Tag Archives: peace

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Negotiating peace

I spend a long day wrestling with love
arguing with myself back and forth
I am no angel descended from above
Those undeserving of my love make me wroth
yet my core argues that it still loves them
and agrees their cruelty’s beyond the pale
I snarl and cough and choke on bitter phlegm
Defend my self staying far away and hale
My core agrees I shall not tolerate abuse
Forgive yet we despair we’ll ever reconcile
They show no guilt nor shame for their misuse
My core says let them be: she is so mild
Negotiation done: Agreed. I may love those who I love
But I leave contact with them to the angels and Beloved.

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Sonnet 10

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Walk with rabbits

Some days I can’t chuckle
when the news rolls in
my heart could buckle
shootings again

US gun habits
What’s up doc? Dagnabbit.

Shootings on the year of the rabbit
dancers dead as they celebrate
Why are guns such a habit?
I refuse to fill my heart with hate

Gun sales stab it
Year of the rabbit

Forgive but do not reconcile
let my resolve not buckle
mental health takes a while
let no demented chuckle

Fearful gun habits
online snared like rabbits

They argue they must defend their homes
daughter teacher on the line
fearful males online alone
think that guns will make them fine

Fear is a habit
Stop being rabbits

Leave your basement
Help another
Walk the pavement
Earth as mother

Make it a habit
To walk out with rabbits

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chuckle.

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Peace Prompt

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is prompt, because we need a seventh person. Sounds pretty easy, right? To pick a word once a week and post it and then watch the replies.

It is easy and it isn’t! That day sneaks up on me. Now I try to post the Tuesday prompt 5-7 days early and set it to post on Tuesday morning.

If another prompt is missing, I can check the Ragtag site. Sometimes a prompter is gone or has something happening in their life or has put 9 pm instead of 9 am! I can intervene and fix the last problem. We fill in for each other, too.

This is an international group and a prompt for peace! Peace us and join us! I love seeing photographs from all over the world. I am itching to go to Australia to see all the birds and to India and back to Alamosa, Colorado and in fact, I would go to any of the areas that people post from. With all of the stress from the pandemic and the ongoing war, this is a daily place that makes me hopeful that people can get along and that we will reach the point where the color of our skin matters no more than the color of our eyes. It is Martin Luther King Day in the US and I am celebrating peace and hope.

I heard a wonderful sermon yesterday from a man who works in our school system, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfmPjcEIbBA. I went to a music jam which had wonderful diversity of music. I went to hear Chicago Bob play and I have to say that I did not expect him to play Teddy Bear’s Picnic. A friend came to dinner too.

I hope that you too have pockets of peace and can peace someone today. And hooray for this musician as well: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230113-martin-luther-king-day-the-song-that-changed-the-us.

Blessings.

How many cats do you see in the photograph?

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blue border

We visited my two aunts and my uncle in Roanoke, right after Christmas. My aunt and daughter and I went for a walk. It was a bit cold but beautifully sunny. This bridge looked so beautiful against the border of the blue sky.

It seems odd sometimes to me that people are so frustrated with immigrants. Don’t we all move if we think there is a better job, or better homes, or opportunities for our children? To escape violence or discrimination or war and to try to help families and ourselves. What is a border to that hope?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: border.

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Winter bless us

Winter bless us year end dark and freezing
winter turn us inwards prayer for joy
prayer for joy for young ones all are seizing
others mourn loved deaths, eschewing toys
darkness let us settle loving all
silence let us turn our thoughts to peace
walk in wind and birds, iced trees so tall
few are out to gently walk the streets
the frozen ground holds lives that lie in wait
in freezing seeds hear the call and know
let every human drop their arms and hate
while seeds lie in wait to grow
let winter’s silence fill our hearts with joy
let peace descend, war melt to children’s toys

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A poem for Christine Goodenough after reading her Winter Delights.

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Heart meditation for the Solstice

It snowed last night. Covid is making me fall asleep at 4 or 5 pm which means I am very awake at midnight. The cats and I checked out the snow at 1 am.

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Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He is enlightened, yet chooses to return to earth over and over, until everyone is enlightened.

In China, he changes gender and names into Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

In college I date a lapsed Jewish Zen Buddhist and I learn to meditate. At the group meetings there are 6 or 7 of us. The Heart Sutra is recited and we meditate facing the wall, sitting on our zafus, for 40 minutes. It is easier to meditate in a group, though I have no idea why. Pride? Some connection to other’s breathing? The breathing will serve me very very well later, when I keep getting pneumonia. The ability to slow my breathing will help me survive.

When we had a group meditation, the Heart Sutra was read slowly and clearly. It has it’s own rhythm. I had lost it and finally found the translation we used. Here it is:

There is more than one translation, here: https://dharmanet.org/HeartSutra.html. I have tapes and books by Jon Kabat Zinn, who has studied mindful meditation for 30 years. He gets better results in his mindful meditation pain classes than opioids, with an average decrease in pain of 50%. His tapes have the same slow gentle speech as our Heart Sutra readers. It is hypnotic and I can relax. Though my oppositional defiance kicks in when he says firmly that I am to fall more awake, not asleep. I listened to that CD every night for a year after my father died. When he would tell me to fall awake, I would smile and slide into sleep, a happy rebel. I was comforted that I did not have to do what he said.

