Tag Archives: peace

Advent II: More Light Appearing

09 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by in advent, Light, peace, Uncategorized

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Right after I posted my blog last week, I opened my Facebook to behold one vista after another of sunrises in the east–one Tiepolo sky, one giant swath of golden and peach rays as far as the eye could see, one bright ball of color arising out of a nest of dark and formidable twigs and trees. Light is coming, slowly but surely, sometimes in ways we can’t miss it, other ways in which it suddenly dawns on us. Yet the Light keeps shining, even if I can see it only a little at a time.

As I light my second Advent candle this week, I acknowledge that there is growing Light in my and the world around me. I am amazed at the way the Light kept shining through the ugly dark patches in the world headlines. For almost every reported incident of meanness or narcissism or selfishness, there was another tale of generosity or sacrifice or kindness. Between the notes of honking and shouting and grinding of gears, came the harmonies of Advent and Christmas hymns and parents adoring and protecting their little and big ones! After the blinding cold rains came the double rainbows across the sky! And in these moments of illumination comes Peace.

The One for whom we are waiting is about Peace.That truth challenges me to imagine how I am to be a Maker of Peace in this season, as I get each dollop of Peaceful Light around me. I see that I can bring a peaceful face to a a contentious criticism. I can listen to my tone of voice as I participate in conversations that are querulous or despairing. I can change my posture to one of open-heartedness, arms uncrossed, when I am in a place where aggressiveness and rigidity seems to be the chosen affect of the day. I remember that sacred text which tells me that “the peace of God which surpasses  all understanding will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.” With the Light I have been given, I am to be Peace in this season, which gets so captivated by un-Peace, and in this world which is so chaotic as it flings itself around in the dark.

My prayer for myself and for others in this week of Advent is that I would allow the increasing Light to bring more Peace:

Holy One for whom we are waiting, it is hard to wait, especially with the all the hustle and bustle around us, even more so with the never-ending conflict, injustice and callousness in the world that needs our attention and work. Let me be a bearer of your Light that leads to your Peace–for my sake, for the sake of those I love and you have given to me, and for the sake of the world. Amen.

 

 

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Peaceful Feet Advent 2

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in community, Jesus Christ, peace, pilgrimage, Uncategorized

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PeacefulFeetHow beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of the one who brings peace, says the prophet, and I would add “along the seashore, in the care facility, tn the church sanctuary, along the streets in the neighborhood, and in the shopping malls.” Too many feet are the bearers of bad tidings. The feet of the peaceful ones are, indeed, welcome, winsome and healing.

I am in awe of those this week whose feet are engaged in marches for reasons of peace–advocacy for DACA students, attention for the fragile in our world, and the strong, weary, persistent feet of the fighters of wind and flame here in Southern California, trying to save lives and home against the seemingly unremitting Santa Ana winds. When I hear footsteps approaching, I long for them to be the the steps of peace bringers, peacemakers, peacekeepers, peace seekers.

I kept company with my community of spirit journeyers yesterday in an Advent retreat, and for a few hours, we reflected on Christ, “the image of the invisible God,” as he walked this earth. Through copies of paintings of artists, we saw Jesus walking with his disciples on the Emmaus Road bringing them peace after their trauma at the crucifixion. We watched Jesus gliding over water to his frightened friends, and then in another painting saw him stop mid-stride when his being sensed the courageous one whose bleeding had kept her on the margins of life for so many years, and sensed her peace as healing flowed into her. This Prince of Peace is the One for whom we are waiting this season. Lady Julian reminds us that “He is our peace, when we ourselves are in un-peace.” We gathered to reflect and share on the stories of the One with peaceful feet that touched and challenged us.

However, I was once again struck with the feet of the very ones sitting in our circle, whose work in the world is so often to bring peace. One of us, while she was with us, was working on finding housing for those in the homeless shelter displaced by the SoCal fires. Another had been that week helping to raise money for the drilling of wells in villages in Niger. Someone else had been caring for family members who are ill, or had gone to the side of one in grief and despair. And each one there had taken herself to the place of being peace for someone else–at home, on-line, over land and sea–in speaking words of peace or in just showing up wordlessly  with peaceful presence.

