People seemed to like this email I sent out...

...so I guess I should add it to my blog.

In the brief midwinter, we dare to celebrate. Today, after tai chi, and after the breakfast we have after tai chi, we sat for a long time in the garden at the Crossroads Cafe, which usually contains families with children who play safely in that enclosed and friendly space. I noticed a big family around one table, clearly a warm and intelligent bunch of humans, and from their conversation, it was clear that they were Jewish. Code Pink friends arrived with rectangles of cloth on which we were to write appropriate and positive words as they would then be strung on lines, as with Tibetan prayer cloth that are hung out to endure all weather until they disintegrate. These lines of "prayers" -- our efforts to create positive, healing sentiments -- are to be taken with a large contingent of Code Pink women about to make another trip into Gaza. For example, one of mine read: "Two Nations, One Hope: Peace."
Soon the sweet children from the Jewish family came over and wanted to know what we were doing and why, and they asked if they could also make some of the prayer cloths, and soon we were one group, writing messages, drawing, discussing what colors to use, the children outstripping us in the number of prayer cloths they made and making creative suggestions, coming up with their own messages, one girl calling for justice on one that she created. As you may can surmise, it was a moment of serendipity -- one that could not have been arranged or predicted -- a sweet gathering. It was wonderful to see children eager to participate in such a task, and more understanding of peace, perhaps, than those they were helping, so adult and overwrought. Something that could be and ought to be perfectly "natural" drew us into its circle, the circle that is so seldom completed with such felicity.
To wish that we all might have a luminous and illuminating Winter Solstice, I am calling back to life a Winter Solstice drawing from many years ago where this grinning fellow seems to be giddy, having a peace dove on his brain!