Where is the Avalokitesvara, the Kwan Yin of the West? What examples in the largest religions are there? Someone who stays even after they have achieved enlightenment/heaven because they want everyone there. Not only that, but they believe everyone can be there. And they will not give up until everyone is there.

I was surprised when a Unitarian Minister stated that Unitarians do not believe in Hell, because a loving creator would not consign anyone to Hell. I didn’t really want to give Hell up, but I also agree that a loving creator would not consign anyone to hell. It’s a bit easier for me to think of people as continuing on a wheel of life until they achieve enlightenment than to think of some people going to Heaven, but after all, I don’t know the whole story. No one knows another person’s whole story. I wrote DMV to figure out the Hell/Heaven thing. And the lead character wants to go back, because her work is not done yet.

I am thankful for paxlovid at the moment. I am thankful that I found this translation of the Heart Sutra.

Happy Solstice.

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The first photograph is Elwha looking very meditative after going out in the snow. Here they both are in the snow:

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: solstice.

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Reconcile

I have been thinking about family a lot this week. My mother’s family has been gossiping about me now for a decade and not one of them has ever talked to me directly about my father’s will. They have a story. They never checked it. It stars me as a villain. They seem to think I controlled attorneys, which is laughable.

I forgive them.

However, I think a decade is enough. I forgive them but I no longer want to reconcile. For ten years I hoped that they would talk to me. I have asked them to, more than one person, more than once. They say that they want to believe what they want to believe. I offered to send copies of bank statements to back up what I said. No. And a cousin silenced me by saying, “Don’t make me hate my sister.” The message is that I can be part of the family for some of them, as long as I remain silent as a tomb on this topic.

No. I won’t. And it’s just like all the silencing that goes on over the world. People say they would not stand by while someone is hurt, but my family sure seems to enjoy having me be the silenced gossiped about villain. I am sick of it. They can go to where ever it is that karma will take them: gossip, after all, is a sin.

And so I am reconciled. I am reconciled after a decade to adding these people to my list of dead. Our friendship is dead, my family feeling towards them is dead, I am not asking or waiting or hoping any more.

Forgiveness is a solo job. We forgive others.

Forgiveness is NOT reconciliation. You should not take an abuser back. You should not let someone treat you badly and refuse to listen to you and refuse to apologize. I know one person whose apologies run something like “I am sorry that you took offense to what I said/did.” Um. That is not an apology. That is putting it on me, it’s my fault for taking offense. The person has no intention of changing and does not actually care how I feel. I am not okay with that. The person is forgiven but there has not been a reconciliation.

With my maternal family, I am letting it go. I would like there to be more peace in the world but as long as people cling to having villains, to believing gossip, to perpetuating gossip and hatred and meanness, I do not think we will have peace in the world.

But in letting this go, I have peace in my heart.

Peace you and please peace me.

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In the dark

I choose to dwell in the dark with the monsters.

I came here because I wanted to understand how people could be monsters. People turn in to monsters sometimes. Not the crazy people or the serial killers: just normal people. They have enormous fights in their families. They get drunk or use drugs. They kill themselves with cigarettes. They sit unmoving in front of the television. They fight family or close friends. Families sue each other over the parent’s will. They fight over the stuff or over mother or over who will take care of father. They disown each other. They say β€œI only let nice people in my life.” That leaves me out. And I don’t want anything to do with anyone who says that. That is monstrous. Do they turn the other cheek? Do they love their neighbor as themselves? No. They are monsters.

I kept studying the monsters and studying them, until I found my own. I rescued mine from a deep hole. The monsters were babies. They were filthy and frightened and crying and abandoned. I washed them and diapered them and fed them and wrapped them in blankets. They stared at me, sullen. They had no idea how to respond to being cared for. I had to learn to love them. I loved them right away, even though they were monsters. I cared for them and they grew up, loved, happy, adults.

And then I see the monsters in other people. People hide their monsters, stuff them in dungeons, neglect them, deny them, scream at them. The monsters realize that I can see them and they start crying. β€œHelp us! Please! Let us out! We are cold! We are hungry! We are neglected!” I learn not to talk to the monsters until the person is gone. The person may never talk to me again if I acknowledge the monster. They think I am the monster. I’ve reminded them of theirs or named them! Most people hate it. I learn, slowly and painfully, that I can only talk to the monsters after their people leave. The monsters hang around. They tell me their stories. They tell me their misery. I hold them while they cry, heads in my lap, howling and breaking things. But eventually they have to return to their person, to their jail, to their suffering.

I like the monsters better than the people. Some people wear the monsters on the outside. Veterans, almost always. To keep people away. They come to clinic and try to scare me. This is very very difficult because I like the monsters. I am delighted to meet the monsters. This is startling and the veteran promptly calms down. I am not afraid. I like the people who wear their monsters on the outside: they are not hiding them. It’s the ones who hide and abuse and torture their monsters: I do not trust those people. And I feel huge grief and sorrow, pity for their monsters. I can’t fix them. The people must each turn to their own monsters. Let them come to consciousness. Face them, comfort them and at last, love them. And this is hard. It is very hard. It is a life time of work. It is emotional maturity. It has nothing to do with educational level. It is hard work worth doing.

I choose to dwell in the dark with the monsters. Because they need me most of all.

Blessings.