Tag: My Wild Hares

I was never interested in coloring my hair. At first, I received numerous compliments for having hair that was essentially one beautiful dark brown shade. But then as styles changed, stylists offered to put streaks in my (to them, very boring) dark brown hair. “No thank you,” said I.

Then my hair started to go grey. As with my family — and I suspect most people — it started at my temples and spread. Immediately, stylists began with the “Oh, my goodness, let’s color this hair, so it’s not grey.” “Why,” I wondered. “You were tired of its being one-colored, so now my temples are a beautiful feathery grey turning white.”

“Humph!” was the stylists’ reply.

But somewhere around 65, I began to think I might like to dye my hair cherry red — or at least a couple locks. Unsurprisingly, I procrastinated, because… it was easier to leave things the way they are. It had taken me 65 years to perfect the art of doing nothing but cuts, ignoring the latest color fashions.

After I retired from ministry, I thought, huh… maybe I’d like my hair to be purple. Cherry red is a favorite color, but for me, Purple connotes Peace. It took about a year to get the right color, but now my hair is a dark purple and I get it done every month. Not because it’s grey — simply because! It’s short and perky and fun. And I like my hairdresser.

As an added bonus, when they look for me in the Trauma Bay, it’s easy to find me.

Nonetheless, it does require tending. And while I love being a styling kinda woman… mostly I’d rather spend my time on decisions on Life and Poetry…

So I’ve been thinking… since my hair is short, it would only take a time or two and I’d be back to a much greyer self. I even told the stylist, this is the last time. After that, I didn’t give it a second thought, because… why? A couple bad months of multicolored purple and grey, which are swimming months anyway… and I’ll be back to my natural hair.

My 19-year-old great nephew was up from New Orleans for the Family Funeral in Maine last week. He was hanging out, chatting with me — all right, I offered to buy him ice cream, and we bonded over the mango sorbetto — but he says, “hey, love your hair.” “yeah, I’m thinking of going back to my natural color.” “what??? No, bad idea, this is great.” Huh. Well, that was something to consider. If a 19yo music producer thinks your purple hair is cool… I mean… as a friend used to say in seminary, “shallow can be nice!”

So I was then on the fence about it. And then I got on the train to go home after the Memorial. Finding a seat was horrible as two trains had been cancelled due to the heat. Having taken whatever seat was available, I fortunately settled down next to this fabulous gay guy from NY. He produces dance and music events for the queer community in NYC.

We had a fascinating conversation about arts as community building. I explained my work as Peacemaker and how music, dance, and lights could be Peacemaking! Couldn’t stop blabbing. It was so fun to engage with him.

Somewhere a bit down the line, he looks at me and says, “you know you’re really rocking it with that plum (PURPLE!) hair and those red glasses. It’s fabulous.” (!!!Wow!!!) I told him I’d been thinking about letting it go back to grey. “Gurl! NO! … Oh, I’m sorry, you should have your hair however you want it. Why on earth would you ever do such a thing?”

It fostered a great conversation. I admitted that I knew it made me easy to pick out in the Trauma Bay, so the Team could know I was doing what I needed to be doing. And there is something about my age, that doesn’t have people challenging me quite as much as they might about my appearance.

So, guess who’s not letting her hair go grey. I’ll giving my stylist a call. If two hip, kinda with it young men suggest that you’re the bees knees… why make changes?

Purple it is.

It seems purple hair suits Investigative Poets— or at least this one! What suits you and your Peacemaking? It’s fun to consider!

Wishing you all Purple-haired Peace!

P.S. when i went to say good night to a young woman who had been in an awful accident that afternoon, she grabbed my arm and said, “Wait: I LOVE your purple hair!” Keepin’ it!

Alas, my wild hare was feeling shy and wouldn’t show up. It’s the thing about wild creatures of prey — sometimes they’re shy. I call her, Dasher, a gift from a Google search. Sadly, I don’t know who drew her. She’s a long eared, shaggy hare, who is wildly curious… This article is another I my series of watching with no fair bit of amazement at what I’m getting up to now!

A goodly portion of my life has been spent ‘becoming’ a Poet. I have been diligent about putting my observations, feelings, and thoughts about this planet and its creatures into prose and poetry. Exactly when that shift from becoming a poet to being one occurred, I’m not certain. Clearly something about truly owning that title had a lot to do with my recent travels across this country. At the outset of the trip, I dubbed myself an ‘Investigative Poet.’ That was a recognition of the kind of poetry I write. This was bigger, as personal as it gets. This was Ann, claiming her soul’s Journey. Perhaps it was the death of a beloved cousin, only nine years older than I, that helped me understand there is no time to waste “becoming.” These poems are no longer going to be an accidental sideline of a trip. These poems will emerge intentionally from the awe-inspiring beauty of this land and its inhabitants, born of a pilgrimage that was carefully and deliberately planned. Other poems have been patiently biding their time as well. I have no regrets that when the family called with news of Nancy’s death, that I organized and wrote her Memorial, planned my trip to see the relatives, and treasured honoring Nancy and enjoying my visit with the extended family.

