Yesterday morning I listened to a meditation led by meditation teacher, writer, and psychologist, Tara Brach. In it Ms. Brach asked listeners to hold a hand over their heart and ask themselves, “Why am I meditating? What is it I am seeking today?”
My answer to both those questions was simple — peace. I am seeking to experience
Peace Like a River
in these moments and throughout my day.
Initially the words, “Seeking peace,” or “Looking for peace” came to me. But I realized that the idea of being peaceful, and seeking or looking for peace were somewhat antithetical. What I really wanted was to BE peace, free from wanting things to be any other way, from striving to fix myself or my health, the world, politics, anything.
What would it be like if I could accept life—accept this moment—exactly as it is?
― Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
To simply be okay with myself and things the way they are is not as easy it might seem. It’s so easy for me to want to fix my health or other things, to worry about climate change, politics, the world, loved ones, getting older — you name it.
But yesterday morning I simply put down the invisible backpack filled with all of my worries and fears, all my desires for things to be different. And I sat, in peace, noticing my heartbeat, following my breath, feeling the aliveness of my body. And now as I remember that meditation it is a little easier to carry peace in my heart.
Being peace is a lifelong practice for me — breathing in worries or fears, breathing out beauty and joy, allowing things to be just as they are and letting go of trying and simply being here now.
Wage Peace
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown
fields.Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.– Mary Oliver
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Today’s photos made during a short walk at Lake Camelot Park yesterday and afterwards with a small branch of oak leaves and acorns that I found on the path as I walked. The trumpeter swan family continues to grow and thrive. Today there were resting and preening in their nest spot at the side of the lake. Their feathers are coming in, but there is also still some soft fluff remaining. They are growing so fast!
Orange-red leaves on bush already!
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