Blog4Peace 2024 - Hold The Light

Welcome to the 19th year of peace blogging! 

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Dona Nobis Pacem ~ 

Hold The Light

The year was 1968.  Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been slain. Our country was in turmoil. The controversial war in Vietnam polarized our politics and our hearts. Richard Milhous Nixon was about to become the 37th President of the United States. 

I was about to begin my education. 

                                     It started at the back door.

                A knock.

"Come on in, Joe!" Papa exclaimed with a laugh. "And Joe, come around to the front door. I'll let you in."  In some areas of the south in the sixties, visiting black men in small town USA, still did not approach the front door of a white man's residence. Fifty-six years later, we've made progress...but there is much work to do. 

I do not know the direction my Grandfather's politics would have taken had he lived to see this election, but I can promise you one thing: the candidate's social status, the color of his skin, his religious affiliation, political slant, or the cost of his shoes would not have mattered. Papa's welcomes were equally sincere and easily given. 

The man needed a job. He couldn't feed his family. I heard low whispers from the living room and shuffling of money. My grandmother brought coffee and cake; then the front door shut.

 Lesson one duly noted. 

At my grandfather's wake, literally half the town showed up. There was a "colored" funeral home and "white" funeral home. It was out of the ordinary for blacks to visit the dead on the other side of the tracks. 

But visit they did. 

I heard stories I'd never heard.

"One day at work, your Papa noticed my feet were almost bare. 

He gave me his shoes."

" He helped me and my family keep our home."

"He brought groceries to our house and in the winter he kept our furnace lit."

"He paid my telephone bill and brought toys for Christmas."

"He bought school clothes for my kids."

 Apparently, he'd been sneaking around with blessing baskets for years. Then I started to remember those strange quiet back door whispers, "coincidental" meetings on the sidewalk, times when my grandmother had to suddenly whip up a chocolate cake, and rides in his station wagon to places he never talked about. "Stay here, Sis. I'll be right back," he'd say.
I always wondered what those porch conversations were about. Now I know.

He was the bridge builder. And the door opener. 

And the example of moral courage in my life. 

He was my light holder

Today, when I visit his double-hearted spirit in the cemetery, I'm reminded of this photo. When I developed the picture long ago, my shadow had fallen across the stone. It looks as though we are perfectly in sync - still.  Now, I choose to let my shadow fall upon his and allow his to fall upon mine.  With whom do you align? Choose carefully.

It started me thinking how my time has eerily overlapped his time - a slice of American history that was shameful in so many respects - the abundance of ignorance, the quest for power, were just background noise to the voices that truly mattered...those that marched and voted and wrote policy. 

What it boils down to is the right of all persons to be treated with dignity and respect. 

Those voices still speak in us. 

Collectively, we are more than a stump speech and a soundbite.

The voices of our time matter too.

Unrest and violence prevailed in 1968.

Unrest and violence still thunder in 2024.

Please hold the light for those in darknessPlease hold the light for those in needSet your foot rightly, for the downtroddenmight come to your door

Let it deliver and emancipate like Peter's shadow in the Book of Acts. 

Let it heal people. Let it love people. 

That's what light does.

***************

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Blog4Peace™ Post4Peace™©Mimi LenoxHow To Get Your Own Peace GlobeGraphics/Templates to Use

PROMO: The annual Blog4Peace event will take place on Monday, November 4, 2024. This special event is held worldwide with bloggers, social media posters and individuals from over 200 countries and nations taking part. Below is a direct link to the Blog4Peace website with details, art images and more. Please visit and remember to post your art in support of Hold The Light for peace. Nov 4, 2024
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Some bits have been re-printed from a post I wrote in 2008Original post

Dona Nobis Pacem ~ The Room

Welcome to the 18th annual Blog4Peace aka Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere. We will post Saturday and Sunday, Nov 4-5th wherever you are online. Please leave your blog or post link in the MR. LINKY below or in the comments section or tag me on social media. Your peace globe will be added to the Official Gallery of Peace Globes
Our 2023 theme is Change The Room ~ The Transforming Power of Walking in Peace

Dona Nobis Pacem 2023The Room
A conversation with Spirit 
"Fill them up," He said.With what? asked the tired peace blogger on the eve of Dona Nobis Pacem. 

