Peace in your home?

Pray for me, if you read this. Send wishes for peace to me.

Guess I'll practice some gratitude until I feel better.

Peace in my home and across the world

I try to think of a new way EACH DAY to promote peace.

Today I am going to work on peace in my own home, where there is a lot of bickering due in part to the fact that my beloved daughter is now a teenager. I will share how my efforts work out.

But that is not enough for today, so here is something nifty:

http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/swallowtail/408/addresses.htm is a website to get contact info for government leaders across the globe. Cool!

Bookmark this site and when you learn of something in a foreign land and want to (Amnesty International-style) write the leaders to express your views, la voila, you can.

Peace and hope

Hope is still high with me. Hope to bridge gaps, to heal divisions, to strengthen community. I thank Barack Obama for instilling this hope in me, and hope (more of the H word) the inspiration can come to those who didn't vote for him, and will remain with me after Barack Obama's certain misstep sometime down the line.

My personal call is for peace. My personal creed states, among other things, "I build peace and find win-wins." So the inspiration puffs up my peace sails and off I go.

I found a nice peace essay from the folks in Portland, OR who run the website for Rooms for Peace. Follow this link

Here is a mere excerpt:

For peace is also found in stillness and quietude, in calm reflection, in kindness and sincere friendship, in building community and relationships, in renewal of ecosystems and cultural heritage, in personal growth and health, in reverence and respect, in love and generosity...in many ways, shapes, and forms (see the list of peace-related qualities below). Each aspect is indeed a doorway into a greater reality of peace that's expansive, timeless, and universal.

Click the link to find the peace-related qualities.

Peace be with you.

Finding common ground

I feel this wonderful sense of optimism. It took me a long time to catch what one could call "Obamamania." I remember too clearly the dismal presidency of another brilliant Democratic newcomer, Jimmy Carter. (Though Jimmy Carter is indisputably the best ex-president we have ever had, and deserves our respect and honor and admiration and gratitude.)

But I do feel the hope. I am personally inspired to do what I can to heal the divides.

Yesterday I shared this thought with a colleague. She is pro-life and I am pro-choice. I noted this, and said, we have common ground--preventing unwanted pregnancies. Let's work on the common ground, and not forsake it for some extreme position, such as not giving federal support to agencies that refuse to teach abstinence-only. This woman agreed with me. So we made a teeny bit of common ground.

How do I build on that?

Washington just followed Oregon with a ballot measure that permits people near the end of their lives to get help from a physician to die. The measure was based on Oregon's, which withstood a Supreme Court challenge.

When the measure became law in Oregon, people hardly lined up to end their lives. In 11 years, fewer than 400 people have used the law to end their lives. A far higher number have obtained the medications that would kill them, but opted not to use them.

What the measure did was focus Oregonian's attention on end of life issues. Hospice services became more available and more availed. Attention to pain management increased.

Common ground--dignity and comfort for the dying!

I am hopeful that Washingtonians will increase their attention to end of life issues and increase dignity and comfort for the dying here too.

Yes, we can

My grumpy old husband told me he feels "euphoria."

I had a quick mini-epiphany (no time yet to settle in and seriously pray about it) that the first step is to stop the name-calling. I am not much of a name-caller anyway but I can do better--encourage and admonish others not to name-call!

I feel love and hope and an urgent call to pray--to devote intense intellectual and spiritual focus on what to do next. Because I do believe--peace starts at home. And I want to do what I can to bring it about.

We still have wars going on. We still have a huge deficit. We are still pouring too much carbon into the air, and poisoning our planet in the process. We have much poor policy to repair. Yes, there is a lot of work to do, and I pledge to you, my reader, and to my planet and to my President I will do what I can.

Love and Peace!

A curious sense of peace, hope, and fear

I voted a few weeks ago. My county votes by mail entirely, so we don't cope with lines or have any sense of "going" to the polls. I have done my part, I have voted. I have given money to many of the candidates I support. Now, like millions of people in the world, I sit back and wait.

This is a strange sense of peace.

It is also a curious interregnum, bursting with hope and with fear. There is so much promise in the changing of leadership. There is potential--for good and for bad, for inspiration and for despair.

Some of my friends have described the event of the presidential election going to McCain/Palin as something akin to the end of the world, or of democracy as we know it. I hopefully disagree. I know that no matter how it turns out, millions of American citizens have become new voters, and that energy can move mountains, if we can harness it.

peacemaking through environmental ed

Today I salute my coworker Ginger. She is a peacemaker even if she doesn't know it. She tends to be on the agressive side interpersonally, and complains a lot. Still--she is always, always seeking to make the world a better place. She is trying to build and strengthen community, promote justice, link people in good ways, help children--all through the lense of environmental education. Helping children understand nature and how to help it is a form of peacemaking. Working to build a stronger and healthier community is peacemaking.

Recently I read a summary she wrote of a summit of community members working to improve the "E3" process in our counties. The three E's are economy, education, and environment. The three need each other. The big move toward green this and green that, even greenwashing, indicateds businesses and business folk see the value of the environmentalism to their bottom line. (Hooray!) What struck me intensely was how all of the elements of the plan support a peaceful community, one that is in greater harmony with Mother Earth.

Hooray for you, Ginger.