Au revoir

I'm heading out to the land of no fusses. A fussless week awaits me.

This sign hangs over the doorway in the main building in the hermitage where I'll be staying.

I'm not just leaving my fusses behind, I've bagged them up and put them out for recycling.

Au revoir, you useless fusses!


See you in a week or so, sweet blogging friends!

Milestones

There seems to be a need in the lives of humans to mark events as milestones, acknowledging significant points along the way.

Different ages - 13, 16, 18, 21,...100 - all have some magical effect on us. We become a teenager, we can drive, we can vote and go to war, we can drink, we are among the oldest of the old.

We celebrate anniversaries of various kinds. Happy occasions like wedding anniversaries and sadder ones commemorating death.

As Buddha the dog sleeps on the floor behind me, I ponder what life is like with no milestones. Sure, he knows when it's time to eat (All the time.) (Or at least once in the early morning and at again at exactly 5:00 p.m.) But that's about it for Buddha milestones. He and the wild animals are completely free of the burden of having to remember another's birthday or a wedding (or mating) anniversary.

And they also miss the fun of creating an event out of a date on the calendar.

Just think... time is pretty much one continuous road if you are oblivious to the milestones we are programmed to honor and remember.

And Buddha the Dog isn't any less happy as he sniffs the road and lifts his leg along the way. He just lives in the moment - noticing each doggy calling card he comes upon.

I'm not exploring milestones in this way to make light of the milestone that occurred today. I'm just pondering our tendency to choose to make one number more important than another.

Today, the 1000th U.S. soldier was killed in Afghanistan. Definitely not the kind of moment to take lightly or celebrate in any way.

But I'm feeling very sober about the 1st and the 999th soldiers to die there (and everyone in between). I can't turn my back to every civilian; every innocent child; every soldier from any country; every person who starved to death today; everyone of us who suffered for any reason.

We mark the 1,000th death as a way to make a point that too many soldiers are dying.

But "too many" didn't start with the 1,000th U.S. soldier's death in Afghanistan. "Too many deaths due to war" happened a long time ago.

The View

In 6 days, I'll be soaking in views like these.

Westerly view

Easterly View

The coyotes are calling me to come listen to their nightly concerts. Who am I to say no?

My little hermitage with its peaceful simplicity awaits. I am being pulled into its open arms.

I yearn for long days of no computer, no requests; days that are so empty, I cannot avoid seeing who I am. I am looking forward to long days of exploring an

Inwardly View




Don't
Surrender
Your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more
Deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so
Tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

- Hafiz

Too Beautiful

Grandparent stories I heard yesterday at a meeting.

Where does our innocence go when we no longer have it?


He is four years old. He flew into Denver with his parents in order to visit his grandparents for Christmas. When going through security, he saw everyone taking off their shoes and their jackets and putting them into bins. After putting her personal things into a bin, his mother turned to him and saw him standing there. He had already taken off his jacket and shoes. And everything else. He was buck naked.


Six-year-old "A", a kindergartener, was telling her grandmother about her boyfriend at school. He tried to kiss her, but she's not going to tell on him and get him in trouble. She believes that when they grow up, maybe they will get married. Her little sister, "Q", listening to this story has one of her own to share. She also has a new friend at school, another little girl. And someday, when they are older, maybe they, too, will marry. Older sister, "A", agrees that they may.

But Wait! There's More!

I'm posting the rest of the photos from yesterday's event so that AFSC staff can see them. Dear AFSC staff, you can see more photos if you scroll down to my previous post. And you can read about my process as I journeyed down the 1,000 postcard path by reading the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that.

He sang for us. A capella. Beautiful.

Those Raging Grannies. So cute!

Postcarded Out

I have no more words about postcards and boots and death and the wonderful experience of working on this project. So here are photos from yesterday. As you can see, after the snow, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.

There is a real person in there.

War IS a crime against humanity.

Frosting on Our Valentines

It has been snowing through the night and it's still coming down pretty hard. There are at least 4 inches of the stuff on the ground right now.