My peace boxes

For weeks I've known that the box marked "Early Writings" in the back of the closet would provide the backbone of my peace post. And is my usual custom, I waited until nigh the hour to investigate.
"Fill up the peace angel boxes with words you will choose from your fairly ancient writings. I will show you the pattern..."Ha Ha, Lord. That's a funny comment you made. Ancient, eh? But You know best. Let's begin.

And just like I've picked up Papa's hammer or his earth marble in years past, I listened. 

I am nothing if not obedient. Inside the closet box I found love poems....lots of silly love poems. Anguished teenage diaries, college essays, journals, quotes, love letters written and received, peace signs and flower power patches, concert tickets....all in the box. It was the seventies and I was young and overly sensitive about most things; and yet...when I read my teenage epiphanies today, I realize not much in the way of what I really care about has changed. Peace. Relationships. Music. God. Rinse Repeat. 
Life happened. I became a very young bride back in the days before electricity (ahem). We made our first home in a little mobile house in the middle of the woods.

It was clean and efficient, secluded and perfect for two.  And because I grew up with a grandfather whose favorite pastime was folding his hands in prayer, the first thing I did was make a prayer and meditation room. A floor cushion, a cross, a Bible, a picture of Jesus, and a candle traveled with me to our first real house in the suburbs. That was denominational "meditation" back in the day. I've learned and adjusted much since, adding A Course in Miracles later; nonetheless, it was a fine foundation when I didn't even realize I was building a spiritual practice.
 Wherever we lived, I needed a room. A place to be quiet. A place to pray. A sanctuary of my own away from noise and life's chaos. That has not changed in my ancient times (thanks Lord) though sometimes the "room" is under the wide canopy of an oak tree in the stillness of woods and rocks on my little mountain.
And that's what I did in that little flat-roof suburban house while I waited for our baby to arrive. 
Every day. Every day. Every day. at precisely 4:10 pmIt was my favorite part of the day. I couldn't wait to shut the door, kneel on the floor and spend some time alone with God and my writing journal. Going IN the room was like being siphoned into a vortex.I was drawn into it.

 I knew the "meeting" had been called to order as soon as I shut the door behind me. Palpable presence and peace. The atmosphere was climate controlled by a Presence I can only describe as perfect peace and joy. He never failed to meet me there. When I gave Him my time and attention, He gave me strong weapons: patience, love, clarity, compassion, a softer heart, inspiration, mindfulness, solace peace


When I was a little girl, I watched my Papa change atmospheres all the time. It was as effortless as changing his hat. People acted differently when he was around. What he carried was palpable.But the question is...where did he get it? 

Papa's marbles

That's easy. Listen carefully. I'll tell you a secret.He' s the one who taught me about the room.
His "room" is scorched in my mind.His room was the Bible on the nightstand in a cold back bedroom, the first thing he touched in the morning.
  His room meant devotions at dawn and scribbled scripture notes in the margins of books you weren't supposed to write inHis room gave thanks at mealtime. 
His room was a recliner that welcomed silent sunrise prayers..a place none of us disturbed (except the occasional kiss I planted on his forehead as I passed by on the way to breakfast, quietly, quietly you see....) 

 His room meant gentle hands on my shoulder and a tug on my sleeve



There was a Lamp in his roomIt showed us who he was, no need for preachy words.It was fueled by The Book sprawled open on his lap - The Book from which he gathered his strength.  

Copyright 1941 The Upper Room

His room was a well-worn pocket prayer book that he carried with him. Buried under a lifetime of rhymes in the box of many ancient words, I unearthed the small stained power book and its leaves of gold.
 Tonight when I opened the tiny pages, it fell open, right on cue, as if it were still open on his lap as I walked past him to the kitchen 
Tears fell on page 40 as I read "In Time of War" and "Prayer ForPeace"
Can you imagine anything more timely in this hour? 

He has shown me the pattern. I will place the prayer book in the peace boxwhere it surely belongs

Marrying prayer and peace sounds like a mighty fine idea.It was Papa's way. I aspire to his way. He didn't make peace, find peace, or go looking for peace -
He carried it.
In his pocket, in his coat, in his mind, in his heart, in his actions, in his demeanor, in his attitude, in his love walkGoing into the room was easy for him. He simply yielded.I watched. 
No matter what beliefs you hold or where you find your rooms of solace, know that it matters greatly how much of it you carry out into the world with you. 

