I promise there won’t be so much text to read for the rest of the series!
I’m going to speak personally, among friends, here. I hope you won’t mind if I refer to you by “name.” Your comments in these diaries are so thought-full that I feel that almost any one of them could be the basis for a diary of its own. Since yesterday, for instance, I’ve been thinking about sbj’s idea that “peace is a verb,” and that you can’t have too much compassion and brotherhood in the world. I have been mulling supersoling’s desire for “change for many. Now.” And Katiebird’s and Second Nature’s honest confessions of a fear that a lot of people have, which is that life may “call” us to do exactly what we’re the most scared to do, and “ask” us to give up what we cherish most. Tampopo illuminated how Peace’s description of the energy she felt is the exact opposite of being “burned-out.” Ductape Fatwa pointed out that while we are not all cut out to follow Peace’s exact path, we are all cut out to be able to make a decision not to hate in this moment. Songbh was struck by the fact that Peace didn’t do it over-night, that 15 years of hard training preceded her walk. Wilderness wench said that when she reads about other people’s self-realization, what jumps out at her is, first of all, the fact that they successfully engaged in the process, and second, how they “measure” their progress.
I could go on here doing nothing but quoting you back at yourselves, but I need to give Peace a chance to talk again. Here is the next short section from the pamphlet we’re using as a launching pad for our own thoughts, worries, fears, aggravations, resentments, hopes, conflicts, dreams, actions, ideas about peace. At one time or another, she had all of those, too. Martin Luther King Jr. was frightened a lot of the time (it makes my heart ache just to type that), but still he marched. The Dalai Lama has lived through the genocide, direct and evilly indirect, of his people, and he’s still able to laugh and rub noses with Barbara Walters (!). Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison, and emerged in serenity to lead his nation. Peace’s path appears more modest, but I think that her very “ordinariness” makes her seem maybe a bit more accessible to the rest of us who have our own paths that are different from all of theirs.
(In the following excerpt, the boldfaced emphasis is mine.)
In Peace Pilgrim’s own words, reprinted with permission from Steps Toward Inner Peace.
It was only at this time, in 1953, that I felt guided or called or motivated to begin my pilgrimage for peace in the world-a journey undertaken traditionally. The tradition of the pilgrimage is a journey undertaken on foot and on faith, prayerfully and as an opportunity to contact people. I wear a lettered tunic in order to contact people. It says `PEACE PILGRIM’ on the front. I feel that’s my name now-it emphasizes my mission instead of me. And on the back it says, `25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE.’ The purpose of the tunic is merely to make contacts for me. Constantly as I walk along the highways and through the cities, people approach me and I have a chance to talk with them about peace.
I have walked 25,000 miles as a penniless pilgrim. I own only what I wear and what I carry in my small pockets. I belong to no organization. I have said that I will walk until given shelter and fast until given food, remaining a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace. And I can truthfully tell you that without ever asking for anything, I have been supplied with everything needed for my journey, which shows you how good people really are.
With me I carry always my peace message: This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love. There is nothing new about this message, except the practice of it. And the practice of it is required not only in the international situation but also in the personal situation. I believe the situation in the world is a reflection of our own immaturity. If we were mature, harmonious people, war would be no problem whatever-it would be impossible.
All of us can work for peace. We can work right where we are, right within ourselves, because the more peace we have within our own lives, the more we can reflect into the outer situation. In fact, I believe that the wish to survive will push us into some kind of uneasy world peace which will then need to be supported by a great inner awakening if it is to endure. I believe we entered a new age when we discovered nuclear energy, and that this new age calls for a new renaissance to lift us to a higher level of understanding so that we will be able to cope with the problems of this new age. So, primarily my subject is peace within ourselves as a step toward peace in our world.
Introductory Diary: LINK:
Yesterday’s Diary: LINK:
Tomorrow: The Four Preparations
Thursday: The Four Preparations, continued
Friday: The Four Purifications
Next Week: The Four Relinquishments
A few follow-ups from yesterday:
I mentioned the three petitions she carried on her first walk, one for peace in Korea, one for world-wide disarmament, and one asking for a national Peace Department: Signatures for these petitions that she and others collected were presented to the White House and the U.N. upon her arrival in the East Coast 11 months later.