Confident in my Poetry, clear about my goals, I applied for a grant to create more possibilities for poetry. I was emboldened to complete and submit the application, after carefully considering how my work aligned with the terms of the grant. Now, don’t be misled, I panicked a bit. But then, I thought why? A Poet is who I am. This is what I do. Whether or not I receive this grant is based on their decision-making metrics. It is a measure neither of my worth or my calling. 200+ people are applying for the same 30 spots. So, we’ll see. One way or another, my musical collaborator Andy and I will apply for other grants. I will write Poetry. He will make music. We will join our forces and talents. Life will be more meaningful, richer, and infinitely more fun.

In the meantime, I can take some time to write my poems from this trip and catch up on Life. It would be good to clean off the dining room table and settle in! To spend a few mornings running in the town Pool. Even to eat ice cream at the local establishments.

The Land I drove through encouraged me. It doesn’t ask for permission to inspire. It is what it is. It is so profoundly itself, that even humans’ greed and disdain for the Earth haven’t touched its Sacredness. So elemental is it, that this Land will continue to evolve as the Earth does — not as humans will it.

This deep recognition of my calling is a step farther into Poetry — in my case Investigative Poetry. It’s the difference between thinking of myself as a Poet and carrying that deep in my core. My cousin Nancy’s death, a cousin who was the same age as my sister Deb (who died 13 years ago), has awakened me to Time’s reality. The nine years between 74 and 83 are a lot of years in elder-speak, but then not really. I work in a hospital Trauma Bay. Every day patients come in with serious traumas and life-challenging conditions. I see people far younger than I with “elderly” conditions. I’m in pretty good shape. But trouble is a fall or an accident away. As Cat Steven sings, “I might Die tonight.” Chance of that is just a bit larger in my mind with Nancy’s death than it has been. If I’m going to take being a Poet seriously, I can’t dither.

It delights me that people like my poetry. But for me, right now, that’s not really the Point. I write because a quiet, but quite insistent voice within me fills my head with precious words to remind us of the Beauty of this Earth, its Land, Waters, and Starry Sky along with the Possibilities of Peace between all the Astonishing People who live here. If I don’t honor this now, when will I? If I don’t honor this now, who else will See with my eyes? Who else will Speak with my voice?

I am grateful for whatever Revelation had to happen to allow me to move past my sense of becoming a poet to a deep knowing – at my core – to simply being a Poet. I will honor this inner truth.

As I do, I remember the importance of you and your Gifts. Who are you? Who are you becoming? Who have you accepted to be and how are you honoring your Life’s role? We are all aging. Every day, we all have fewer days to speak the Truth that only we have been invited to witness. We all have Dreams and Callings to pursue. And Death is not, by far, the only reason to be who you are. It is Life’s Abundance which calls us into our Truth. If we’re willing to listen, we will respond.

So, let me turn to an astonishing Poet, Mary Oliver, as she asks us all: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I really want to know. Me? I’m an Investigative Poet, in the Service of Peace.

The one thing about writing for a couple of different formats, what you write in one informs what you’re thinking about as you settle on what to write for the next. So, it was in this case.

Before I settled down to write this Substack, I was rolling things around in my brain for a sermon I was writing. I began to remember things, that as a child in school, made me doubt my competence. I recalled that I was not good at certain subjects and games.  I came to realize that I am not a strategic thinker. My brain doesn’t bend that way. At a higher level I understand many things, but once you get into the meat of it, yep, I’ll find my brain wondering at the beauty of the angle rather than wanting to calculate what it means. In other words, I am easily distracted by things of Beauty and Wonder. I am caught up in the Awe and Amazement of this world. For me this is where Peace lies, in the Present and the Intimate. That “what a beautiful spring violet” or that “look, it’s an eagle!” remind us that Life is Abundant.

Because I was in my 20s in the 70s, that meant it was perfectly ok to dismiss me and my beautiful brain as girlish or less than — as not a serious brain. It’s true I have a great eye for the amusing, so certainly not always a serious brain — and it took me a long time to figure this out — say just a couple years ago, that I have a brain built for reverence and wonder. And it’s a great brain for that. But growing up, those things were not valued, nor were they thought worthy of pay, and this made me feel less competent in taking on the world. Now that I’m in my 70s in the 20s, I feel entirely competent in reminding the world how central Beauty and Peace are to our lives here on Earth

Now I understand that, not only are reverence and wonder vitally important to the living of a happy, healthy life, the world needs “scholars” of the topic of “Well, my goodness, would you look at that. That’s amazing.” Not to mention — living a happy, healthy life is important to your wellbeing and determines how you build your relationships with/within this incredible world. 