In this dark and trying time in the world, I'd like to offer Papa's Prayer For PeaceHe passed it to me. I pass it to you.
"O God, who hast made of one blood all nations of men, mercifully receive the prayer that we offer for our anxious and troubled world. Send Thy Light into our darkness and guide the nations as one family into the ways of peace. Take away all prejudice and hatred and fear. Strengthen in us day by day the will to understand.And to those who by their counsels lead the people of the earth, grant at right judgment, that so, through them and us Thy will be done through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen." 
Shalom




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Monday Mimisms ~ Like He Just Walked Through The Door

Papa's box 1974

Somewhere in the attic is a box....and another....and another......that looks like this one. Every year of my life until the year that he died, on Valentine's Day, he brought one home with him - one for her and one for me.

It was the same every year.

Wonderfully the same.

A red medium sized heart-shaped box of chocolates
with a red silk rose and a ribbon.

From Papa

It wasn't the chocolate I craved. Nor the box.
It was this....

As if on cue, he would enter with an eager smile and a faithful gift for both of us on February 14th. He would kiss my grandmother on the cheek as she hugged his laughing belly, cup my uplifted adoring face with the other hand and ask, "How's my girl?"

What a silly question.

He knew I was his girl.

I still am.

Today I asked my own sweet three-year-old granddaughter the same question: 

"How's my girl?" 

Her answer was a big sloppy kiss on the side of my cheek, and then the other, as if she knew I needed affection that only she could deliver, with an extra smack of "wipstick" smeared from one end of her face to the other now transferred to mine, she laughingly commanded, "Go look in the mirror, Mimi!"  And there it was. Two big love lips on both sides of my face, purposely planted by none other than "my girl."

It was the faithfulness of those boxes that made me love him so.

It's the memory of that faithfulness that teaches me how to love my own.

It's why I make sure she has heart-shaped boxes on Valentine's Day. She will have seasons in her life - as I have had recently - when there is no tangible presence of sentimental gifts, times she'll feel alone. I hope she keeps the boxes. This one from Papa has a reflecting surface in the middle. I can see my own face clearly in the box year after year. For the past forty years, no matter the season I'm in, when I pick up the box I not only see myself..... I see and feel how he loves me 

Still

And it feels like he just walked through the door

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Dona Nobis Pacem ~ Unbounded

Welcome to the 17th launch of BlogBlast For Peace aka Blog4Peace. Please sign the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this page so that we may read your beautiful peace posts and visit each other. You can even enter your social media post url.

Most peace posts/globes stream on social media platforms instead of blogs. Doing a hashtag search will get you to many more postings in the coming days. Thank you so much for continuing to speak peace in the world. 

Enjoy the view and be inspired! 

 Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere began in 2006 and is held annually on November 4th. Our theme for 2022 is "No Freedom. No Peace" and my peace post is called.... 

UNBOUNDED

I woke up smelling rain....and thinking of dahlias.Seeing a girl so newly married and in love that if you told her the sky was purple she would have believed it if it came from his eyes. I was that girl.
Standing beside the carport of our first modest house, I was planting petunias and dahlias, covered in straw mulch, stardust and dreams. Perched beneath the eave of a green house under a peculiar blue sky, I remember the smell of that rain. Wondering if I'd get my flowers in the ground before the clouds broke free.
 Soon the house would have new siding, brick window casings and a new front porch. And because the roof was flat and tarred, men from our church descended upon us early one Saturday morning, raising pitched rafters and putting on a new roof. It was like an old-fashioned barn raising in the suburbs! They wore blue overalls with pockets of tools and handkerchiefs. One carried Bible tracts in his back pocket and just before the work began, I heard a whole bunch of deacons high on my little green house say a hearty prayer and a big hallelujah amen (kind of like a Baptist football huddle but not...)

We suddenly had an attic and beautiful wood stained siding in the course of one day. I can still see my Dad up on the ladder, hammering and laughing with the motley crew, along with my father-in-law who covered his balding un-churched truck-driving head with a neck gator so that he could dodge impromptu Scripture-throwing and splinters at the same time.  I needed to spruce up the outside with bulbs and patches of prayed-in dirt. 
The year was 1979. I was expecting a baby and the move had been difficult. My mother-in-law moved boxes for me and put my house together. I just wanted to plant things in the ground.
The chorus in the shingled sky continued. They hammered. And sang. And prayed. I ran as fast as I could from flying nails - as fast as a pregnant woman could run - and served iced tea, carefully and slowly walking barefoot through the grass filled with tape measures and lumber, wondering how we would ever repay them for such kindness 
And then it started to rain

They kept hammering. But faster.

