Prioritize Peace: A Call for Courage
Many of us aspire to create a peaceful and meaningful life. What stops us? The busy life of just getting by? Not knowing how or what to do? The harsh reality is that the pain of divorce, family violence, hunger and homelessness haunt our homes and communities. Death and destruction due to violent conflict ravage our nations and our planet. There is no escaping these harsh realities because we all have pain and anger and destructiveness. This is a call for courage, the courage to stop pointing the finger, the courage to stop giving lip service and money, the courage to become the answers we would like to see.
This message is for women and men who know in their deepest heart of hearts that there is a different way, a different way to solve conflicts and to create a world of cooperation and sharing. This is not a call to promote a social or political agenda. It is not even a call to a religious or spiritual practice. This is a call to promote a culture of peace that includes all social, political and religious views. This is a call to prioritize peace. It is a call to transform our culture of fear and violence. I call for your courage, the courage to discover peace within yourself. I call for your courage to let your inner peace be the foundation for creative and life-giving solutions to the many difficulties that face us all, personally and globally. The answers are available, and might even be simple.
I call on you who are reading this now to prioritize peace. I do not mean become a doormat. I do not mean accommodate the destruction of your soul. I do not mean disappear or keep quiet or avoid making waves. Peacemaking is characterized by strength. Prioritizing peace means, knowing where it lives in you, creating peaceful solutions, and acting peacefully. Prioritizing peace can be simple, but requires discipline and persistence.
To know where peace lives in you means becoming aware of the place in you that is calm, spacious, open hearted and deeply knowing. If you don’t experience anything internally that you might call peace, consider going on a quest to find it. Such a journey might begin simply, by taking a deep breath at the end of the day.
What would you create out of your peace? Creating peaceful solutions begins by listening deeply to others, speaking without blame, engaging in dialogue, and seeking reconciliation. It continues by reflecting on the specifics of what a solution would look and feel like. You do not have to be an expert, you just have to know what you want instead of the problem. Extra meaning can be added your solutions by wishing them for both yourself and for everyone in a similar situation. It might be as simple as telling someone you love what they mean to you.
Peaceful action flows easily once you have found peace within yourself and once you have envisioned a peaceful solution. Learn to trust your intuition and your heart. Observe how the ways of peace reveal themselves to you. It might be as simple as eating when you are hungry and sleeping when you are tired. Believe in the ripple effect. Every compassionate and peaceful act can become an inspiration to others to do likewise. It may have meaning beyond what you will ever know. No act of peacemaking is too small or too large. Anything that comes into your mind is a step just the right size to be taken by you, to promote peace in a world that sorely needs it.
Sarah Hartzell together with Karen Latvala are co-directors of Circles of Ten: Women for World Peace. Their mission is to promote peace by gathering in circles to identify, carry out and make public acts of courageous peacemaking. To find out more about their program or to add your story of peacemaking to their website visit www.peacecircles.net. To receive a free copy “Peaceful Ways” , to schedule a free session of peace coaching or to book Sarah or Karen for a talk or workshop, write info@peacecircles.net .
|
