High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘peace’

You think it’s a private matter?  Those feelings you’re holding in your heart?
Not so.  They radiate for miles.

I’m not making this up.

Why would you think skin could hold them in?  Their juice floods every cell.  Dogs know.

And it’s not just the juice, it’s the sound of them, the color, the electromagnetic waves broadcasting exactly what you’re playing.

Miles, I tell you.  They’ve measured it.

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?  What are you beaming out there, pumping into the world?   Are you emitting hope?  Pushing out peace?  Streaming love?  Radiating joy?

Cool!  Power it up!

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Because it floats into being from the very same Yes that gives rise to all things, happiness can sigh the most beautiful, contented sigh.

Even when it drifts over the broken things, the wounded, even when it wears the colors of compassion for the beings who suffer or are lost and in pain, happiness knows no resistance.

It enfolds and accepts things just as they are, for its vision focuses broadly, taking in reality’s grand sweep, putting specks in eternity’s context, understanding that the fullness must, of course, contain it all.

And so happiness glides, effortlessly and free, and croons its lullabies, its harmonies of peace, and deep, deep joy.

Interpret it as you will.  Call it allegory, call it myth.  Take the current account as literal truth.  It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that inside you, something is drawn by the Light.  Something in you longs for the Word that will make all things clear, give you hope, give you peace, let you understand, heal you, love you, set you free.

And once, we are told, the Great Yes took on human form and came to live among us, offering all this and more, pointing the way, living it for our benefit.

And even though its passage through the sands of time and across a multitude of cultures has woven countless versions of the tale, its essence remains.  Its truth lives within us still and sings to us in the darkness, bringing hope, kindling the flame of faith, of belief that all our highest ideals are rooted in it somehow, and through it will one day blossom and bear fruit.

Past the farthest reaches of our reason, beyond our limited capacity to understand, the Great Yes speaks to us still, to our hearts, to our spirits, to our souls.  It beckons us.  It radiates love and joy.  It tells us we are one with it, and with each other.

In it lies fulfillment, and peace, and freedom, and boundless potential.

And on this night, we sing of the legend, we sing of the story.  We sing of the birth of Love and Light, of Peace and Good Will, personified in a being who took on human form that we might be truly known.  And our hearts overflow with the joy of it, and burst with a grand Alleluia, in praise, in worship, in thanksgiving.

And from the heart of the cosmos, the Source of it all, the Giver of Life, echoes back our joy and, calling us each by name, whispers, “All is well, my child.  Be at peace. You are loved.”

Let there be peace in our hearts.
May our minds rest in its truth.

Let there be peace between us.
May our love dissolve all separation.

Let there be peace in our families.
May we see each other’s beauty.

Let there be peace between neighbors.
May we hold one another in high regard.

Let there be peace between enemies.
May they see beyond their disputes.

Let there be peace between nations.
May we see our common longing.

Now, as never before,
May peace reign.

Peace flows as calmly as a winter stream, as deep as the sky.  Riding our breaths, it fills the spaces between them.  Riding life’s music, it’s the song between the notes.

It’s the presence of harmony and connection, weaving all things into an endless, dynamic whole.

It’s the grace that underlies being, the motion that makes all things sing.  It’s the ever-changing rhythm of the dance, the river of life’s flowing seen through eyes of acceptance and love.

Peace is the whispering of the great Yes, the infinite affirmation that all is, and will be, well.

It unfolds its gifts to us when we trust life as it comes, when we embrace its mystery and echo back its Yes, letting go of our need for it to be anything other than it is, letting ourselves take it as beautiful and perfect beyond our ability to see.

And when we accept the gifts that peace would offer, it wraps around our wounds and heals them.  It dissolves our fears and leaves us valiant and free.  It bathes us in its beauty and makes us fresh and new.

Its right here, now, this very season, this very moment, gift-wrapped with joy and tied with ribbons of love, offering itself to us for a single, silent yes.

