I started with a story once upon a time
about a little tow-headed, blue-eyed girl
who always lived in her mind.
She escaped from the world’s chaos,
but she never escaped being anxious and scared.
“Peace,” she said. “All I want is peace.”
As she got older, she lived in a black, white, and gray world
giving up, for the most part, living in her mind.
She felt the outside chaos much more, of course –
the moving and adventures with college, marriage, divorce,
traveling, working here and there, and people dying.
Throughout out it all, she said, “Peace. All I want is peace.”
Sooner than expected, she was no longer a little girl or even middle-aged.
She practices meditation and presence and learns to live with body and mind
inside herself and outside in the colorful, chaotic world, too.
She stops. She touches trees. She dances.
She breathes in orange, yellow, pink, and red sunrises and sunsets.
She embraces the roiling storms.
She accepts, she allows, she lets go, and she lets in.
She discovers she is held through it all.
She sees a rich garnet aura and numinous, lacy wings extended wide.
“Peace,” she says. “I finally find peace, and it comes with joy and wonder.”
