Making Peace

Peace with change, peace by accepting our powerlessness and giving over to the Divine power to bring about peace--in our lives, in our communities, in our country and in the world--this calls to me at this time in the life cycle of nature, and with the loss around us here in Boulder County.

I acknowledge the need for this peace on the anniversary of 9/11. I know this peace with the passing of a truly great Episcopal priest who was the Rector at St. John's in Boulder for 25 years and a priest in the church for over 50 years. I'm praying for hope and peace for all of those who lost so much in the fires which are not yet out in our mountains.

All of us who love our mountains so deeply will suffer in this loss, but in different ways than those who lost homes--some that had been rooted in our canyons since the late 1800s. My favorite drive up to Gold Hill to enjoy the golden aspens is now gray with ash and ruin, but I'll drive up another canyon to enjoy the aspens. I'll look for another road. Others must look for another home.

The fall color show brings with it the realization that those leaves will fall, dry up, and the berries will either be eaten or turn black and drop to the ground. Fall depressed Mother. She stood at the kitchen window and watched as "her birds" ate their last meals for the season, readying for their flights to warmer climates. She had difficulty enjoying the red, orange, and yellow maple leaves as she projected us into winter. I try to be present to each day's beauty--and I'm able most days. My camera pushes me to see beauty in all things, all people, all places.

Our blue Colorado skies arch over blackened trees and smoldering ashes where homes once stood. I can remember when those blue skies angered me as I dealt with loss. How dare the maple leaves put on such a show when I am feeling such pain, I thought the fall my brother was killed in an automobile wreck. How dare the sky be so blue and the roses so lovely as long buried memories spued around me, destroying who I had thought I was? The artist whose show and party is celebrated tonight is worrying that people won't want to attend because they are grieving their losses.

Peace for me is about holding the dual realities of death and destruction together with the hopes and joys of new life and unfolding blessings on our paths. Without the losses in my life, I would not have had the compassion I needed to listen to the woman who was crying as she chose new linens in a Boulder store this morning. She was ending a 24-year-old marriage, knowing it was the right thing for her, yet unable to stem the tears flowing down her cheeks.
Without unearthing the fear I had as a young child when Mother was too sick to take care of Bill and me and Daddy had gone out to the fields, I wouldn't understand the fear of not knowing how to do what was needed, the fear that whatever I did, it wouldn't be right, be enough. I wouldn't understand the sister who wants to scream at her younger siblings to shut up when they asked for their Mother, one who can't for whatever reason, be available.

I'm allowing for grief and loss--emotions of the child Margaret whose Mother was crying so loudly that she couldn't hear her daughter--to bubble up from within so that I can hold them up for Divine healing, thus allowing me to be more peaceful. My contribution--the only one I know how to make--is to allow God's peace to emanate through me to those with whom I come in contact in my daily life. God's peace--available to all, not to one religious group and not another, but to all. Blessed peace from within.