And today we are supposed to put out over 70 pairs of boots that represent the Colorado soldiers killed in these wars. We're going to place 100 or so pairs of shoes on the ground to represent the hundreds of thousands (if not more) Iraqi and Afghan citizens who have been killed in the wars. We're supposed to be putting out 1,000 PAPER postcards to represent all U.S. soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. Not a great plan on a snowy day.

I watch a squirrel run along the telephone wire, knocking snow to the ground. I feel the calm of a frosting-covered world. Peace IS, right here, right now.

This may be the first EVER event for me where I slept like a baby the night before. I feel no anxiety. I am satisfied. I know that things will unfold as they will and it's not in my hands. What will we do today? Will we have to cancel because of the snow? Will the snow stop and will those amazing people who clear it all away clear it before our event? If so, will people still brave the cold to face a war that has been so hidden from them that they forget it's even occurring?

I have no idea.

I'll be interested in finding out.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Much love to you.


P.S. If you have a moment, please stop by Nick's place and wish him a Happy Birthday.

Hummus and Baba Ganoush

I love hummus and baba ganoush. I love Ali Baba Grill's hummus and baba ganoush the best. If you want to taste heaven, come visit me and I'll take you to Ali Baba's and we will stuff ourselves with their hummus and baba ganoush.

Big, honkin' hummus
(Guinness World Record Hummus)
(Could I tolerate so much bliss?)

Three nights in a row we have worked with these postcards. Three nights in a row, hummus and baba ganoush have sustained us while we worked. Over these three days, I have touched the names of 989 U.S. soldiers.

Yesterday I saw Pat Tillman's name on a postcard. I could tell that a young person wrote that name on the card. I suspect it was a young man. He didn't just write Pat's name and age. He wrote Pat's rank and he wrote that Pat was an NFL player. He put Pat's card on the very top of the pile of cards he had.

And I saw Juan Torres, Jr.'s name. I met Juan's father when I was at Camp Casey protesting the Iraq war. I can still see his Juan Sr.'s face, his tears; I can feel his kind, broken heart.

Eating baby carrots dipped in hummus and baba ganoush while I typed in names, I could swear that I live among angels. It seems we can look for God or One-ness or whatever we call that which our heart yearns for and, all along, it is truly, truly with us in every moment.

- It is in my friend, Arnie, who is working with me on this project. Neither of us knew how much it would take to do it. Arnie has poured himself into it like water upon thirsty land.

- It is in the way volunteers and staff came together to respectfully respond to a woman who had issues with the work that we are doing.

- It is in the young people who have participated. As we ate hummus and baba ganoush and typed in names and strung up postcards last night; three beautiful beings in their 20s showed up to help. Oh my. Pure presence. They live their lives making this world a better place. They volunteer with Fight With Tools, a community of young people who work to "Wake Up, Activate, Transform and Step Up." I didn't even know that I could work for the betterment of this world when I was in my 20s!

- It's in Mr. CFP's understanding when I spend almost every waking hour on a project and the house turns into a dump.

-It is in everything.

This morning, I watched the video of K.D. Lang singing at the opening of the 2010 Olympics. A beautiful voice can open the dam of held-back tears. That is what happened this morning as I listened to K.D. singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Acknowledging the pain of war breaks my heart, but so does hearing a voice of such crystal beauty. We judge one as bad and the other as good, but my heart breaks open just the same.

K.D. Lang's rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah at the opening of the Olympics.

The Sorrow of War

Today: 986.

1,000 postcards. 1,000 names. 1,000 loved ones.

I can only imagine what it would look like to see the stacks of postcards that would represent every human killed by war just in my lifetime. Or every human being killed by war since WWII.

My limited computer knowledge didn't include a way to get the names of the 32 most recent deaths off of the Internet and onto a spreadsheet (Mr. CFP taught me today - too late. I needed them last night). I decided I would have to type them all, including age, rank, and hometown. I was not too happy about having to do that. I thought that the people who sent me the rest of the names should have sent me these, also. I didn't have much time to mess with it.