Everything in the universe is composed of five elements: wood, fire, earth, water and metal. I had all five elements on top of my house at the same time. It was like watching spiritual improv on my own personal green Mount of Transfiguration! Jesus told a crowd of people that His Father sends rain to the just and the unjust. During my green house days, I saw Him send rain on the churched and the un-churched. My neighborhood had never heard such.My house was transfigured in a day.My heart was changed forever.

My African water jug

Which brings me to why I think I know what my heart was trying to tell me this morning some forty-three years later when God as my Witness, I sat straight up in bed and smelled earthy rain clear as day. Not a cloud in the sky outside. But I'm sure I heard a thunderclap in my bedroom. It came from way back in the suburban days of newborns and baptisms, deacons and dahlias...
Two simple words have been floating around in my consciousness for about three years now and they won't let me go. 
Remove judgment.
The year of 2019 was a banner year of bodacious struggle, you see...literally raining down on my pencil head with a force so ungodly I didn't think I'd survive it  and that was before the pandemic began. I had a right to hate. I had a right to seek revenge. I had a right to....to.....undo myself.
Remove judgment.That's what Spirit said.
 I've been trying for three years to fine-tune that command. "But they did this..." Remove judgment. "And then they did that!!..." Remove judgment. "But they deserve to pay for what they did. They are the unjust. Right?"Remove judgment. 

Finally one day I asked why. And the answer I got was like unbounded water falling off a roof.

Because your freedom is at stake. 

The cloud that filled my room this morning

was the same cloud that kept those heavenly roofers hammering in the pouring rain

and is the same cloud that continues to transform me when life sends thunder and lightning.

Whenever I feel justified in judging no matter how justified it is

I hear those two words and stop myself lest it be my undoing

This morning my own sweet grandson gathered a pile of rocks, sticks and leaves (those elements...) and took them to the cemetery. He made an arrangement on top of Papa's marble headstone with great care and deliberation and I felt

the power of marble on marble, peace on peace, granite and wood and fire and earth

and water

and maybe the sound of hammers

My flower garden 1979

Watered with sawdust

no judgment

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The Eve of Dona Nobis Pacem in The Blogosphere ~ The Silence of Peace

It is the eve of Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere. Soon we'll see little blue peace globes flying all over the world. In some parts of the globe peace is already flying and sadly, war is waging. Nonetheless, peace is waging too. We do it every year. As is tradition, we will recall and repost the very first day we blogged peace in 2006 and the story that came forth. It's called The Silence of Peace ~ and well....let's let Papa speak. He's been waiting all year.

The Silence of Peace Papa's Marbles (2006)
They've been sitting on my piano for more years than I care to count, on the corner of the Kohler and Campbell my grandfather gave me when I was fourteen years old. After he died, I found them in a tattered and dirty bag at the bottom of a box full of his personal things. He wanted me to have them. His marbles.
Handmade rough-hewn marbles crafted from rock by my grandfather and his brothers. The year was 1920 and there was no money for toys.
I often wondered why he didn't leave them for a male member of the family. Honestly folks, it wasn't just until tonight - the Eve of Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere - that I discovered the answer. 
I know stranger things have happened.I just can't recall when.

I knew this post would not be written until the last moment. I made lots of notes but I just couldn't quite make it happen. It is still a little while before midnight in my part of the United States and I'm supposed to be spinning out a masterpiece of goodwill and peace prose - maybe a stunning poem like those we've already seen. A song, a lyric, a new tune.
Instead, Mimi Pencil Skirt wants to talk about rocks.
So I went into my study and I began to polish them. One by one. The bowl. The piano. The granite. How many times have I sat at that very bench and casually glanced into that bowl?Thousands. Song after song. Tune after tune. Lesson after lesson. Tear after tear.Papa - he heard it all.

