Tonight feels reflective.  It's been a very long week.  Very.  I started the week feeling energetic, finally recovered from all of the work of Christmas.  We had the tree down and the Winter decorating done.  We'd been sledding and I was in the mood to cook when meal times came.  Long about the middle of the week, I allowed chaos and stress to step into the picture and steal my joy. 

Working past it all now, I'm seeking the peace of wild things and wild men like Bob Dylan.  Peace is what you make it and when you make it.  Only you have the power to make peace in your life and home.  It's not always the easiest choice to make, but it's best for all concerned.  I'm always thankful for the peace of our home, of snuggling in before bed and quiet mornings before work.

There's a little more snow in the forecast and we're going to see Anna and Mark over in Dungannon for a little mud and Thai food.  Thank goodness for weekends. . .

Alicia Paulson has written a thoughtful post about her Christmas wish over at Posie Gets Cozy and it's got me to thinking about my everyday wish.  Each morning, before I settle into my granola, I pray that God will help me to do good things today.  It reminds me that I am here to show His love and spread His peace, the kind of love and peace that we will never find in stores or in wealth or in trying to make everything perfect all the time.

Sometimes I find myself feeling quite chaotic, like how are we going to go the store and get buttermilk and get to the bank to put in money and get to the library to take back books and . . .  Then I get a little nudging that helps me recall that all those things are such nonsense and don't merit my worries.  What will be done will be done.  Other times I sense this same chaos growing in others and wonder what I can do to ease their stresses.  How can I tell Catrina not to fret over the stuffed mushrooms or ease Dawn's worries we won't like her?

Telling people not to worry won't work.  Sometimes, most of the time, I'm not sure what will.  I guess that's why I start most every day with asking God to help me to do good things.  I never know what those things will be, but I must be mindful of being the change that the world needs.  I must work to be open to doing the good that needs so desperately to be done.

Because, yes, war is over, if you want it.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seein' your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.

Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I'm a-sayin' an' a-many times more.
I'm a-singin' you the song, but I can't sing enough,
'Cause there's not many men that done the things that you've done.

Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today,
Somewhere down the road someday.
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too.

"Song to Woody"~Bob Dylan


A year ago in the mountains, I set to work on homemaking and peacemaking and blogmaking determined to be the change I wished to see in others.  It's been quite a journey to learn more about people who don't think like me and the surprising number that do.  This week's been a real retrospective on the past while and it's got me waxing all sentimental about where God's taken me in the first quarter of my hundred years.

I've talked about my hundred years before, and I really do mean to live one hundred years.  The women in my family have lived to be ancient pillars, setting the precedent for those of us who've followed.  Great-great grandmothers and great-great aunts have lived well into their nineties.  Now my great grandmother sits on a hillside finishing up her hundredth year, reading tatting patterns with a magnifying glass, praying she'll be taken before her eyesight is.  I want to be like these women, to have a hundred years to spread love and skills to those around me.

This past week our simple living group met with Bill Nickle of the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center.  Mainly he and our pastor reminisced on their days of civil rights work while I asked questions for handling those who think peace is merely a "nice idea."  I wonder sometimes, if David and Bill know how much their time with us, learning simplicity and environmental stewardship, has really impacted me personally.  I've been able to learn what matters in our lives and how to weed out the things (and most of them are things) that don't.  I've been blessed to see the joys of a peaceful home and have learned to be an instrument for peace in others' lives.

What a blessed year.  I guess this is the Thanksgiving entry--thanks for the gifts of simplicity, thanks for the hard work of peace and thanks for teaching me that the world is full of different kinds of people who all have an interesting story to tell.

Sometimes, in the face of an extreme drought and the growing strife of wars, I want to run and hide in the Appalachia of yesteryear.  Back when we were isolated and truly Forgotten, when we went barefoot half of the year and Winter was really Winter.  I want to find a hollow with a spring, have a cabin and split wood.  I want to walk the ridges and find where deer have slept.  I want to take refuge in the challenges of the land.

But that Appalachia has been forgotten in the fields with the haystacks and tobacco, and now serves to reinforce to me that we are not alone in this world.  When I think of the forgotten, my mind travels thousands of miles to the faceless people I will never see.  I am faceless to them, as well.  Thank God for prayer.  It is the only way I can reach those whom I cannot see and causes which I cannot touch.

Peace in Role-Play

for Clara of Celo

Somewhere in a field of feral strawberries
A scene of eight five-year-olds opens.
In moments, young testosterone ignites the group.

As if to give perspective, a young girl enters the scene.
She darts toward the erupting fight
Like a prophet child come to sing the devil into a long sleep.

