Making Peace in Troubled times
It’s nearly 2 AM on July 5th 2020 and fireworks of all types are still being heard and seen in our fair city. Many thoughts come to mind. First, I hope there’s at least one sober. Person involved in each of these celebrations because fire works and firewater are not the winning healthcare combo in most cases. SDecond, I’m wondering what really important things these people were doing before the witching hour—planting food for the hungry?—reading to little children or recording books for the blind?—knitting blankets for homeless veterans who will be needing shelter when the weather turns cold?—working on plans to integrate solar power, wind power and fossil fuels? Now if people were doing these things earlier in the day and had to push their fireworks later in the day—well okay. Next, I had a thought of gratitude based on the notion that these. Explosions are not gunshots or actual military weapons being fired. After all in so many places on our planet, attacks on humans take place day and night for years on end. All that thinking brought the conceptual caravan around to the lack of domestic battlefields here. In this vicinity or what some folks might call —-wait for it—-PEACE.
SO WHAT IS “PEACE?”
If all we expect seeking peace to be is maintaining a lack of open war are we settling for far less than what is possible? One would. Hope so. That being stated—what then are the standards that we might aim for in seeking this thing called peace? When we say
PEACE” what arwe speaking of? Well using PEACE as an acronym here are some ideas that might be fruitful. You are certainly invited and jouyfully invited to come up with your own and share if you feel inspired to do so.
Purposeful Empathy And Compassionate Engagement
Positive Enthusiastic Acceptance and Caring for Everyone
Pursuing Excellence And Changing Expectations
Promoting Equal Access to Community Endeavors
Preparing Everyone And Considering Everything
Pushing Envelopes And Celebrating Experimentation
Participating in Extended Actions after Creating Excitement
This is just a starter list, however it is important to note that each of these requires a common thing. While we sometimes confuse “peace” with calm—peace is not passive. It is not something limited to what is left over after all distractions have been removed. It most often requires focus on purpose and has internal and external components. Many times it is larger than a single individual while requiring an individual to create awareness and to engage in in actions with passion. Peace is for everyone and is a part of reality that emerges from spiritual strength or the growth of some combination of spiritual strength and community effort.
In short Peace is not something we get...it is something we seek and something we do.
So... after saying thank you for reading this far... “seeking Peace” deserves for than a day of definition and awareness of some of the terms found in the acronyms above—so the next four posts will give a few of these phrases a closer look
Welcome to PEACE WEEK 2020”
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