You can see all 52 peace pieces here — You can see all 52 peace pieces **here**

Yesterday was the first Monday in a year that I did not spend embroidering a small meditation on peace.

To be honest, it was kind of a relief. For the first time in 52 weeks I was not frantically trying to come up with an idea of how to describe or define or illustrate peace, or figure out how I could translate that idea as simply as possible into a 5”-square stitched work that I could actually complete in one day.

As the months went on, I feared I would run out of ideas long before the year was over.

As the months went on, and as the turmoil and tumult in our country and the world only deepened and grew, exponentially it seems, every day, I considered that stitching weekly about peace was about as futile and meaningful as trying to put out a raging wildfire with a cup of water and an eyedropper. And to be honest, when I listened to the news each day, I found myself saying and thinking things about… other people… that were decidedly not peaceful.

And as the months went on, I stitched peace through bombings, and broken treaties, and mass shootings, and the opioid crisis, and impeachment, and the breakdown of society and civility, and wars, and hate crimes, and everyday violence, and fear, and so much more.

In short, my year of stitching peace was not always very peaceful.

And yet.

I did think about and concentrate on peace. I thought about what makes me feel peaceful, what constitutes peace for me, for others. I weighed the contradictions of peace—is war always wrong? Is violence committed in the face of injustice or evil necessarily evil itself? Is it possible to strive for peace without ever creating or forcing conflict? Is seeking my own personal peace selfish in view of the suffering of others? Is it possible to work for the peace of all without doing my best to find or create peace within myself?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I know that I have to work hard every day to maintain my equilibrium, to not give in to despair when I think about all the massive social-cultural-political-historical-global-environmental forces that seemingly conspire against peace of any and every kind.

I know that every time in human history is difficult. Though it’s tempting to feel that these times are “the worst yet,” I know that other times have also been “the worst,” and that there are probably future “worst times” ahead of us.

So, what to do? I circle back to peace. The incredibly positive response I have gotten from people who have seen my peace pieces on line, or in person, tells me that we all crave peace, that seeing someone stand up for peace helps others to do so as well, or at least to take heart that all is not lost, not yet.

In short, where there is hope, there is peace. Hmmm. I might have to stitch that.

And now, I have a cardboard box filled with 52 pieces of cloth, each stitched with peace. Over the next few months I will assemble these individual pieces into a series of banners, which I hope to complete in time for the upcoming reprise of the Women Speak exhibit (with Meta Strick and Sarah Rosedahl), which we will present in Vermont in March at the Richmond Free Library and in April at the Barre Opera House. Beyond that, I plan to collect and publish photos of all 52 meditations in a perpetual day book/desk calendar that I hope to have available for sale by the end of the year.