The season of peace
As the year draws to an end, we find ourselves seeking light in a season of darkness. We seek peace in a world of suffering. We seek peace amid tragedies in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, and Sudan, and here at home.
We seek peace in the face of the frenzy of marketers who urge us to buy, buy, buy. We seek peace weighed down by grief and loss. Indeed, this is a season of mixed emotions, a time when we can easily get pulled away from peace and hope, love and light. And, yet, I have found deep peace—ironically, metaphorically—returning home to a place I never imagined as “home.” This season of polarities finds me returned to the peace of my roots, living in a renovated 1896 farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania sheltered by towering pines. I look out any window and these ancient sentinels ground me, reminding me of my interdependence with the natural world and my deep resilience. Like these trees, I, too, have weathered the biting cold of winter and the searing heat of summer. I have faced times of drought and times of abundance. And yet, here I stand. Peaceful in spite of the dualities of life.
When I moved in November, I was greeted by the rustle of acres of corn, dried by the heat of the late summer sun and the autumn winds, awaiting the final harvest and the season of both fallowness and rest. The land invites you to draw strength from the earth, stillness and serenity.
The fields invite you to embrace the impending season of darkness and rest, an earthy time of fallowness that will yield to renewal come spring. This place whispers reassuringly, if you listen, that like these fallow fields, the wounded will heal, hope will rekindle, new life will be born.
The nights are cold and clear and crisp, as if simply breathing in the night air is itself a cleansing ritual. The night sky—jet black, pierced by starlight, bathed in moonlight. The sky ushers in a sense of wonder and awe, an experience shared by more than eight billion fellow star gazers, wonderers, wanderers, lovers, and dreamers. The stars, twinkling beacons connecting us to all of time and space, to our ancestors, and the simple peace of long forgotten ways.
I can’t claim that I sought and found inner peace. More accurately, peace found me. Peace invites us to enter her sacred space of stillness and harmony. Ancient pines promise healing and renewal, roots anchored deep in Mother Earth while sunlight dances playfully through their dew-drenched boughs. Fallow fields offer entry to the dreamtime and new beginnings, seeds planted in fertile soil.
Peace asks that we pay this gift forward and radiate peace and hope, love and light to all we meet. Peace insists that we are all connected. Peace tantalizes us with the potential of changing the vibrational energy of the world. She encourages the planting of flags and the power of declarations, “This is how I will bring peace on earth, goodwill to all.”
And, Peace beguiles us with a vision for a transformed world. “If only we all accepted this invitation to Peace. . . .”
Photo taken by Gretchen Martens
This reflection was written by Gretchen Martens she is an adventurer, author, artist, mystic, holistic healer, retreat leader, and spiritual companion. Drawing on her early years as an archaeologist, she describes herself as an archaeologist of the Soul, seeking out spaces that speak to the culture of place and the origins of our shared humanity. She finds herself drawn to places wild and remote, where people live simple lives of resilient happiness.
Recently returned from an eighteen-month sojourn in Belize, Gretchen has replanted herself in an 1896 farmhouse in Osterburg, Pennsylvania. Surrounded by corn fields and towering pines, she is finally manifesting a decades old dream of having a small retreat center for writing, creativity, and healing.