Sliding down my stairwell steps, casting rainbows on the wall. Twice a year, the sun celebrates its vacation at the equator and throws its light around at my house. Whether he hollers, “See you later!” or “I’m on my way!” the beauty makes me grin.
We have to celebrate these brief shining moments, wake up to them and be present to their glory.
There are a lot of things that are hard, but sometimes Peace is as molten as sunshine and as sweet as a dancing rainbow. Drink at the well of Peace!
I sometimes wonder if the Universe doesn’t find little ways to amuse itself. Now maybe whoever built this house in 1860 carefully calculated how to capture the sun on the equinoxes and at no other time of the year.
Or maybe the Sun, on one of it’s endless rotations noticed this dark hallway and thought, huh, I can do this. Wonder if anyone will notice.
Did all the other inhabitants of the notice? I can ask one of them. There’s a guy in town whom I’ve been following from rental to rental… I’ve told him the next move is into his house. Small towns. everything has provenance and you can figure it out.
Or did it take this Earth-centered witch to hang the crystal and notice both the molten gold and the rainbow. When you work at home, you practice being present to all sorts of things! Whatever. It causes me to rejoice. I start checking about a week before, hope for sun on the days I’m looking on those late afternoons and wait for the magic to happen on this very dark stairwell. Ah! there it is!
Tiny little Blessings show up lots of places and give you Peace. Let’s pay attention! Let’s hear it for Peace.
The picture Deb took this week offers a great snapshot of Central Pennsylvania agriculture with our fields in various states of harvest. The sun is going down. Because we’ve just had the full moon, it’s easy to imagine it rising orange across the river, our Harvest Moon. Life is fertile here, a product of the bounty of the land, the generosity of the climate and the hard work of the farmers. And we give thanks.
Contrast that quiet beauty with the terror of the city that beautiful day in September — the hatred that engendered it; the hatred that it caused, both a by product of so many bad decisions. So many words written, no more needed, just our deep sadness for this incalculable loss. I looked out the window at those towers in that city every day for many years. I had tiny bits of history there. I worked in the investment industry. I left the city to pursue dreams, but the city never leaves your heart… and even without a personal connection, the horror is overwhelming. If you haven’t gone to the memorial, do it. you begin to understand the immensity of what happened; of the deep imperative for Peace.
And then a personal sadness for my sweet nieces whose father ended his life years later.
Peace is needed. Honesty. Understandings that actions have consequences and a willingness to think those things through — as true globally as personally. Healing. Love. When we arise from yesterday’s pain, we must go to work.
The seasons keep turning. I take incredible joy in summer… bodies in bodies of water… ahhhhhh. I’m sure I leave the town pool at the end of every summer, even knowing that I’ll be swimming the day after, with some of the same feelings I had when leaving the womb (developmental crowd, did i have feelings or just sensations?). Well, at least I was reluctant.
But every season brings its joy. The trick is to celebrate. I positively gushed about how beautiful this region is in the Spring. Wait… the fall and its colors are coming. And then the snows. Sure the storms are annoying. If the Almanac is right it’ll be a snowy one. thank goodness I have snow tires. I may actually put them on this year.
I think it’s important to find sweetness in every season and to cling to that… enjoying. Every season is too something: hot, cold, grey, snowy, polleny, rainy. But every season is astonishingly something as well: green, sultry, colorful, clean, clear, shady… Life on Earth… we’re so lucky.
Now if only we could find ways to embrace the differences in all of life and not just the seasons and the landscapes, we’d be making progress toward Peace. Let’s do that, shall we? It’s a large job… but if we each do our tiny little piece… we can do this. Peace. it’s what we’re made for.
I do tend to wax eloquent about Sweden. It’s beautiful. And when you’re visiting, it’s easy to see what works and not what doesn’t. There’s loads to write about what doesn’t… And I will eventually, when I get home and I’m doing more than just hanging out in the beauty.
But oh, the Beauty. And as I’ve said, it’s not just the beauty but the fact that people take time to enjoy it. So here’s this beautiful little chapel with all sorts of odd instruments and old church altar implements turned museums. So many of the churches here have lots more people visiting the beautiful antiquities than they do people worshiping.