As part of a graduate program I participated in, we all took a lot of psychological tests. In reviewing my tests, the psychologist recognized that, far more than most folk, the doorway between the rational and the artistic — or between science and religion — was wide open in my brain. Most people have to do some mental maneuvers to move between the brain’s hemispheres. I slide easily from left to right brain functions. Many people work a, b, c, d… I start on a, maybe get to b, and then WOW! Can you believe Q??? It’s always been a surprise to me that people needed the steps. I’m not making chemical compounds — I’m making alchemical connections with and among that which is Awesome. I rarely take a subtle step into the waters of Possibility — it’s usually rather more like a cannonball. Whee! Sometimes people who want (need) the steps are sort of pissy should they find that it really is about Q. I certainly wish I’d known I could “channel” answers to math questions when I was starting to look at higher level math. I was taught I did sloppy work — Intuiting the answer wasn’t really acceptable. Remember the teaching telling us we had to show our work, how we got to the answer? Now I know… trusting the Answer can give rise to important new questions. There are always more questions in Peace, more ways to make connections of the heart.

Look, I get it. My father was a chemist. He worked on things like making sure that wool and nylon could be put in the same dye-bath and come out exactly the same color. Color was a huge bone of contention at our house growing up. Dad worked painstakingly forward. I got my brain from my mother for whom the feel of color makes her paintings come alive. There were a lot of breakfast table conversations on whether that shirt and tie matched or even complimented. (Oddly, many people find arguments about matching shirts and ties not worth the bother. Ha!)

Here’s the thing. I was not too many years away from today years old when I discovered how astonishing my brain was. It’s just not “the norm.”  And whose is? Whatever the shape of your brain and however it may function, it is certainly also outrageously wonderful. You can do so many things — many of which I can’t do. And that is what makes this world astonishing!

But I’ll tell you one thing my brain can do. It can believe in the Possibilities of Peace. I can believe that Peace is Possible and that you and I are the people to cooperate, to enlist others, to persevere and to make it so. I have people I’m talking to about steps that might be helpful (they’re a, b, c, d folk who understand what my brain brings to the party — oh, did you see that perfectly amazing patch of clover?) — and together we’re going to consider steps that we can take, steps that can be a challenge in the midst of a government that’s dead set on domination.

We find ourselves here, in early 2026, with chaos swirling all about. I believe in my wild hares, in the strength and beauty of all of you, in Wonder and Reverence, and most of all, Peace. As the Spiritual I keep quoting invites: Come and go with me to that Land… It may be far away. It may be a hard walk. But we’ll eat good food, look at beauty, lend one another a hand, and travel together, straight on to Peace. Together. Whatever your brain is like, you are welcome on the Peace Path. When I struggled with the thought that my brain was less than, I wasn’t able to see how my gifts of insight, inspiration, amazement and wonder are valuable and needed in our world. I’m a visionary, I dream of Peace, I notice the little things. My tools are a higher level of creativity and wild association than many have, with a perception of Possibilities for Peace that others are not yet able to conceive. We lose half our knowledge and intuition when some make fear-based judgments about which brains and hearts have value. I’ll tell you which ones — offered from that place of finally taking myself seriously: All of them. All of us. Making Peace together.

Support your local Peacemaker. I’ve got ideas for all of us to make Peace. I’m hoping you have ideas for me. And this isn’t a one way-street, let me know how I can support your work. Thank you! Let’s make Peace together. The World needs our tenderness.

Salaam, Shalom, Peace, and Blessed Be!

Continue reading “Peacemaking and My Wild Hares #2”

When I mentioned to my writing coach that I wanted to start a Wild Hair series in my Substack, we both started laughing because we both imagined some version of this darling instead of a me on a bad hair day. Friends, meet Dasher. She’ll show up here every now and then when there’s something I want to share relevant to me and my personal work. She’s a gift from a Google search. Sadly, I don’t know who drew her.

You may have noticed in the breadth of my Substack writings, that I am a Peacemaker with a very busy brain. People weren’t diagnosing Attention Deficit Disorder when I was growing up, I was simply ‘extroverted.’ Which I am. And I don’t know if I’ll ever bother to be diagnosed, because my brain and I are long-term friends. We know how we work together.

Continue reading “Peacemaking and My Wild Hares #1”