She plucks a white straw flower from the three-leafed plant,
Halts in the center of the battle field,
And holds her flower in the air.

~Maggie Hess, recipient of the Leidig Poetry Prize, 2006



Can one person? Yes.  I've seen it.
Imagine peace.

Oddly, Sally Field said just about the same thing, though she didn't say it hovering over a quilt.  She said it on TV during the Emmys and she was censored.  It's not about feminism or politics.  It's about having the sense to know that for every child, there was once a mother. 

I've joined the masses at One Million Blogs for Peace.

Because:

• "There never was a good war, or a bad peace."  -Benjamin Franklin
• "War is over, if you want it." -John Lennon and Yoko Ono
• "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Mahatma Ghandi
• and because there are six billion people in this world besides me.

It seems we've been thinking lots on peace lately.  The Appalachian Peace Education Center has been circulating some thoughtful e-mails and maggie_hess has offered some contemplations on reacting to the violent aftermath of mountain top removal.

Long ago, I made an analogy for peace in the pomegranate, and I believe I've found another in the blackberry.  Yesterday, Mike and Beth and I went berry picking on a farm near the Davis Homestead.  I'll write more about the Most Beautiful Place to Pick Blackberries later.  I will say that when we brought Beth, we were destined for adventure. :-) 

The June bugs, Japanese beetles and itty bitty ants were all after the same harvest as us.  So, for about half an hour after our hike to the farm, there would be sudden screams from Beth when she was buzzed by a beetle or found an ant crawling on her.  I offer this anecdote as a background for my own contemplations while picking blackberries.  It has a lot to do with coping with life's perils, choosing your battles, and sidestepping trouble.

Berry picking is not for the faint of heart.  I think that is because most of the berries Mike and I pick are not cultivated.  We find them in meadows and along roadsides.  They are often thorny, sometimes infested with poison ivy, and we are usually not the only ones trying to gobble them up.  Our blackberry patch is also a cow field, and I am petrified of critters bigger than me.  Additionally, berries often take a long time to amass, since most are very small, save the blackberry.  Also a disclaimer:  None of Nichols' Natural Jams & Jellies contain insects--we leave the bugs to have their own.  Just had to say it.  ;-P

As I was trying to help Beth cope with the insects so that she might acquire the berry-that-all-the-Nichols-seem-to-love-best, it occurred to me how tactful we must be so that the beetles and ant may have their fill, as well.  And how disconnected from our food we can be. 


Truly, in the steamy Summer afternoon, there were loads of insects on the ripest berries.  Some blackberries had as many as five June bugs drinking their juices.  They're drowsy with sugar and preoccupied with mating; they'll be a little slow to move out.  But when they do, it's like a flock of ruffed grouse.  Always a little shocking.  Truly, in life, we must expect that when we embark on new journeys challenges will come buzzing out of life's vine.  We can scream in horror, or calmly cope and wait for them to pass.

I also told her to choose her vines carefully.  If they're too covered in bugs, move on.  There's always another vine around the corner in our favorite blackberry field.  Likewise, we should choose the problems we tackle carefully, and know that our options are only limited by our imaginations.  It's not about doing it all--it's about doing what we can, always.

In my ideal Appalachia,
wars would be
carefully considered --
like blackberry patches in the hot sun.

I've been having headache lately.  Maybe it's spring on its way or maybe it's a change in the air pressure from my big head.

That's right, I got my letter to the editor published in the Bristol paper.  It was about thinking beyond myself, and here I am, thinking about myself.  But we all need validation, if even a tiny bit.  It is a very saintly person who can push on towards a cause without reinforcement from others.  And so I got a nice e-mail from my dad.  He told me yesterday that if I spoke as well as I wrote, I could be a politician.  If my advent devotions at church are any indication, let my campaign slogan be similar to that of Jim Webb--"Born Knitting!"

Brandy,

I guess you know I had similar feelings as a youth.  It was a very
turbulent time in America.  I was drafted into the heart of the
governmental solution to the Viet Nam conflict.  It caused me to rethink
and adapt to the situation I faced.  I guess we all get into the
survival mode if pushed.

I saw, first hand, the turmoil in the streets.  I knew the feelings of
the soldier in an unpopular war.  There was no hero's welcome for the
returning veterans and many young women shunned us boys with the
military haircuts.  I saw the Army of draftees that somehow was over
thirty percent blacks.  When I returned I tried to fit into the society
but could only do so by remaining silent.  Fortunately I did not have to
be in combat.

Enjoy your freedom and desire for peace.  I hope no one spoils it for
you.  There are many reasons for war and none of them are valid.  Jesus
clearly says that there will be wars until the time of his Kingdom on
Earth.  But his message was one of peace.  Your politics are fine by me.
I am glad that you have a passion for what you know is right.

