Next week we celebrate the Lake County Summer of Peace with opening celebrations at both ends of the lake on Friday: Lakeport”s Library Park at 4 p.m. and Clearlake”s Austin Park at 7 p.m. Summer of Peace is what we as a community make of it. Despite awkward and expensive logistics in getting around the lake, Clear Lake is the center of our existence ? a serene, remote and exquisite mountain-lake region that invites community into a cohesive whole.
We are in many ways, overcoming our distances, becoming one county with greater possibilities for the extension of our county”s natural beauty into the unified flow of its residents.
Yet we are also separated by conditions of our time: sectarian high technology that makes us think we are close when we have many friends on Facebook; the exclusions of money, especially during a recession when income disappears; the settled belonging of early families juxtaposed with the new Bay Area influx; political or social vetting; Hollywood competition in a fast-expanding talent pool ? all old traditions and cultural habits that may not be compatible with peace. If not sensitively examined and resolved or redirected through miracles of dialogue, they divide a county, state or nation into the extremes we see today.
Frequently, we see peace as an absence of war, but, it is more. It”s an absence of the threat of violence. Despite the horrors stateside and internationally in today”s news media, in a broader context (but, ironically, closer to home), the violence threat can be as subtle as the confluence of reductions in meaning felt by each of us by such minimizations as being “damned with faint praise.” It is not just the absence of hitting, kicking or physically injuring another, but the trauma to individuals and groups from dismissal, exclusion, gossip, blame or outright rejection and contempt. Such actions or inactions cause deep psychological and spiritual injury resulting in depression and suicide, as we see in tragic reports of ostracized or bullied children.
Peace is a conscious choice for others as well as ourselves, even when we are free from overt war. It is a gift of spirit that arises from insight, compassion and a deeper truth from the heart. The Summer of Peace suggests a kind of living peace that mandates continuous inner-reflection ? a time to focus on the good forces of our nature and spiritual opportunities and on how we may unwittingly contribute to community pain.
May the Summer of Peace remind us to seek deeper into our healing propensities and for conscious living with peaceful resolutions as both the means and the goal of everyday life. May we take gentle steps toward cultivating sacred relationships and eliminating complexities that ignored, divide our community, our county and our country.
Pomo Elder Thomas Brown will open the Lake County Summer of Peace program on Friday with a Pomo prayer in Pomo language. In a letter I wrote that ran in Friday”s paper, I wrote the incorrect name and I offer my apologies.
Taira St. John
Lakeport
