Dear John,

We hope you are safe and warm wherever you find yourself in these early days of 2025. With unprecedented storms in the southeast, and the devastating fires in LA, so many are struggling to find safety and comfort. We hope that you and the ones you love are out of harm's way.

On January 1, Jodie Evans led the Local Peace Economy call to talk about commitment. She opened by sharing a poem by Nora Bateson (see P.S. below). We discussed how to reframe and pivot from being used by all that is presented to make us anxious and distracted to attending to weaving community as a place to speak and listen, to connect with humanity instead of the distortions and stories we cannot affect from where we are.  

Reframe and pivot became our commitment.  To cultivate a sense of peace and a homecoming for the heart.  If WE don’t it won’t happen.  We are possibility.  We are hope.  

When the craziness of the external world is pulling you in, what is your commitment to yourself, and your community? What is your commitment to life?  Just the question pivots us away from being used. 

We did not to record this call in order to create a container of intimacy for thoughtful sharing.

Our next Local Peace Economy online gathering is thisWednesday, January 15th.

Inside of all of us is the instinct to care, to love, to be connected to one another and our planet. Most human beings hold these values very tightly to their hearts—and yet, why doesn’t the world, and the dominant culture, reflect that?

Reflecting on our daily lives, and the choices we make, can show us that we are participants in our own separation—we are upholding the dominant culture, rather than upholding our values, with every action that plays into consumerism and supports extractive systems.

Granted, the richness of culture has been privatized, sanitized, dehumanized, emptied, and tortured out of us, collectively. This is not our fault, and not of our choosing. Becoming aware of this does grant us the power to change our own behaviors and make new choices—choices that support a local peace economy and align with our values.

On January 15th, we will be gathering to unpack our cultural programming together by looking at tangible behaviors in our everyday lives. We will ask of ourselves and each other, how are we participants in our own separation? And how can we find the instincts buried within us that want connection, and nourish them into our daily lives?"

Join us in for this conversation Wednesday, January 15th at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT as we learn together.

UPCOMING Local Peace Economy Gatherings:

• February Local Peace Economy Writing Workshop (2/3)
• March Local Peace Economy Writing Workshop (3/3)

Other supportive resources:

• Local Peace Economy Wiki
• Local Peace Economy Padlet — add yourself and see who is near you!
• Video introduction to the workbook
• Download The Local Peace Economy Workbook (free digital version)
• Purchase The Local Peace Economy Workbook (physical copy)
• The Local Peace Economy website
• CODEPINK Radio Ep. 242: The Local Peace Economy
• CODEPINK Radio Ep. 256: What is the root of peace?

We hope to see you on January 15th.

With care,

Jodie, Marie, Daisy & Cameron

P.S.   Jodie shared a poem by Nora Bateson in the last LPE call, and we thought you might enjoy it as well.

Morale

When the betrayal of friends has punctured the gourd of my soul, and I am leaking out life,

When the meanness of name-calling and the long wounds of history make me wish I were a small rodent living underground,

When the tidal wave, the earthquake, the drought and the flood are all coming at once,

When the metallic ideas of a world high on technology make my lungs freeze,

When the cold distance of the logic of getting through a day of grids, schedules and protocols becomes predictably claustrophobic,

When my sleep thins with worry and looping wires of remorse,

When the children’s eyes grey with futures where they only see chaos, and as their mama I cannot help find the chroma, the blush, the glow to grow into,

When the bloodstains of several hundred years of exploitation are revealed to be not only in every aspect of my day, but also inside me:

And the embers of verve and morale go dark in my belly,

And I cannot find an entry or an exit,

And I cannot place myself anywhere that does not make it all worse-

And I am both malnourished and overfed,

And appetite for life quits me,

And I am disgusted,

And I am disgusting.

Then the shine of rain on newly washed leaves is something like grace,

The curvature of my childrens’ cheekbones is a marvel of creation,

The coarse calluses of my beloved’s hands comfort raw isolation with warm skill and strength of knowing as only hands know.

The birdsong awakens my nervous system like moonlight flickering on water,

The immense history of intergenerational tending in a single recipe for soup, is itself the medicine; a broth of ancient touch,

Then the devotion present in waking up tomorrow and feeding the dog sweetens, breaks open that gourd to spill my nectar of care recklessly,

Then all the creatures, with their fur and slime and toes and fins and fangs and whiskers and babies and illnesses… come into a vision of adoration, fascination, wonder and ubiquitous sacred performance.

I am living in a song of a trillion tones:

A mural covering in color,

A theatrical drama of overlapping stories leaping forward and backward in time,

A ceremony so profound its reverence is piercing,

A poem written in fruit, bacteria, soil, bark, and sun,

A magic spell, a potion, a deep secret cloaked in darkness and sparkles.

A lovestory gushing with longing, lust, and exploding in contact, skin to skin.

A sculpture of movement in differing rhythms some in stone-time, some in dragonfly-time, resonating, shaping, forming…

A volcanic urge bubbling from the center of life itself pulsates through me.

And I am again animate, again going, again again-ing…

As every moment is a remembering that I will do everything,

Give everything,

To life.