful or resourceful or determined. The Love makes the setbacks bearable. The Possibilities of Peace illuminate the journey. We have a place we’re bound. There is more Love, more Peace, more Grace. And I’ve found it in your company.

Oh who you are and the work you do are worthy of all the encouragement I can give you.

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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