The Dewdrop Digest

The Dewdrop Digest
Connecting Children, Youth and Sangha
Clouds in Water Zen Center
Sunday, October 19, 2003

Becoming a peace-making family
Rebecca Janke shared some great ideas that would be wonderful to incorporate into our home practice.

A stand-out was the whole notion of consciously choosing to become a peacemaking family: a very compelling and powerful idea, and an excellent fit with our mission. Let us co-develop this idea throughout the rest of this program year, and, hopefully, forward into the future.

Gather your family together to talk about this! Here are some possible discussion items the path to becoming a peacemaking family:
· Say: Each of us, regardless of age or ability, can be peacemaker.
· Discuss the range of ways to make peace. Setting the table, helping a turtle, standing up for someone who's being teased, sharing, developing conflict resolution skills, mindfulness and meditation practice, using resources mindfully, picking up litter, and so on.
· Say: We can choose to become a peacemaking family.
· Say: Three types of peacemaking activities might be: cultivating inner peace, striving to live in peace and harmony with others, and creating opportunities for peace for plants, animals, minerals and people all over the world. [Comment: These are the three aspects of the Eightfold Path of Peace, as we are interpreting them this year; we are equating the Wisdom aspect with caring for the interdependent web of life. We can recognize that these three sorts of actions are not separate - for example, our personal practice of mindfulness and meditation is creating peace around us, not just "in" us.]
· Discuss: What would it look like if your family became a peacemaking family? What sorts of things would be happening? What would the atmosphere be? What would be new and different? What be preserved? What sorts of peace activities would be most exciting? The easiest to get going on? The most difficult to complete? The most meaningful for us?
· Choose which areas of peacemaking you want to focus on and where you will begin.
· Decide to be a peacemaking family.
· Launch yourselves as a peacemaking family with a peace action step (see below for ideas for family peace actions in two of the three peacemaking areas).
· Celebrate! A meal with candles, a photo, baking brownies?


Ideas for family action steps for "Peace begins with me"
· Set up a family altar. Maintain it beautifully and reverently.
· Perhaps, in your living space, each family member can identify a "place of their own", which might be a quiet place to read or daydream, or perhaps a place to breath, to find peace. For young children, it might be a blanket over a chair. For many children, it's their bed. The Preschool and K-1 classes are exploring this idea. Having a physical peace place is a metaphor for finding our inside peace place. For 2nd grade on up, it is great to articulate the metaphor. With youngers, we might simply help co-create little houses and let them experience it without labeling or analyzing it.
· Gather together daily for some sort of mindfulness practice. Ideas:
- Begin the day with a good morning song and a hug and saying "Let's make peace together today!"
- Offer incense. Light a candle. Sit and breathe together.
- Recite The Two Vows, The Five Wonderful Precepts, The Three Refuges and/or a Loving-Kindness Meditation
- Before bed, review the day, celebrate the peacemaking, mourn the trouble spots, and visualize the trouble spots with each person acting as a peacemaker (or Bodhisattva).
· Spend time out of doors each day, mindfully and joyfully.
· Bring mindfulness and reverence to your daily tasks of cooking and cleaning.

Ideas for family action steps for "Living in peace and harmony"
· Have regular family meetings. Celebrate what's going well. Find out what's not going so well, acknowledge feelings, validate needs, brainstorm ways to meet needs, choose solutions that work for everyone in the family.
· Use a talking stick or talking stone at family meetings. Pass it around; everyone listens to whoever is holding the stick. It encourages speaking from the heart, listening deeply, and showing respect for everyone's feeling and ideas.
· Keep a scrapbook of family peacemaking. Record your successes such as: working out a tough family issue, creating a space in you home (however small) for meditation or breathing or peacemaking, volunteering at a homeless shelter, eating more meals together.
· Use "I" messages which describe what happened, how you felt, what your need is, and what your request is -- rather than blaming others for not meeting your needs.
· Have regular fun time together. Go for a walk, eat popcorn in front of the fire, play cards, whittle, make muffins, do yoga, tell jokes and riddles from a book, read a book, cuddle! Remember: Video time does not count as together time.
Comment: We will be practicing and learning about the above and more during Winter Quarter when our focus will be on Wholesome Behavior.

Bake Sale: The Middle School Group is sponsoring a bake and craft sale today!!! Treat yourself and support for this fine community-within-a community!


posted by webmaster on 10/19/2003 01:32:00 PM | link