Peace Blogging aka Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere ~
We've been declaring it for twenty-one years all over the world.
Somewhere along the way, we became a Tribe.
Our 2026 theme is Let It Be Known
Please sign the Mr. Linky at the end of this post and leave a comment in the comment section. You may tag me on Facebook as well. Tell us where you're from. I hope you will visit each other and share the peace vibe with your neighbnors.That's the best part of being a peace blogger.
. It's a launch!
Dona Nobis Pacem ~ A Little Grace
She smelled of mothballs and Jesus.
Her hem touched the floor. Her hands folded reverently. Every bare inch of her country-sunshine-smooth-skin was covered. I mean covered from head to toe. Like hell might burst open at any minute if she wore a hint of lipstick while some pitchforked demon took her away. Little black laced-up knee-high proper lady boots. The kind that didn't click-clack or squeak. The kind that didn't attract attention. Unpolished.The kind that made a statement, leaving no doubt that Practical belonged in her first, last, and middle name.
She was my Aunt Grace.
Makeup? Hardly. Perfume? A sin. Just camphor mixed with turpentine and Vick's Vapor Rub and....those.... mothballs that wafted from the cellar in a so-clean-you-could-eat-off-the-floor cobblestone house right up into the kitchen by the spooky basement door.
Oh, did I mention she was 4 ft nothing?
Towering over giants and loud-mouthed children who might need a swat on the behind if they got too rambunctious near the pickled beets on the neatly-lined basement shelves...or near the fireplace that was always stoked with smoldering embers.
To say she was a force to be reckoned with is an understatement.
Her house held oil lamps. Blooming everywhere. Casting shadows on that one last spiderweb she forgot to broom down. There were ancient OPEN Bibles in every room with Uncle Henry's wire-rimmed spectacles gently laid upon the wrinkled pages. He was always on a journey from room to room, through fiery brimstones and sanctified handkerchiefs used for loud Amening, after every prayer and verse.
Aunt Grace and Uncle Henry scuttled around in a black 1936 Chevrolet Sedan. It looked like a hearse with a hunchback.
I was afraid to get in it, but it matched her shoes and his hat.
Aunt Grace was too short to drive. Sitting on a Sears & Roebuck catalog only made things worse - she could see out the windshield but couldn't reach the pedals; and besides, everybody knows there were shhhhhhhhhh naked ladies in brassiere advertisements amongst those pages. For shame!
And they were forever planning for something - something was about to happen. The shelves were stocked and well water siphoned into barrels just in case something happened.
I never saw them touch.
It wasn't proper.
Their only outings were Sunday mornings to the little white church, where Uncle left his hat on the pew seat, and Auntie made sure she was still covered everywhere that legally mattered.
Both were most comfortable, however, behind a contraption pulled by Nellie the Mule, who wobbled and tilled the garden the old-fashioned way. We were most happy under the wall-to-wall grapevines that provided muscadines for wall-to-wall pear preserves in the musty cellar. Aunt Grace kindly served us red-striped peppermint sticks when it wasn't even Christmas. And lemonade.
It was not so much what was said in that house - it was the silence.
It had a presence. Children were to be seen and not heard in those days. I was almost afraid to speak, much less utter something accidentally unacceptable - which I was prone to do - so I tried to make-believe she couldn't read my sometimes salacious mind, lest I get a swat or a you're-going-straight-to-hell look over dinner.
There was no talking at dinner.
Even if I thought a cuss word, she knew it.
I loved her.
She had a fascination with the inward being. She nurtured it with fine food, homemade love, and service to others. She took in orphaned children, making a home where there was no home, while she walked with a grace that bore her name in the folds of her skirt. Ladylike. Confident. Humble. Knowing. She knew who she was and Whose she was.
Freud would have loved her. My grandfather told a story of an Angel in Light standing by his hospital bed, while he lay sick with a heart attack and not expected to live. Every time he told it, even years later, he wept. This soft-spoken messenger came to capture his soul for safe-keeping, making sure he was ready to go. There was no angel.
It was Aunt Grace.
Whether running through apple tree branches or playing beach in the white sand she kept on the driveway, we always went home with a basket of fruit and the imaginary smell of seagulls and surf.
