#flowersforpeace

Yesterday in the fourth meeting of the Core Shamanic Peace Laboratory, as every meeting, we journeyed to find the answer to what we can each do in the coming week, here in our daily Ordinary Reality, to aid in peace efforts during the invasion of Ukraine. This week's answer came quickly to me: #flowersforpeace.

I've been posting occasionally on my personal social media pages, as well as my accounts associated with Hjertehagen Shamanic Services, photos of flowers I've taken, mostly recently, and a call out hashtag #flowersforpeace - along with multiple other hashtags to draw attention to the beauty of flowers in this time of war, displacement, ugliness. This week my efforts will focus on increasing these posts, and finding hashtags that will resonate, in an effort to help the call for peace to resonate. I have begun to download some of my older photos to feature, and I will focus on the national flowers of various countries, beginning with Ukraine (sunflower) and Russia (chamomile). I'm fairly certain I've photographed the two together at some time, and I am determined to find that photo. Why?

The history of the two countries is inextricably linked. Some have used this as an excuse for the Russian affront to Ukraine's sovereignty. But this is 2022. Times have changed since the Rus people left Scandinavia and began their foray into a wider world, plying the rivers between the Baltic and Black Seas. (The Medieval Kievan Rus encompassed what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and part of Russia, and the three nations recognize the Kievan Rus as cultural ancestors.) Centuries have passed, and entire peoples have made decisions over that course of time, as well as more recently over the decades since the Soviet Union- and since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent demise of the Iron Curtain and dissolvement of that Union.

But we are not here for a history lesson! (There are some excellent resources out there, and I'd be happy to point you to some if you leave me a comment.)

We are one. In order for peace to prevail, we must all acknowledge each other individually but collectively as well. Imagine being a young soldier sent on a mission. You think you are protecting your country. So you have been told, this is why you sign on (if you are not conscripted.) Yet you are faced with a moral dilemma you never expected when you are given orders to bombard civilians in another, sovereign land. Imagine the fear.

War is complex. There are multiple sides to every story. Peace the same. Please share #flowersforpeace. You can find posts at https://www.facebook.com/Hjertehagen/ and at https://www.instagram.com/hjertehagenmoments/. Please share them. Please create your own posts too, if that is how you are called. Make no mistake: No matter how small you think your actions, they will have an impact. Give peace a chance. Thank you.

Floral display outside a shop in Victoria, BC, Canada - 2015, Lisa Cox photo