Peacemaker Priestess

Creating Safe, Peaceful Community that Includes our Soldiers

One of the ways I practice Peace is by being a hospital chaplain. Often my work is supporting the patients involved in traumatic events and their families. It’s work that I was surprised to find as rewarding as I do and at which I am quite competent. If you’re going to have a job after retirement, I hope yours will please you as much as mine does me.

We recently had some events with men in their mid-thirties who put themselves into quite dangerous situations. They overestimated their ability to accomplish whatever daredevil feat they had tried and failed to accomplish. Most likely they were thrill seeking, trying to feel alive and maybe, competent. I chose daredevil deliberately, because I’m not sure these are the kind of activities you go into expecting to or caring if you survive. Too many of these men are living on – teetering on – an edge, undertaking activities that could maim or kill them.

We all Need Safe, Peaceful Community

On my way into a restaurant the other day, I interrupted a middle-aged man who was leaning in to talk to the young hostess. The situation made me so uncomfortable that I walked around him and stood where she could see me. She immediately slipped into business mode, and asked me questions about seating. As the man started to walk out, he said, “well, if I don’t see you, I hope you have a great rest of your life.”

After lunch, I asked the hostess if he had been hitting on her. “Oh, ick, I’m 17.” “Exactly,” I said. She looked a little troubled and then confided she no longer felt safe going into some stores and visiting certain areas of the Valley. She and I then had a conversation and did a little role-playing in the empty entrance about occupying her space when there were bullies around.

A Reading on the Peace that Violets Offer

On Earth Day, I decided to do a Peace reading, leaning on the beauty of my beloved violets. They absolutely delight me as they slowly unfurl and then begin their electric Spring scamper across the lawn… I thought: What if I were to ask the Major Arcana from my deck, Peacemaker’s Tarot for the 21^st Century, and see what the violets wanted us to think about and, how in this season, we can be most deliberate, but also sassy about Peace and building Peaceful Community. I spent time with the violets, then I laid the reading out in the shape of a violet and named the value each petal would represent. And then I pulled my cards.

Creating Safe, Peaceful Community

In the month of February, I was privileged to spend two weeks in Antarctica. During the lead-up to the trip we were coached on the things that would make our trip the most enjoyable and personally profitable. At the top of the list was Safety. Safety would guide all our movements. If at any moment a boat ride or a landing became unsafe, the outing would be aborted, and we would return to the boat immediately. When the boat rocked and rolled while crossing the Drake Passage, I really gained a visceral understanding of the meaning of safety. Passengers remembered to stay in contact with a wall, to latch doors after ourselves, not to leave precious objects unsecured. It’s a challenge to feel Peace when a ship is rocking and rolling, yet trusting the advice and skills of the crew make it a possibility.

Emerging into Peace: Creating Peaceful Community

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
— T.S. Eliot

For the last 40 years, I have marked time with the turning of the seasons. These dates have become even more important since I claimed my dedication to Peace. My work now is to discern and accept each season’s invitation to explore its particular Peace… the Peace of the cycle, the spiral, the Peace in which we dwell. The constancy of the Peace of the seasons is a powerful encouragement to me that if there can be Peace in Earth, there can be Peace on Earth.

An Understanding of the Peace of Living and Dying in Hospital Settings

To everything there is a season…

As a Peacemaker, I am most focused on Peacemaking within communities. It is rare for me to focus on a particular group. Recently, as a hospital chaplain, I was asked to have a second-year medical student shadow me as I went about my day. During that time, I began to suspect that, in the ways we teach our young upcoming doctors about their responsibility for curing patients how great a disservice we do them and ultimately the patients they will serve. I realized that my Peacemaking skills might be useful in supporting these soon-to-be practitioners. Let’s start before the students arrive.

Becoming Peaceful, Beloved Communities

Last month we commemorated The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. You may or may not have been around when Dr. King was living, however it’s likely that you have an MLK story. In my case, he was my first invitation to find an off-ramp on the Hatred Highway. He educated, he illustrated, he sang, he led, and he preached his way through hatred and long held beliefs of inequality and racism. He was not a perfect man. He was not the only incredible person on that journey. In fact, there were many incredible people with Dr. King on that journey, many whose names we were never taught and will never know. People who continued his work of Peace and the fight for Civil Rights.

Becoming Warm, Peaceful Communities

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the roles of Story and Fact and the way their roles in our lives intertwine as we examine the past and envision the future. Stories ask and try to answer questions in our lives. To be human, I believe, is to be driven to search for “Truth” and “Meaning” and answers to such questions. We long for facts to lean on. If we don’t have all the facts needed to build our story, we propose facts until we have more information. As humans, we like having neat, little, comprehensible packages. Each discovery allows us to alter our stories to include this new facet of Truth.

Becoming Peaceful Communities

You know that old joke about how everyone treats us like mushrooms: unaware of what’s happening, separated from our neighbors, and covered in compost? We misunderstood. Those mushrooms were connected by mycelium and never alone.

Mycelium are the roots of fungus, but they have other work as well.

It is only in the last five years that I’m beginning to understand that mycelium, tiny, hairlike connected entities, are couriers of the forests, supplying the much larger trees with information and sugar. Think of them as grandmothers — providing wisdom and remedies for life along with a casserole or a batch of cookies. It is this Peacemaking, community-building purpose that has much to teach us as we struggle to understand how we might best Pass Peace.

Becoming Peaceful Communities

“We are stardust
We are golden,
and we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.”

If you grew up when I did, this chorus of Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell, will forever bring a smile to your face. While I always smiled and sang along, it would be quite a few years before I understood the theology behind it — and certainly not any of the science. It is only recently that I’ve begun to see the possibility of Stardust’s being more than simply a Metaphor. As I pond building communities of Peace, I wonder what role might Stardust play?