Live long & prosper, RD

And so it is that I begin to feel better.  Mike took me out for a one-year-at-a-real-job dinner last night.  I even got all dolled up (I wore lip gloss) and stepped out in style in my pixie hat.  I wear it with counterculture pride, though it's funny that a hat would get people so worked up.

I'm super excited about the vigil on Saturday.  It will be warm and Mike is coming, at least as a spectator.

My name is Brandy Nichols.  I graduated from Emory & Henry in 2005 and I am another informed optimist for peace.

The world is full of different kinds of people.  This is why I am against the Iraq war.  I want respect for all people, fear for none, love for the forgotten and enthusiasm for the comfortable.  I’m constantly learning about the ways our lives challenge us and I know the best thing I can do is to be a living realistic example of hope and peace.

In the summer of 2006, I went to my first APEC Peace Vigil.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I needed to do something to express and further my feelings about the Iraq War and pacifism.  It was a very powerful event that taught me to continue to work on thinking beyond my self, my Appalachia and my continent.

As we read the names of those American soldiers who had been killed in the war, I felt as though I wanted to cry.  I felt guilty.  I felt ashamed.  Cars passed.  The sun of a warming earth beat down on me.  Somewhere in the mix of emotions and car exhaust, I found the strength to look in the eyes who were staring back at mine.  I didn’t want them to ignore the harsh reality of our cause.

It’s very easy to sequester one’s self from the cares of daily living on a moving planet.  But in those moments at the first vigil I came to know that the truth cannot be avoided.  My life for peace is but a small stepping stone on the trail to something better for everyone.

 

The vigil is not for me.
It is for you
in the cars
with your honks, waves
and obscenities.

Your agreement
may be absent
but the seeds of peace
are sown
in your head.

The vigil is not for me.
It is for you
on the list
of names we read.

Your life
may be over
but your snapshots
live on
in our hearts.

The vigil is not for me.
It is for you
in the future,
nearer every day.

Your life
may not be here yet
but my prayer
for your peace
grows daily.

The difficult I’ll do right now.  The impossible will take a little while.

This story from NPR (Soldiers Say Army Ignores, Punishes Mental Anguish) shows what fighting of any kind can do to a person.  It destroys you--slowly from a dispute with a friend or family member, or quickly and shockingly from life in a land steeped in hatred and conflict.

Sometimes I don't know what to think.  I'm still thinking this story over in my head.  My cousin Michael is in Iraq.  We've never been close, unfortunately, but when I saw him on July 4th, I could see the pain and fear.  My uncle Craig said that he was paranoid, checking for his gun all the time, unaccustomed to feeling safe.  He seemed angry to me.

Even the young man in the story who feels that some people are weak, later admits his own emotional problems and seeks help.  

Jobs of any kind are not for one personal entertainment and the variety in the life of a soldier described by one young man in the story is vile.

And to think that these people feel and in some cases, know, they have nowhere to turn for help, and that the army will "eliminate" them if they do.

One of the comments read:

Time for Real Change

PTSD is a normal human response to witnessing or experiencing violence and feeling intense fear, horror, and helplessness. War is condoned violence. If everyone condoned peace, we could rid this world of war.

These soldiers need support from their government, not denial and punishment. It's time for real change.

-- Mary Ann Reynolds, Austin, Texas

During the Thanksgiving preparations, I began to think about pomegranates. Mike and I enjoy them, but they're lots of work and can be quite messy to "disassemble."

Back when I was making the pumpkin pies, I was trying to prepare one. I was very tense and the little arils kept going everywhere. There was juice on the floor, walls, cabinets, Mike's head (as he was cleaning up the floor) and my shirt. I had to finish up my baking by getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing the pie crust bits and pomegranate juice off the floor.

I love to know the history of food. Pomegranates are among the oldest cultivated fruits. They came from Asia and are symbols of fertility and marriage (like most fruits). Some say that Eve picked a pomegranate in the Garden of Eden, not an apple

Last Wednesday I was fixing one for Thanksgiving. I was trying to feel more calm and not make such a mess. Though I was a little anxious about the coming festivities and potential conflicts, I tried to focus solely on the pomegranate.

I felt much more peaceful. I was also less messy.

And I developed my theory of pomegranates as peace fruits. One must be gentle and calm while working with them. Otherwise, chaos will ensue and the little juicy seeds will be everywhere. The same cannot be said for apples, pears and pineapples. You can hack at them like a maniac and have reasonable results.

The pomegranate takes my focus off myself. My tensions melt and I think about peace with fruit and with people. It will not come about haphazardly, but only with extreme care and tact.