What a pageant!  What a festival!  Symbols and traditions from every corner of the globe all poured together into a few days at year’s end in one rollicking, ringing, joyous celebration.

All to say, “Be merry; be of good cheer.”

All to bring light to the darkness.

All to wish for ourselves and for one another peaceful hearts, filled with good will.

May the spirit of the season flame within you, lighting your way with hope and warming your heart with love and joy.

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Before the winter comes, before the first snow, we stand stripped to our essence.

We stand, another round of seasons added to our girth, holding the memories of the bursting spring, the leafy dance of summer, autumn’s grand hoorah as if they were dreams.  But we know they were much more than dreams.  We lived them, and they grew us.

Now, as night descends, we stand with no distractions to keep us from unraveling the seasons past, absorbing their meanings into our beings.

“How rich we are,” we whisper to one another, “and how lucky.”  The earth beneath us sings lullabies and in the sky the first star appears.  Here, before nightfall, joy descends and we are wrapped in gladness and peace.

For the first time ever, the winds of war tore across the entire globe.  But on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the hostilities came to an end.

Twenty million people had died in the Great War’s battles.

Since then, we commemorate the day in remembrance of the lives lost in all wars.  And in our hearts we long for the day when love will rule and wars will be no more.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” said Gandhi.
Be the peace.  Be the joy.  Be the love.

Sweet Serenity whispers in dressed as evening, her breath full of lullabies.  She scatters invisible flowers as she glides across our minds and they melt like snowflakes and taste like peace.

She drapes us with silk woven from hummingbird wings and the sighs of sleeping babies. And as she bends to kiss our foreheads, her eyes are filled with stars, each one telling a story about how we are loved, and have been, and will be, beyond the reach of time.

Softly, she pulls the night over us, purple and deep. And it dances with dreamless dreams and carries us past suns and galaxies to a place of wholeness and knowing.  And we hear Serenity’s lullabies echoing all around us.  “Be at peace, my children,” she whispers.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

“There is no road to peace; peace is the road.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

With the fires of contention burning all around us, and those on each side passionately heaping on fuel, it’s difficult not to jump into the fray.

We all want righteousness.  We all want justice to prevail.  We all want to give ourselves to that which will bring freedom and light to all humankind.

Frankly, we all want passion, too.  It’s the lure of passion that urges us to join the battle.

But ponder this.  The voices which continue to echo through the centuries—the words that have endured through all the battles, that have crossed all the boundaries that wars have created and changed, the voices whose truth is echoing still–speak to us of peace and of its home within our hearts.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” counseled Ghandi.  “When confronted with an opponent,” he said, echoing Jesus of Nazareth, “Conquer him with love.”

Jawaharial Nehur explained it this way: “Peace is not a relationship of nations.  It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul.”

A serenity of soul.  Go for that.  And how do you do that?  American psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky suggests a way:  “When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.”

And psychotherapist Arnold A. Hutschnecker, offers this as a way to know peace:  “Peace comes from feelings of satisfaction when working with joy, living with hope, loving with abandonment.”  If you wish to be passionate for peace, find it within you, and let it flow in passionate work, in passionate hope, in passionate, unfettered love.

Finding peace within is an arduous work.  It requires focus.  It requires dedication.  It requires whole-hearted, passionate commitment and relentless re-commitment every time we fail.  “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles,” said President Lyndon B. Johnson; “and it must be taken one step at a time.”  Nevertheless, until we find it within ourselves, we cannot create it in the world.  For the world is but a mirror of our collective souls.

If we wish peace for the world, we must become its embodiment.  We must practice it over and over, until its radiance infuses us completely, until we are lost in its dancing beauty and sparkling love.

Let me close as I began, with a quote from Gandhi.  May it sing to your heart as it does to mine.

“I offer you peace.  I offer you love.  I offer you friendship.  I see your beauty.  I hear your need.  I feel your feelings.  My wisdom flows from the Highest Source.  I salute that Source in you.  Let us work together for unity and love.”