Laughing Lura on Tour 2010

2010! A Year of Peace-filled Possibilites!

What a pensive December it was-- a time for me to ruminate about my quilt journey since June. In teacher language, I took time to assess and evaluate but also, to stay put and to listen expectantly for next steps. Time out to think.

The quilt resided on Gary's Coffee Shop wall while I rested too. Its December presence brought continued awareness of the developing peace park in Eugene to relaxed customers drinking chai tea or eggnog lattes and to Last Friday Art Walk viewers. The peace sing-along was a hoot...lots of friends singing peace songs together, all led by the Harmony Quartet. During this quilt stop, U.S. Nobel Peace Prize winners' visions-of-peace postcards illustrated by middle schoolers were attached to the fabric surface for people to examine if they felt like it.

A Few Postcard Examples on the Quilt:

"My vision of peace is to destroy all landmines." Jody Williams, 1997.

"My vision of peace is for everybody to have food to eat, especially young children." Norman Borlaug, 1970.

"My vision of peace is that all women would have rights." Emily Green Balch, 1946.

"Everybody can be great because everybody can serve...you only need a heart full of grace...a soul generated by LOVE." Martin Luther King Jr., 1964

Guiding quotes have surfaced this month. Eleanor Roosevelt's call to work for peace is one I am adopting, and there are two others that are the essence of the next year of my travels outside the U.S. As I once more commit to action by fulfilling a teacher's promise, I will spread middle schoolers' visions of peace to adults who may have forgotten how peace really can look and sound. I will go where the joy is to be found.

1. At the height of laughter the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities- Jean Houston

2. When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. When action comes from another section, the feeling disappears. Rumi

Thus, Onward into 2010: Laughing Lura on Tour 2010. Was December a productive thinking month? Yes. I know one thing for sure. I won't run for City Council. (That's another story for another time.) There's not much of a river of joy or laughter in that possibility.