But I typed.

And typed.

And thought about each person whose name I was typing.

I would notice a funny-sounding hometown name or a last name that I knew probably brought teasing to the person, especially in grade school and junior high. Then I thought about how, in boot camp, it's common practice for recruits to endure demeaning name-calling. Most likely, they were the subjects, again, of harassment about their name or their hometown. And then they went to war. And then they died.

If we really thought about the possibility that our cruelty would be one of the last things someone experienced before they died, would we still say cruel things?

It wasn't long into my typing exercise before I was no longer irritated by having to do it. I was grateful for the opportunity to share some time with these young men (they were all men) who died for whatever cause they believed in.

Some of them were only 18 years old! Eighteen. I remember it. I turned 18 the summer after I graduated from high school. I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Because of that, I didn't go to college right out of high school. Aimless, I got a job at a loan company. While hanging out at Cheeseman Park, a cult found me and I allowed myself to be taken in. How many of these young soldiers were like me? Not knowing what they wanted to do next, feeling aimless, or having a sense of limited options, they sign up for what I consider to be another type of cult.

The sorrow of war.

That is the phrase Kathy Kelly kept mentioning in her talk last night after out postcard-signing event.

The sorrow of war...

984

We are nearing 1,000 U.S. soldier deaths as a result of the war in Afghanistan.

A thousand U.S. deaths in a war doesn't sound that bad, does it? After all, over 50,000 died in Vietnam. Over 416,000 U.S. soldiers died in World War II.

I have a thousand postcards. Each will soon have the name of a soldier that has died due to this never-ending war. A thousand postcards is a lot of postcards.

Yes, 1,000 U.S. deaths is a lot. One death is a lot when it's your son. One death is a lot when you are a baby and you've never known your dad because he's been overseas your whole life. One death is a lot when it's your sister.

And the deaths are the tip of the iceberg. How will the thousands heal from the trauma of their experience in this barbaric drama?

Thousands and thousands of Afghan citizens have died. How will an entire country heal from the devastation that has engulfed it for so long?

This Sunday, Valentine's Day, I, along with other volunteers working with AFSC, will be hosting a vigil in front of the Colorado Capitol in honor of ALL who have died due to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 1,000 postcards - each with a name of a U.S. soldier who has died in Afghanistan, each with a message to Nancy Pelosi telling her "No more deaths, No more dollars" - will be displayed along the street in front of the Capitol so that passersby can see that 1,000 postcards, 1,000 deaths is a lot.

All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers - Francois Fenelon

Lost Years

Hard for me to understand all of the technical jargon, but I have been notified that my CarolForPeace blog will disappear into thin air in a month or so, unless the people who are hosting the site perform some miracles.

Because I have a website over, around, and through my blog, thus giving it the name "CarolForPeace.com" instead of something like "CarolForPeace.blogger.com", I am at the mercy of more than Blogger.

The more complex we make our lives...

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

Okay already... I'm looking for that genius and courage...

In some ways, it would be a relief to lose my old blog. History GONE. Just me, showing up today with little blogging baggage.

Truthfully, I no longer feel like the person who wrote much of the content on that old blog, anyway. Things have settled a lot inside me. Less urgency.

Still, countless hours were put into that piece of Carol history between 2005 and 2009.

It could be a record of historical significance for some future generation to find as a means of realizing that, contrary to the message indicated by an abundance of war-like artifacts, some of us did want peace during the 2000s.

Maybe not.

It could be a record of a bit of my life over a 4-year span that my grandkids might enjoy.

Except I don't have any grandkids and my crystal ball doesn't indicate any are anticipated.

I'm guessing that the geniuses who host my site will come up with a brilliant save here and all of my pondering will be for nothing. But it IS fascinating to look at the motivation behind wanting to hold onto a bunch of symbols on a screen. It feels like those symbols are a part of me - but I know that they could all be erased today and there would be no less of me.