The irony of peace (#SmallWonder)

I nearly laughed out loud when I saw it this evening. The beautifully rusted ship anchored alongside the shore, it's side bearing the painted name: Angelic Peace.

Yeah, right?

I'd fled here in a state of desperation bordering on anything but peace. More like the thirst for peace. Or even a sip of it, a whiff of it... or, the sight of it painted on an old metal ship.

Ok, sure. I'll take it in whatever form I can get it.

So I came, bearing all the names that press in with their paint brushes to define me at any given moment these days; many of them, part of the process of healing, transition, becoming; others, names I barely give a nod to, hoping they'll not stick around.

Weary. Impatient. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Alone. Grieved. Numb. Disconnected. Distracted. Not enough. 

And I sat down on a fallen tree, in the presence of an offshore Angelic Peace, and soaked from a distance, breath by breath, its invisible strokes across my skin.

Peace.

Peace be with you.

Peace be in you.

Peace anchor you.

Peace.

I watched a flock of coots, their black bodies peppering the water around the ship. And the few stray cormorants, bobbing and swimming and fishing, alighting in a propellant of ash colored wings. It was this sight that finally did it, bringing me to tears at the end of the day.

How they flew with such grace and freedom and skill, the way they always had; the way they assumed they always would. And I thought of the 11,000 like them in Portland that may soon be shot from their nests, shot in flight, because of humans refusing to assume responsibility for human error. And those birds have been marked to pay the fine.

Still, tonight these cormorants swim and fish and fly beneath a beautiful, rusted proclamation of peace while the weary-hearted world goes on and cars inch along traffic-clogged streets and humans plot violence against each other and all manner of created things.

And still, peace hovers close by, anchored in the waters.

Let it be, I whisper. Let it be so.




Linking up with Kelly and the Small Wonder community.