Being happy in your friends’ company also tends to make the lens softer. So there we were, riding out to visit some of their past, some of which i share, on a day when the sun was dancing in and out of the clouds. We’d have a quick shower and then it would pour in the shining sun, and then it was just a simple breezy sunlit day again. Summer in Sweden. The hay fields were newly mown and there were these huge round bales waiting to be wrapped in plastic for the winter. It’s damp here, so the trees are green and gardens are fertile. The houses are dark red or gold with sparkling windows trimmed in white.
Really, it’s sort of storybookish. And that’s ok with me. It’s a Peace that claims the land and then fills us. Any different than the Peace we’re flooded with when you drive to Penn State along those farm-filled Valleys? Not at all. It’s simply a different landscape. This one has claimed a piece of my heart. And isn’t that grand. The Peace will be here long after I leave, this time and forever.
Swedish Summer has reverted back to its more normal up, down, little of this, little of that. (I’m trying not to feel too guilty that I sent my fleece jacket home… can it be my fault? Aren’t I the center of the universe?) At least, and Hallelujah, the horrible forest fire has finally been brought under control.
But for me the point about this weather… about any weather really, it is what it is. No, I’m not jumping in the lake every day. My astonishing tan, despite loads of #70, is fading… but I’m hanging with dear, dear friends and making space in my brain. Sometimes even using my brain.
My honey’s in CA with our family and his music. That’s pretty great. That’s a lot of Love. Love I can’t believe I’ve fallen into.
And if I were so full of hubris as to name all this bounty simply good enough, shame on me! My life is pretty damned fabulous even in this in-between weather in this state of leaving a Paradise I’ve visited and coming home to the Paradise I inhabit.
There’s so much turmoil in the world. Things are truly horrible. These problems are far greater than I can impact directly. Far greater than I can reason out — if you can reason out hatred… I’m trying very hard to remember that I can grieve, pray, and get to work at home. Get to work loving. Get to work helping. Get to work on my work, on being the best Ann… not just the resting Ann.
And so the transition. From here to there which will soon be here. Being present is actually a slow and fluid process… this particular here is so precious and so seldom shared with my friends, it takes time to disentangle and time to become the woman enrapt and rapped in her sacred, mundane life. Who cares if it’s cloudy or sunny? Love is. Peace is. And both will be as we believe they matter…
Today I get another picture from Deb to lure me home… that’s pretty sweet. Tomorrow you get it!
I’m having the loveliest time… So many sweet summer days in a row, “no particular place to go…”
Although today we do, Lorraine’s sister Dorothy and her daughter Sigrid are coming and we’re taking the “banana boat” over to the island and going to Kjell and Lorraine’s favorite rocks on the island. Lunch is coming along. Swimming will ensue. It’s only going to be mid 70s today, but the water’s still warm… ahhhhhh. And it’s nice because there’s a rigamarole attached to it. Drive to the boat. Stand in line. Ride to the island (we’re on the Vanern Lake now, the large, large lake in central Sweden, Karlstad is the closest town that’s usually visible on the map, but we’re in Kristinehamn.) Then it’s a 20 minute walk through the woods to get to where we’re going. (that’s the scary part for me… my balance, my balance!) and then out onto the warm, warm rocks that slope into the sea. yay! Everyday’s a holiday.
Yesterday there was dinner with a well known Swedish filmmaker… small art films, not big commercial ones. Gunvor Nelson lives in the same Artists Area in K’hamn that Lorraine and Kjell do. (There’s a print of her house in the snow, done by Kjell that hangs in my office). Pizza. yum. Really, it’s a perfect vacation, lots of eating, lots of swimming, lots of talking to beloved friends and visiting beloved places.
And so I’m reading and enjoying life. Writing a little. And at the same time, fretting a little because after all… There’s a war on and my friend Sonia’s family is at risk. But I guess my prayers from here are carried as well as they might be if i were at home. It’s a very frightening time we live in. As Pope Francis, quickly becoming beloved, said: No more war! No more War! No more War!
You forget how big hares are, when they’re just a word you’re using. But as we were sitting there watching the evening slowly, slowly die, one of them came crashing through the underbrush to take a look at us before loping down the path to the road.