He didn't have a lot of money it seems to me now, my grandfather. At the time though, he was the richest man I knew. And he has been on my mind this week more often than not. Well over six-feet tall and always impeccably dressed, my Papa was the most humble I've ever met. When he passed away I met scores of people who told me what he'd meant to them. "He helped me when I needed money......He gave me his shoes...." and on and on.
His kindness was not news to me. The fact that a large portion of the town showed up at his wake was, however, a stunning surprise. They were lined up outside for hours. They just kept coming from every part of our very southern, very segregated town. People from "across the tracks" in the poorest part of town met folks from "across the tracks" at Papa's funeral. Economic separation didn't matter this night. And I...oh, I was stunned. I didn't know I'd been sharing him all those years. He made me feel as if I were the only one in the world.
Strange, those marbles, all different sizes and shapes. Colors, too. Yet they've co-existed all these year right there atop the long-lovingly-played strings inside my piano - the one Papa used his savings account to buy for me - while he worked two jobs at the factory and made his time up on Saturdays when he missed work hours to drive me to my lessons in the afternoon. 
I was a bit different. Content with solitude. Always writing in endless journals and playing broody piano music. Papa didn't pamper me - although that's a disputed fact to this day in my family - what he did was more earth-shattering.
The one on top. That one. Different. That one. I know that's the very one he made. I'm sure of it.
When I think about peace and what it means to me, I always wander back to a time when I first felt it. Because I knew even on an unconscious level that world peace cannot - will not - be achieved without inner peace. Adversaries on both sides of the conflict have to have it. You can't weave magical tranquility out of thin air and conferences. Peace is a state of being.
It has a life and an energy of its own.
Real lasting peace is borne out of creative jumble and hard work. Victories are never really won by the one who holds the most power, wars are won, but lasting peace is not the result. Nothing good can ever come from power-at-play for the sake of power. It never lasts. There's always a hideous price.
Papa's marbles. Not a pretty one in the bunch.Every one brown or taupe. 

Almost every one
I started thinking this week about the times in my life when I first felt real peace. For me, it came in the presence of God at a very young age. Not because I am privileged or special. But simply because I was loved. Unconditionally.
Sometimes it takes just one personto unlock magic in someone else. I watched that kind of magic flow through my grandfather's life. He was in tune with who he was. He knew the simple meaning of love. He knew how to pray. I often wondered how other people sensed that about him, without the benefit of those life-giving hugs he saved just for me. 
He chose the color himself....Papa. He must have spent hours honing that rock.
I often went with him to backwoods church services. Informal revivals. Formal services. Anywhere there was special music and a spirit of God, he was there. Anywhere he was, I wanted to be. I can't explain it really. We would visit churches we'd never been to before and the minister would ask him to lead the invocation or say the benediction - even though they'd never met. How did they know he could pray? I knew he could pray....but how did they know?
Taking his hat off and bowing his head, he would very quietly hold audience with his Maker. It didn't matter how many people were listening. His prayers always began the same ways, "...Dear Gracious Heavenly Father....."No matter where. Or with whom. Or in front of whom.
Hat in hand. Head bowed. He knew how to reach God.And people sensed that when they met him. If peace can be worn like a garment then he was always finely clothed, my Papa.
One night he took me by the hand and led me to the altar with him. He knelt down on one knee, elbow resting on the other, and silently voiced his heart. I was right there with my arm tucked in the crook of his. I heard the whole thing and he never said a word.
He made them with his own hands. He molded them into shape.Created them and lovingly took care of them. He chose the color. Not a sonata or a novel. Certainly nothing brilliant or fancy.Just ordinary marbles. Ordinary rocks.
Tonight I'm sitting at a table writing stories on an electronic device that sends messages to a man in Canada about globe graphics and insomnia, making pots of endless coffee to stay awake, answering emails from Germany, London, China, New York, Oman and beyond. Could Papa have ever imagined such a thing?Did he?
What was he praying about all that time anyway?
Papa's marbles...there's something odd about them.
Oh, forget about it. They're just a bunch of rocks. You've got a story to write.Can't you think of something brilliant? It's past midnight and everyone has their peace globe up but you.
I struggled. There's something missing here, I thought. It's about Papa. I can't stop thinking about him. 
What would he say to me tonight?How would he pray?
The marbles.Look closer.
When it hit me I was way past the point of arguing with myself about miracles and such. I've seen too many come through my mailbox today to argue with God about that.

Do you see it?The blue one on top.
It looks like a globe.
Dona nobis pacem did not start with Mimi. It started in 1920 when a little boy in the rural southeastern United States decided to shape a small blue marble - for his granddaughter. 
************************
And that is the story of how peace globes began.We hope to see you this weekend for the 17th BlogBlast For Peace (Blog4Peace).Here's how to get your own peace globe.Peace Globe Templates












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