|
The Springtime of Peace
The deeper beauty of spring is its process. In winter's last days,
as the sun warms the earth, each
root and branch awakens to the patterned memory of who it is and
what it can be. Life stirs and
nature's growth in turn awakens all of us to the glories of being
fully alive.
Consciousness awakens in much the same way, doesn't it? One moment,
everything is dark and still.
Growth begins and we are excited by movement and its vibrant promise
of what is to come.
I have a sense of our world awakening to peace: not a blind pretense
that we are coming up roses,
but a soul-deep vision of the seeds of peace within us, just waiting
for the warmth and light
needed for them to flourish. In the quiet stillness of centering
prayer and meditation, we connect
with this warmth and light, and become it. Our joy sweeps across
green valleys and white-clouded
blue mountains kiss the sky.
That's how it was for Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi,
Mohammed, Mother Theresa, Buddha and
so many others who became our great peacemakers. They were divinely
illuminated in the silence and
carried this peaceful inner light back into our world.
I remember the power of this impulse in the 1960s and see it taking
hold again today, as people
tire of war and destruction. It is a telling co-incidence that Mel
Gibson's "The Passion of the
Christ" comes along now to rip away the veils concealing our
brutality. When people see in this
movie the raw atrocity of violence, and know it for the monster that
it is, then perhaps we will
begin to reject it on our airwaves and refuse war in our lives and
as a nation.
This awakening to peace is deeply needed in our suffering country,
and I believe our silent prayers
have brought an opportunity to choose a new symbol of who we are, in
the U.S. Department of Peace.
It is an impulse whose time has come, for within it is the potential
to shift the consciousness of
war to peace.
The Department of Peace, initiated by two spiritual peacemakers,
Marianne Williamson and Dennis
Kuchinich (D-Oh), holds peace as an organizing principle in our
society. The DoP would teach
conflict resolution in schools; address domestic violence, child
abuse, mistreatment of the elderly, and other issues of cultural
violence; monitor arms sales and weapons of mass destruction; and in
every way seek to prevent conflict, determine the root causes of
violence, and increase our
national security.
By raising the torch of peace, the DoP has stirred up some
fundamental questions for each of us to
answer: Is there within us a compartment of peace or a compartment
of war? Is it time to release
our fearful struggle for power, position and possessions, in which
we accept conflict and violence
as ways of life? Can we shift to the life-enhancing perspectives of
the heart and soul: that we are
one humanity connected to a web of Spirit in which each person,
drawing sustenance from this web,
is fed by an unlimited abundance that supplies more than enough to
satisfy us all?
Some 44 percent of all Americans are waiting for a messiah to save
us from ourselves, when all we
need to do is awaken to the divine life force within us and grow
into the peaceful, loving and
awakened beings that we are meant to be, as Jesus and other
enlightened masters have taught us.
Do you feel this inner impulse? Just listen quietly to see. If an
inner light urges you toward
peacemaking, then perhaps it is time to act: if not to support the
non-partisan Department of Peace
campaign (dopcampaign.org), then to express your need and desire for
peace in another way, so that
peace can make your valleys green and you can raise the torch of
peace in our world.
Each of us is an instrument of the peace awakening on Earth right
now. May we experience it deep
within and stir it in others, so that our springtime of peace
blossoms and lifts us into the
Perfection that pours life into every being.
©2004, Eagle Life Communications. All rights in all media reserved.
Judith Pennington is an internationally published writer, spiritual
teacher and author of The Voice
of the Soul: A Journey into Wisdom and the Physics of God, a
critically acclaimed book on the step- by-step evolution of the soul
and consciousness. Visit her website, www.eaglelife.com, to sign up
for her free e-newsletter and paid-for e-zine, OneWorld, whose
second issue is a beautiful resource
of the art, poetry, visions and principles of peacemakers and peace
groups helping to bring about a
new Earth.
|
|
