Here’s the finished bracelet with the copper charms I showed as an earlier AEDM creation.  Since the original picture, I buffed them up and they turned out nicely.  I think the way to go for nice finished edges is the purchased copper discs made into charms (I had to file the edges and corners of the diamond piece so they weren’ pokey).

This is a versatile design in that I can create an extender chain so the bracelet can also be worn as a necklace.

Today is a very busy day so I actually preposted this yesterday (ah!  the marvels of modern technology!).  I Am Peace is an essay I wrote 5 or so years ago (time flies.  I remember the contract but not the actual years and I don’t want to go look them up).  It was definitely a test day! (The job was 6 months (into a 1 year contract) of test before I realized it was a test to see if I was going to put up with the same ol’ same ol’ or quit.  I quit.)

I Am Peace

Every now and then, in order to be Peace, you just have to stop everything and regroup. 

            I’m not ready for this particular business trip to Cecil County, even though I made the appointments almost a month ago.  Something inside has resisted, denied, delayed, so that this morning at 6:45 a.m. I am still gathering what I need for a four day away stay and loading the car for a 7:30 a.m. departure.  “So not want to go” ticks through my head like a tune that has overstayed its welcome.  And it’s raining.  Hard.  Woke up to its syncopation on the skylight. 

            Shawn made French Toast for breakfast, making breakfast his ritual for caring for me.  Had the TV on to WAR – what else would be on?  By myself I leave the TV off.  I don’t need the blow by blow description.  I can already feel it in my body – without having to hear it.  After five minutes I had to ask him to turn it off.  If I am to be Peace, I need more practice before I can be Peace with the TV and its spewing blather in my face. 

             I think of my StoryPeople sculpture from Jess, the one she special ordered:  “It’s easy to trust the universe when everything’s going well, she said.”  And then of something I read a long time ago:  It’s easy to be a saint if you live in a mountain cave.  And something I read by Gary Zukov (Seat of the Soul) just last night:  the universe, in its compassion, will send you temptations as a mental way to learn without earning negative karma.  

            So the way it works is:   once you decide to stay in the world and still determine to be Peace, the compassionate universe sends you the lessons to practice it.  Perhaps war is a practice test; one we keep failing, thus earning a retest.

             Upon crossing the boundary from Kent to Cecil county, I was greeted with rain turning to snow, then sleet, then (by the time I was hitting Rising Sun) a sideways stream of more snow.  Did you know that if you car’s defroster is broken, snow freezes on the windshield?  I didn’t before.  I do now.  Windshield wiper fluid will clear it.  Until the reservoir runs dry.  On a hilly, windy, now icy, no shouldered backroad.  I am Peace.  I remember I am Peace. 

            Perhaps I should have stopped and regrouped on the side of the road.  But there was no side, only road, and my head said too much snow, can’t see! And I didn’t feel very Peaceful because it was a strange place and there were all kinds of uncontrollable variables.  I think of decisions to wage war and wonder if anyone at the top might ever think about variables or being Peace. 

            I cancel my appointment (the thing I can control).  I still can’t see, and drive windows wide open to defog, head out the window to see, slowly to be safe, thinking about Peace, 10 miles back to a gas station where I buy two gallons of windshield wiper fluid, fill the reservoir, and decide to just go check in at the Inn.  As I turn onto the road from the gas station, the one contact lens that I wear gets something under it.  I am Peace.  Now there is sleet and blurry eyes but the windshield wiper fluid is working.  At last I can see.  Sort of.  Maybe the point is that even when we think we’re seeing, we’re still missing something overhead, off to the side, under our very feet. 

            I arrive at the Inn with my toes numb and my fingers, double gloved, stinging from the cold.  I discover my hosts have gone to the eye doctors (because I was not due to arrive for three more hours).  This reminds me of a quote in “The Tao of Peace,” something like:  If you pick the apple and eat it before it is ready and ripe, you will get a tummy ache.  So I arrived, three hours early, one solid door away from a warm room and the ability to stop and regroup.  Sometimes it’s a headache, not a stomach ache. 

            The last time I was in Cecil County, I discovered Bakers restaurant.  It’s one of those small town gems:  great food, very reasonable prices – the place all the locals go for the nightly special (usually meat – no matter, there’s enough other to make do).      I decide to try to be Peace at Bakers.  And because Grace has asked for a poem and an essay this week, and because I successfully managed that, I also had pad and paper and the inclination to find Peace by creating the path over the blue lines in front of me. 

            There are worse things than being cold for an hour, or without windshield wiper fluid.  There is being cold for years because your country might be Afghanistan, which has been bombed back to the stone age and left behind for bigger targets.  Baghdad for instance.  There is having no chance whatsoever of ever owning a car to put windshield wiper fluid in even though your country is Iraq, the second largest producer of oil in the world.

             A sip of coffee, a potato chip, a sip of wine (yes, wine for lunch).  Sometimes, when your support system is a four hour drive or an unconnected internet line away, Peace needs a prop. 

            Outside everything has turned back to rain or maybe ice (can’t tell from here).  Half a world away, families are losing each other – our side and theirs (are there two sides?) (can’t tell from here).        The forsythia bushes across the street are at their height of bloom and the daffodils are sitting with their stems in accumulated snow. 

            This morning my mind thought:  April 7; warm!  And the day brought snow.  My body thought:  I so don’t want to go.  And I went.  My soul thinks:  Peace.  And the war goes on.  I am Peace.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

it’s all in the heart, she said.  open it and you get magic.  close it and you don’t.  it’s not rocket science, she laughed.  Terri St. Cloud