I have seen several mashup posts from movies this week of dancing, all synchronized to a contemporary refrain and beat, and there is joy in seeing Fred Astaire, Julie Andrews, john Travolta and Minnie Mouse, one after the other,  swirl and tap out joy with their feet; that energy comes first from a peaceful being. Jesus, looking over Jerusalem, sighed,saying, “Would that you knew the things that made for peace!” We all echo that same sigh. And in this season of Advent while we wait, I am choosing to be the one with beautiful, peaceful feet, whether it is by sitting with my daughter overlooking the ocean as we contemplate the unknown future, or by dancing with my little loved ones for the sheer fun of it, or by taking a staff person in the church to lunch, or by collecting money day by day for the fragile ones further damaged by the fires around us. And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep my heart and mind…

 

The Turn of the Year

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in beauty, body, creation, grace, gratitude, Mindfulness, Mystery, paying attention, presence

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coloradoaspens

Two years ago as the season turned from summer to fall, I was driving through Colorado and northern New Mexico, and saw the stunning harbingers of the season in the forests of aspens.

plazaresort

Last year as the summer became fall I was on the west coast of Florida to see my children, the beauty of a completely different order, serenity of a different hue and promise.

These summer and fall seasons I have felt sidelined from the turning of the season because of surgery and recovery. I watch as the children go back to school through my front window. I follow the many adventures of my friends and colleagues as they take their sojourns to exciting or exotic locations. I notice that committees and kick-off events are happening without me. Since here in Southern California there are not critical changes in the weather, I look up our current predictions for the day, all usually well within the temperate zone, which tell me that Fall has come.

But my focus is here where I am, with the resources that I have this moment, looking over the place where I have been planted.

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It is a lovely place, a place of stability that I have been given to savor and to share, even as the world turns. It has many moments of deep stillness, a capacity to invite and enjoy host of beloved ones or just one. I have a window to the street and another window to the sunrise. Many birds visit, along with our dog, the squirrels and the occasional unwelcome possum. I live in God’s world, as well as God’s season, God’s time, God’s rhythm. I have been reminded again in this season of relative confinement that it is all Grace, and that the only appropriate response to Grace is gratitude–for bringing me safe this far–in Love, in Beauty, in Joy. So let the season turn–in me, around me!

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A Tune for All Seasons

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in action, listening, open heart, peace, singing

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Some tunes seem to thread through my life. “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius is one of them. I first knew it as a personal, contemplative song:

Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side./Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain,/in all thy ways, God faithful will remain.

It comforted me, resourced and filled me when I felt very alone.

I then learned the tune as a rousing hymn to action:

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender/ we go not forth alone against the foe./Strong in Thy strength and in Thy keeping tender/ we rest on Thee and in Thy name we go.

A call action in a military mode, in which my part of the community saw a need to defend ourselves and our beliefs against the enemies, waiting to attack us.

But we are in a different time, a more connected world, with much more expressed pain and rage, a much closer view of what is human behavior at its worst, and a continual call to imagining and being Christ’s peace in the world. So these words by Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness fill the tune today, my birthday, when I am in the process of recuperating from surgery, when I am given more confinement–but also more space–to actively and contemplatively give myself to the healing of this world in which I live, in which my children and grandchildren more and have their being, the world that God created, redeems and loves.

..hear my prayer, O God of all the nations, myself, I give thee, let thy will be done. 

Peaceful Places

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, music, paying attention, peace, pilgrimage, seeing

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PeacefulPlaceIHC

I noticed this week that although I have trusted that peace was first an interior attitude of Spirit, I also come more readily into peace (which passes understanding) when I am in a physical environment of peace. I enter into it whenever I am able to retreat to the Immaculate Heart Center at Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara. I felt it when I visited the exhibit of Agnes Martin paintings at the Los Angeles Museum of Art this week. I am always engulfed in peace when I hear concerts by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall. And I am learning more deeply, and leaning more fully into “the peace of wild things,” as Wendell Berry calls it, as I encounter and attend to the natural world.

This morning as I went out early to pick up the newspaper, as I was musing about the new stalks of irises about to bloom, yet again, I heard a thrilling and joyful birdsong which I was able to follow to a mockingbird perched on a “No Parking” sign directly across from my house. No one else was visible, no other noises were audible, and this moment there was a peaceful beauty as the sun rose in the east, that tuned my own heart to the Peace of the Holy. I sense in my body and soul when I have entered into a place of peace.

