Wear peace, it is all you own

Have you noticed that despite all of the discourse about the Affordable Healthcare Act and the typhoon, the Middle East is still simmering like a kettle of homemade soup? The area is very unstable and I think it won’t take much for it to explode. If it does, Israel and the United States will be receiving collateral damage. I am sure our military is looking at this and know much more than we could ever guess.

The only option we have to being drawn into another war, is the path of peace. We all talk a lot about peace, but each of us needs to do actions that are peaceful. I realize that I am probably preaching to the choir, but do each of us every day perform an act of peace? Peaceful acts to me means acts of kindness, acts of gentleness, reaching out a helping hand to someone in need.

The other day most of us saw the photo of the Pope kissing a terribly deformed person. I have seen it several times now and each time I come close to tears. Why? Because you don’t see that kind of compassion often. Usually that severe of a disfigurement will keepus all a couple of feet away. Yet this Pope walked his truth and kissed this man and blessed him.

It made me think of the Buddhist religion and their Goddess, Kuan Yin. She is the goddess of compassion. Think of peace as a recipe. We need equal amounts of compassion, love, acceptance, compromise and selflessness to make peace.

Path to peace

What the world needs now is love, acceptance, compassion, acceptance and each one of us must produce some every day. Are you ready to hold the door for someone with a cane?Would it occur to you to invite someone with no family to join  you for the holidays? If a neighbor asks if you could take them to the doctor, would you willingly do it? There are so many things that we can do as an act of peace.

There are killings, people suffering with severe mental illness, anger is found everywhere, paranoia, dissatisfaction every where we look. People trying to protect themselves  act without thinking. The Stand Your Ground Law  was to be used in an emergency situation. It was designed to save your life or the lives of those with you. Now it seems to be a legal way to take the life of minority people.

When the colonies were founded, most people had guns. There were the Indians who were upset that we were stealing their land, there were bears, and mountain lions and other wild animals who could kill you or you could kill them and eat the meat. All kinds of people came to America for a hundred reasons and some of them could have been mentally ill or could be carrying a grudge. People had real reasons to feel fear. After the revolution, we were forming a new country based on new thinking and an experiment as how to form our government. Laws and people to enforce those laws were not on every corner. I can see where people felt they needed a gun.This just isn’t true in the twenty first century.

Despite the danger the early colonists lived in, they were hospitable, kind, compassionate. Today we see anger, a disconnect from reality, we see selfishness, and greed. Now people barely talk, if they bump into you they give you a dirty look, drivers wear faces filled with hate and irritation. Why? Why is our world so filled with anger and hatred?  I have not lived a golden blessed life but I have had many blessings in it. 

I do feel that stress fits in here as well as the ability to earn a livable wage. I think we have become very materialistic and as technology increases, there is a race to keep up with the newest gadget. We have to pay for them and we have to learn how to use them. There is no privacy in our lives anymore. With the advent of social media, nothing is personal and private. I admit that when people post on their status, I am eating breakfast or something as inane it makes me a little crazy. Yeah, ok, so eat. The world is worrying about mass shootings, strange viruses, how to save their home, or how will they pay for college for their three children. Another thing we have to face is the fact that we are acquainted with many people but there isn’t the time to really know people and to make friends.

So the path of peace is something we need to work on every day on our journey. You don’t have to write a book, you don’t  have to win a Grammy. You just need to do something compassionate, ethical or kind every day. We’ll link them together and we will have our peace. And maybe we will have sacrificed the last of our children to the god of War.

Achieve peace; Albert Einstein