That one set of clothing she wore/had? She never changed it until it wore out and somebody offered to replace it for her. She said the question women asked her most often was, “How do you clean it?” She would wash it, then “wear it dry.”
She walked north in summer and south in winter, so her cross-country routes must have looked like jagged paths. She walked in Canada, too.
Eventually she was so in demand as a speaker that sometimes she had as many as ten speaking engagements a day. She kept in contact with her sister, who always knew her route in advance. Sometimes she went in cognito to her sister’s house to rest and recharge.
She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
A newsletter about her says, “Peace Pilgrim ‘walked her talk.’ She walked in complete fearlessness, calmly facing arrest for vagrancy, sneering interviews, violence, misunderstanding, all kinds of weather, drunks and psychotics, even near death in an Arizona snowstorm. She walked with boundless energy, in complete health, with sparkle and verve. Those who met her were impressed by her intelligence, serenity, wit, and genuine loving nature. Home and hearts opened to her, and as many testified later, lives were changed.”
The pamphlet I am reprinting has been sent out free, upon request, to more than a million people world-wide.
Although we now know “who” she was, during the years she was walking she didn’t tell her “real” name or talk about the specifics of her earlier life, preferring always to deflect attention away from herself and onto her message: “This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”
“Vision isn’t enough unless combined with venture. It’s not enough to stare up the steps unless we also step up the stairs”. Vance Havner
For so many years, most my life actually, I left to others to do the right thing, fight the battles, God, even take care of me. Through love and acceptance of myself I am slowly coming awake and realising that I must “walk the talk” as Peace Pilgrim says. Be the change I want to see in the world, the country, my home. It is not an easy task, often full of risk and sacrifice. I am very resistant most of the time actually. I do want to be at peace and work towards harmony in the world.
(Did I bust the margins with my first comment?)
I suspect that a lot of those 15 years that Peace spent getting ready were spent dealing with her own resistances, don’t you? It took her the last five of those years, for instance, to get rid of all of her worldly possessions.
It’s interesting about resistances. Sometimes they’re hard for me to read. Sometimes they seem to be yellow or even red lights, saying: don’t go there. Other times they seem to be only about fear that can be dissolved over time.
(Love your sig line. Maybe the ring will fall off as his popularity “thins.”)
Oh fear is the biggest part of resistance imho.
Fear=F Everything And Run, as fast and as far as possible. I am still trying to walk through the fears. One of my breakthroughs on this was doing a Firewalk about four years ago. Part of the ceremony before the actual Firewalk was writing down the fears we were aware of and then tossing them into the fire. It was very freeing at the time. The feeling as I walked over the red hot embers was one of “I can do anything” now. That feeling stayed with me for a long time but I have to say I somewhere along the line let it go.
Maybe you just need a new version of a firewalk.
For those of us who have never been physically brave, doing something like that is incredibly empowering! I’m a physical scaredy-cat, myself, so the times when I’ve made myself do something that terrified me–like flying lessons–has always changed me for the better. I just like myself better afterwards, you know?
[I tell writing students that if they go out and make themselves do something that has always scared them, it will make them better writers. Don’t ask me to prove this. 🙂 ]
So here is the crux of the Peace Pilgrim’s message:
“This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”
Three aspects of peace, three kinds of “overcoming.”
Overcome evil with good: that means actions, I think. Overcome evil actions in the world with my own — our own — good actions.
Overcome falsehood with truth: Falsehoods are words, ideas. Overcome the lies that prop up violence and war and injustice, with the truth that IS peace and justice.
Overcome hatred with love: she’s talking here about our feelings. This is SO much harder than actions or ideas. But clearly, she made a choice that she would walk the earth with love in her heart for everyone she met — and she did it. It is possible.
Beautiful summation.
I think that blogs like this one are really good at addressing #2 on that list: overcoming falsehood with truth. So every time any of us does that in a diary or comment, we are walking the path of peace, as she laid it out. We’re already doing it! When it comes to #2, people like Susan and Boo who are devoted to overcoming falsehood with truth are “walking” at their computers.
And yeah, what she demonstrated is that it is possible.
First, Nancy, I want to commend you here for this series. It is that which gives us something to think about and perhaps even learn from.
I personally believe that with some maturity, we all here have that, BTW, we just might come up with a place for contentment for our selves, or for a way to address ways to ascertain some sort of peace for the world, as a whole.