I wonder why I don’t seek out these places with more regularity. Between my enslavement to the clock, my anticipatory anxiety, and my restless mind, I find it difficult to follow Wendell Berry, to turn aside into the places and the things that foster peace. I don’t lack possibilities. Several years ago my husband and I each bought each other simultaneously, and unbeknownst to the other, a book called Peaceful Places in Los Angeles (Laura Randall, Menasha Ridge Press, 20010). Each week that summer I explored one of the 110 “tranquil sites” listed in the book. I selected a place for each Thursday morning, setting out with a sacred book, journal, hat, and sunglasses. I sat in the courtyard of Union Station downtown, perused the collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art on the ocean, savored the UCLA Murphy Sculpture Garden, and and browsed Small World Books in Venice. I visited for the first time the Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades and the labyrinth at the Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes Estates.

Several things happened in these pilgrimages. I was removed from my quotidian routine and daily distractions; my sojourn was intentionally to seek the things that made for peace in my being. And I discovered delights and challenges right around me that I had never known were there. Not every single one felt like what the Celts call a “thin place,” where heaven and earth intersect, yet every one had things of beauty and interest. Moreover, the time and attention that I gave to this quest brought me nearer each time to that place of peace for which I yearn day after day.

So! my spiritual practice in this ordinary time leading into the summertime is to pick up the practice again. According to the book, there are many place that still await:Amir’s Garden in Griffith Park, the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, Jin Patisserie in Venice, Wattles Garden Park in Hollywood, and many more. My guess is there are also hidden places of peace not even catalogued in the book.

And I need to bring my open heart. The apostle Paul write in Philippians that the steps to that openness are gratitude–again and again; gentleness to everybody; letting go of worry and anxiety, and: the peace of God which surpasses understanding will keep our hearts and minds safe (Phil 4:7) as we enter into the peaceful places.

Here’s to a summer of entering the places and practicing the attitudes that make for peace!

Personal photo taken in courtyard, Immaculate heart Center, Casa d Maria, Santa Barbara.

 

Icons of Peace

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in icons, paying attention, peace

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VisitationSometimes there are no words…no words of inspiration, no words of provocation, no words of illumination. But there are icons, images, visual impressions all round in the world. When I have wearied of words, on which I am inordinately dependent, and they fail me, I open my eyes to the Light carried in images and in people.

This summer I seem to have had enough words–political words, ecclesiastical words, even words that are too clever by half. I am even tired of my own words, or attempts at them. But I long to sense the Light of Grace, and I remember how often Grace is articulated in exemplars in my life, people and things in whose presence I can recognize and rest peacefully in Grace and Truth.

There was a grandmother, small and unprepossessing, from the South, whose gentle manner and powerful faith commanded confidence and trust from any who sat with her near her corner chair. There is a spiritual director who appears to be made of fairy dust, living in a well-used library of text and symbol, with a black cat and a welcoming smile. There is an author of books who moves with quiet and ease, and when he speaks with confidence, a hush falls on the room. There is an anthem by a composer who recently left this world; each chord of this song sung by a choir intimates holy presence. There is a shoreline, away from a larger body of water, where the small wavelets lap in peace along the sand and rocks.

Each of these icons brings me into peace, and reminds me that there is peace to be had. Wendell Berry has reminded me of “the peace of wild things, who bear no forethought of grief,”  and when all the words bring no peace, I look to these images–people, places and things–who assure me that peace is still waiting to surround me.

In an exhibit of illustrated manuscripts at the Getty Museum this week, I found yet another icon in the central offering, from a 15th Century French prayerbook, the centerpiece of the exhibit, an illustration of the greeting of Elizabeth to her cousin Mary in the gospel of Luke. I spent 17 months marinating in this story when I first retired, and I came to know Elizabeth as that icon of peace for a young woman whose world was turned upside down by the appearance of an angel. All the gentle manifestations of hospitality are evident in her–her joy, her faith, her warmth, her hope, and that safe place in which Mary could begin the spiritual practice of pondering–paying attention to what was happening in her body, her mind and spirit–in safety and in rest.

In a restless and chaotic world, in the absence of reassuring rhetoric and thoughtfulness of loud pronouncements, in the numbing reiteration of talking points and faux narratives, I look for those people and things that embody peace. Not the least of these invitations is to looki again at Jesus…a peaceful presence always. Lady Julian tells us that, “He is our peace, when we ourselves are in un-peace.” My eyes and heart can rest with him.