Week 2: Peace - Saturday

There are particular writings that capture my heart at this time of year, books of poems and stories that can always be found on a table in my living room, close at hand to be read again and again. Amazing Peace by Maya Angelou is just one such poem. She wrote the poem especially for the White House Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in 2005 but her words are just as relevant in 2025 as they were twenty years ago.

Today to close off the second week of Advent I offer her poem in full along with my photo interpretation in an effort to proclaim peace and light the darkness.

Amazing Peace

"Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues."

"Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening."

"We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?

We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?" 

"Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship."

"It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground."

"Hope is born again in the faces of children"
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors."

"In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.

The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs."

"We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds."

"We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace."

"Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community."

image by license from Pixabay.com

"It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth’s tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace."

"We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother. 

Peace, My Sister. 

Peace, My Soul."

poem: ©2005 Maya Angelou
Listen to the late Maya Angelou recite Amazing Peace here. 

photos: ©2025 April Hoeller, unless otherwise noted

Week 2: Peace - Friday

The storage containers have been lowered down from the attic. Huge bins have been hauled up from the basement. Each one is filled with baubles and trinkets, garlands and children's crafts - a history of tradition and memories.

Some are showing their age. Yet another vintage ornament shatters in my hand and I cry. A few of our children's school crafts are hardly holding together, but I haven't got the heart to discard them, because I know the stories. I once held the hands of the people who gifted my home with all of these treasures. 

The Adventstollen, pfeffernusse, almond spritz, gingerbread, and three different kinds of shortbread, including my mother's shortbread recipe have all been baked. Along with all the rich buttery flavours, a bounty of rich memories of the aromas and treasures that came from her kitchen fill my heart.

Each heady baking aroma evokes memories of my family - from the sublime to the ridiculous, the poignant to the marvelous.

Christmas 1972

Hubby with our two, 1987

Granddaughter #1, 2019

Granddaughter #2, 2021

Two sets of little hands, 2024 

There is a practiced ritual to all this work of Advent yet there is nothing ordinary about it. It is a sensory feast that evokes stories of old while at the same time adding new ones. It is an annual open-hearted opportunity to look closely, listen carefully, inhale deeply, savour slowly, touch and be touched gently, and experience that peace that passes all understanding.

©2025 April Hoeller

Week 2: Peace - Thursday

 Cover me - I'm going in...

Today is the day for me to head into town to tackle the last of the Christmas gifts, the ones that must be explored in person before buying. Even though I have a detailed list and a very organized plan of attack, I'm not going to like it at all. In fact, I'm thinking of donning sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones for this venture into the December retail universe.

The Mall and the Big Box stores out there in the concrete jungle, and now appearing in flashing banners across laptop screens, work very hard to get us to join the wide-eyed throng mesmerized into believing that ALL of us,

                             will have enough time and money, and that

                                   we will all have fun,

                                         we will all be warm,

                                               we will all be safe and

                                                      we will all be truly loved,

IF

we just buy!

 

Well I've reached that age/stage of life when downsizing -- getting rid of the surplus stuff we already have -- is far more important than acquiring any new stuff, so all this hype of the latest and greatest eye-popping, mind-blowing electronic widget, app or platform is tiring at best and at worse downright aggravating. There is nothing peaceful to be found here.

My father's traditional Christmas morning words float back to me...

After about ten minutes of frenzied activity around the tree -- you know the chaos three children can uncrate in ten minutes, -- Dad would bluster into the midst of that scramble waving a big green garbage bag and bellowing:

 

"All right girls! Keep down the junk!"

Underneath all the frenzied activity, all the noise, all the glitz and glitter, lies a profound craving for simplicity, and a yearning for deep peace, not just in my heart and home, but in all hearts and homes.

Take 5 minutes this day to

                          stop – step out of commercial whirlwind;

                                     look – seek out your light shining in the darkness;

                                                 and listen – what is it that waits to be born in you?

Oh and, keep down the junk, eh?!

©2025 April Hoeller

Week 2: Peace - Wednesday

 My peace candle has been struggling to maintain little more than a flicker. I've tended the wick, cleaned away the excess wax but still the flame is weak. It's a remarkable reflection of my feelings about peace. 

Heartwarming messages about Peace. Nice, comfortable, serene words, images, and stories that kindle a divine tranquility of inner peace just don't work for me this year.  As much as Peace begins with me, it extends way beyond my own little corner in my own little world. It's about peace on earth. Nice stuff for sure, but it feels more like an impossible dream these days. 