“Hmph,” you could practically see him think as he had to detour around the car. What are they doing here again?
And then twenty yards from the deck where we sat watching, the sun slowly gave up its struggle to shine through the woods. Then it was dusk and it was pretty easy to imagine that you might see the animals that truly do live there. But this day there were no elk or deer, just the ghost memories of them.
It made you consider as we sat in this little Paradise, what the animals might be thinking if they were the sort to do that. How they might fret and grumble about what humans are doing to their world. And it must be said, that in this place, at this cabin, very little, life is lived according to Nature, there’s very little other than our quiet presence to disturb it…
But so many things are threatened. And it seems that people need to push at the edges. There’s an osprey off on an island, and they’ve reserved that island to him. but if you don’t think people need to park their fishing boat right at the very boundary of the forbidden…
Now when life is so slow, it’s easier to hear Mother Earth inhale and exhale; easier to see her beauty; easier to worry about the ways we degrade her.
I wonder why I live so far from Nature when I’m back at my home? And those hares? They’re HUGE! You had to think about Monty Python.
I hope that where you live is as extraordinary as where I live. I’m betting that it is. If you’re not exploring that, oh, poor you.
Now, I completely believe that there are great and wonderful things about where I live, and my husband, and not simply because I love him and he’s my husband, is one of those things. He’s not simply a good drummer, which is wonderful, but he’s a generous drummer. He wants to make everyone sound good. And he plays with two musicians who can play anything (and do!). They’re in the hum a few bars school of back-up bands. Both the bassist and the guitarist sing, both do jazz, country, funk, rock and now Irish and who knows what else and Steve’s there with the beat. Hot town in the Summertime and the living is soooo easy.
And I must admit, the guy that owns the tavern’s pretty wonderful as well, recognizing that this could happen. Sure he’s making money on it, but that’s fine… because he’s made a place for a community to come together. It’s not every joint in town that is going to have jazz, Irish music, country, 70s peace rock, blues… you name it, all jumbled up into one big happy evening. Steve’s gotten what he wanted, our local musical heroes stepping outside their musical genres, stepping in and playing or singing back up, roaring to attention when the kidlets try something out. If you’d have heard the band singing along with one young man accompanying himself singing “Eight Days a Week” on the ukelele. It was a moment you’re sorry you missed. oh, and when that 15 year old went head to head with Elvis and didn’t do badly at all? that was another one.
I got to chacha with Sue, always a fave, sing back up with Charlie (we found that back up!), shout at friends over the loud music, and generally have a marvelous time.
If you live here and you don’t wander by at least once, you’re wasting your time… if you live somewhere else, figure out where to go where your village’s lines get all mixed up. This type of event builds relationships across all sorts of lines. It teaches us to be kind.
And score. I signed up two more musicians for the Love Flows concert I’ll do in the fall, (we hope!). Watch this spot for new songs. But in the meantime, find out where Peace is mixing it up. If you can’t find it, start it.
There’s science between what happens in our brains, bodies and psyches when we sing together. It’s why hymn sings work. It’s why Eight Days a Week (The Beatles, who ever thought of them as hymnists?) worked for everyone that night. Great community. Great fun. oh, yahoo…
It’s a river of Peace, it’s a river of Sound, it’s a river of Love… C’mon, Wade in the Water!
It was one of those perfect moments. (so perfect it needed more than one musing.)
“When I sit here, I want Heaven to look just like this.”
“Heaven is right here.”
Heaven was right there in so many ways. It was one prolonged moment of bliss. The water temperature was exactly right. The sun was slowly being hidden behind the trees. The air temperature was warm enough to keep us comfortable in the cool water but not too hot to bear. Old friends talking about big things and little. A front porch experience in the middle of the creek as the neighbors drifted by… neighbors as they always are. some noisy with exuberant kids, some quiet and precise.
And in the heart of it, a moment of Perfect Peace. Magic in Nature. No place to go. Nothing to do. Who knew that making memories could be so completely effortless? Just Being on a summer afternoon into evening. Telling tales of families that held everything of fondness and at that moment nothing of missing. My whole crew so easily could have been around the bend… Floating Heaven. May you have a piece of Heaven to remind you how sweet life is and how sacred.