It was a beautiful place to be. To play. To hide. To explore.
To imagine.
Until she got sick
That's when the cussing started.
It was just a cold. And she needed an antibiotic. So, Uncle Henry cranked up the old black squeaky-clean monstrosity and drove her into "town" (I use that term loosely) to see the only doctor around for at least fifty miles. He was the same country physician I saw as a child, housed in a tiny brick building with one nurse who doubled as a receptionist and walls full of Norman Rockwell prints.
It smelled of alcohol pads and hysterical babies.
He was known for his gruffness and impatience, bordering on rudeness. No nonsense. No personality. No breath mints.
Children feared him. The worst part of needing a doctor in our town was having to actually go to the doctor in our town.
But Aunt Grace was feeling a tad under the weather. She clutched her invisible pearls, covered from head to tippy-toe in a white button-up shirt, plaid black maxi-skirt and invisible jewelry.
She was elegant in her own righteous way.
As she entered his office to file her complaint, carefully sitting down across from him in the scrunchy, noisy brown leather-padded chair, he looked at her and scowled,
"What the hell is wrong with YOU?!"
Have you ever heard thermometers break?
Harp strings stop playing midair?
Saint Peter readying a room?
My mother re-told this story to me many times. When she'd get to this part I'd hold my breath, waiting for the punchline again and again and again. It never came.
Aunt Grace didn't flinch. She didn't hesitate. She didn't raise her voice - she raised her words.
"I am going to to go back out into the waiting room.
When I return you are going to greet me differently."
Diplomas rattled. Hades trembled. Charts flipped. Stethoscopes tangled all over the room. Cotton balls swabbed and syringes reloaded. The door applauded behind her as it quietly closed on a fuming, red-faced physician who'd just been brutally taken down by a 4 foot tall powerhouse of a woman who suffered no fools. Owned by a little woman with more authority in the tip of her girdle than he held with a wall full of long-handled degrees.
And it only took a Mimosa minute.
She didn't have to gather her strength. She was strength.
She gave him a little Grace, you might say.
I can imagine her stepping outside to straighten her skirt (it's a family affliction), mmbling that prayer we all learn in Sunday School and making the sign of the cross - just for good measure. But before she turned the knob and re-entered the nauseating examination room, Jesus asked,"Do you need my whip? I made one for just such occasions, you know."
With a No-Lord-I-won't-be-needing-that look, she opened the door and sat down in the brown leather chair once again.
"Good morning, Dr. Hamilton."
"Good morning, Mrs. Richardson," said the docile but scorched physician. He rose to meet her, then quietly asked, "What brings you to see me today?"
And so the healing began
No judgment. No scolding. No sermon.
She didn't ask him to change. She didn't cry and wail and play the victim. She didn't stoop to his level.
He rose to hers.
She walked in as Grace.
She walked out as Grace.
Lately, there is a lot of talk about 'owning' your truth or 'speaking' your truth." But what I like about Aunt Grace's story in our community and in our family, is that she did more than talk. And she did it in a way that demanded respect. For herself first.
Then she gave him a way to redeem himself.
Which brings me to the point of her legendary influence in my own life, as if it happened yesterday - because it did.
Someone I love cursed me out this week.
And I had to make a decision whether to stay or or go.
I thought of Aunt Grace.
She kept peace with herself first. She spoke up. Directly.
She honored herself. She respected her own standards.
And she brought resolution to what could have been a volatile confrontation with wisdom and well....Grace.
Sometimes, when we seek peace with those around us, with the world, with our loved ones, with the Earth, with political factions and loud raucus opinions - they are not ready for our words.
It might be that instead of trying to change the other guy, we start by protecting the peace we already have. The old-fashioned way.
Both were most comfortable, however, behind a contraption pulled by Nellie the Mule, who wobbled and tilled the garden the old-fashioned way. We were most happy under the wall-to-wall grapevines that provided muscadines for wall-to-wall pear preserves in the musty cellar. Aunt Grace kindly served us red-striped peppermint sticks when it wasn't even Christmas. And lemonade. 
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