"You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist." Indira Gandhi

Peace on earth is anything but peaceful. It is messy, awkward, and unstable. It lasts but a moment, then like a wave on the sand it slips back into the sea and must be re-made again.

There is nothing everlasting about it, this side of eternity.

Peace is hard work. It is costly on so many levels not the least of which is human life. It bears no resemblance to greeting card sentiments or the songs of angels.

"One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic pressure to which people find themselves subjected. One of the most practical things to be done in the world is to seek arrangements under which such pressure may be removed so that opportunity may be renewed and hope may be revived."

Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925

Peace demands justice, justice that is underpinned by a desire for reconciliation not revenge.  Peace also demands trust. Ah, there's the rub - Trust. Not un-involved armchair acquiescence or apathy, not blind by any means, but an informed, engaged trust that is shared, mutually valued and respected. 

"If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Trust leaves a piece of me and all of us hanging out there, unprotected, vulnerable to injury, loss, or even death. Those are mighty high stakes. But life is a high stakes endeavour, demanding my best efforts each day to respect the dignity of every human being, including myself, and to care for the whole of creation.

That Peace on earth may seem to be an impossible dream but that is no excuse for not daring to Trust, daring to do Justice and making Peace whenever and wherever I can.

Easy? Not at all.

Possible? Just maybe... 

©2025 April Hoeller

Week 2: Peace - Tuesday

At this early time of the morning I am content to sit in my kitchen and lose myself in stillness as I watch the sun awaken the land around with light. Here in this moment it's easy to be at peace. 

After a time in that stillness I became aware of a whisper arising from somewhere deep in my own wilderness. "Helloooo? Anybody home? There's some stuff in here that needs attention. There's some junk that you need to get rid of."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Next thing I'm hearing is that thing about peace beginning with me. Blah, blah, blah. Why do I want to gag when I hear that? I know it's true, but I don't really want to sort through the old crap. I mean 

Some of those old grudges remain  strangely savoury delicacies, as Frederick Buechner noted:

"To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savour to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king."

 The theologian also pointed out that, 

"...what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

So yes, this is a good time to do a little straightening out in my personal wilderness.  It's time to banish a bunch of those disappointments, the hurts, the failures - including the ones that I thought I had dispatched but somehow have crept back into my headspace!! The ones that long ago yielded all the lessons they had for me to learn. It's time to clear some space where I can wait in stillness, listen, and watch for the moments that scatter the darkness and breathe peace into my heart.

Shalom.

©2025 April Hoeller

Week 2: Peace - Monday

 

This

Christmas

mend a quarrel,

Seek out a forgotten

friend. Dismiss suspicion,

and replace it with trust.

Write a love letter. Share some

treasure. Give a soft answer. Keep

a promise. Find the time. Forgo a grudge.

Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you

were wrong. Try to understand. Examine your

demands of others. Think first of someone else.

Be kind; be gentle. Appreciate. Laugh a little. Laugh a

little more. Express your gratitude. Gladden the heart of a

child. Welcome a stranger. Take pleasure in the beauty and the

wonder of Earth.

Speak your love.

Speak it again.

Speak it yet

Once again.

poem by Howard W. Hunter

©2025 April Hoeller

The Second Sunday of Advent

Snow is falling outside my door on this somewhat frosty (-4°C; 25°F) morning. Inside, my Advent Candles sit on the long harvest table in the midst of the jumble of busy wildness that is my kitchen, the place where I spend most of my time. I light the first candle - hope - and then stop. 

The second candle signifies peace and I can't bring myself  to give it light. All is really not at all right in the world. This whole peace thing is a bloody mess and has been for too many for too long! Is there any point in this world gone mad with aggression to even entertain the concept of peace however symbolic it may be? 

I find myself wandering back to the old story, the one that has angels, and good news, and wonderful signs. It feels comfortable, peaceful. But of course the news of the day 2000+ years ago was not that much different from today. Lots of bloodshed, death, persecution, and dirty dealing.
And yet, she dared to imagine peace. 

Advent stands in the thick of my December life, in the disorder that is the world today and asks me to dare to open my arms and heart to the way of peace, to imagine.

"You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one."

John Lennon: Imagine (have a listen) 

So I light the second small candle, right in the middle of my wild busy kitchen and dare to imagine.

Peace begins with me.

(And when it comes to lighting the darkness, two candles are better than one!)

©2025 April Hoeller