The nuclear threat has always given me pause to stop and think more deeply on the ways of the world, as a whole. Fearful, yes, most certainly. I truly think that most humans think through this to see the reality of this. The fear, I feel, is the nut cases that do not think! When they are in charge of things and how this will present itself to us and the world as a whole. I suppose what I am saying here, is/are, ethical and morality of ppl and their thinking. Why would we even need nuclear things. I am always willing to listen to any arguement for this. But I would hope to think they would recipitate me as well. This fear factor is something I truly have on this topic!
In regard that one has to give up or to do a specific thing, to ascertain a specific feeling or action on things, has to be dealt with by some, and then again not others. It is left up the individual to determine the best way for them to find this answer, I feel.
That PP, as I will be calling her, is, as I see her, going through such a struggle within herself on many many issues. I wonder about her relationship with her immediate family..ic, sister, husband, etc. Don’t we all! Just a passing thought here, is all.
I hope that in the future we might find out that we all have attributes of said definitions in all of us.
Why that brought her to this determination? Really? I have yet to understand the why of her actions. What brought her to this point in her life? Have I missed something here? I get the feeling she was not in a happy marriage. Am I correct? What made her feel she needed inner peace? I admire her…really I do. I think she had such courage. I do not have nor have I had such courage. I do not think anyone has asked me to ascertain such courage in myself, to my knowledge. I do know that I ask more of myself than others do. ( well, then again..) This is my fault. I am very unjust to myself only. I do have to take time out to just examine me and my motives on many things. This is yet a topic for another diary…:o) I want to understand her ethics and standards for herself and others and circumstances surrounding her and others. I know some was the Korean War, etc. Oh well, just my thoughts here. Sorry to be rambling.
Again, thank you for this series. I am here to learn. Perhaps to take away something of serious value for me. I feel we all can do better. NO matter who we are. We all can do better in many things. I probably would have been a bystander giving her refuge, sitting up a place for her to rest and perhaps to speak. Thank you……..
(I came back over here, cause my asnwer is so damn long!)
Hi, Brenda. I’ll answer as best I can from the vantage point of knowing her only through what I have read about her.
Not to be too glib, I hope, but I think the reason she felt she needed inner peace was because she didn’t have any. She was not in a happy marriage, that’s right. And from what I gather she also was not a woman who could fit happily into the l940’s-50’s formula for what women were supposed to do/be. So that was a big part of it. She must have felt, I’m not cut out to be a wife and mother, but I’m not allowed to do much of anything else, so how will I live? We know that that kind of thing made a lot of women feel desperate in those days, (leading to Betty Freidan’s groundbreaking book, The Feminine Mystique.)
Another part seems to be that she was able to look around the world and see that other people suffered from far too little while she had far too much. That really bugged her.
Another part seems to be that she was ahead of her time in many ways. For instance, she told her husband that she’d rather he go to prison than fight in the Korean War. She promised to visit him and stay loyal to him if he would do that. When he didn’t, and went to fight instead, their marriage was–according to him–essentially over.
So all of these things–a preference for peace in a world hell-bent on war, personal restlessness and unhappiness, etc.–built up until one night in a kind of desperation, I think, she walked all night in some woods, determined not to stop until she knew what she should do with her life. That night she had what she said was a revelatory experience that calmed her down and pointed her in the direction her life would take, although it took her another 15 years to begin to get there.
There doesn’t seem to have been a great personal tragedy in her life that led her to feel desperate, if that’s maybe part of what you’re asking. There was, of course, the almost invisible tragedy of being female in a world that didn’t welcome her vigor, intelligence, ambition. Otherwise, it sounds like a pretty ordinary, garden-variety brand of unhappiness, which built to an intolerable level, and which was combined with a high intellect and a demanding personal nature. All that fused together to drive her to a point where she felt she had to break through to some kind of change that might give her life more meaning than it had, or die trying.
I hope I’ve done it justice. Sorry for the length!
Thanks. This gives me a lot more to deliberate upon. I am now understanding her position with greater perspective. I was growing up in the 40-50’s, so I can go back to that time and try to see what she might have felt.
I really look forward to the emphisis on looking into the analysis of finding the tools to find inner peace here in my heart and soul too. I am really reading this and the comments to find this as well.
I feel we all can learn from others, or at least I do. Again, thanks..for the background. I will go back and re-read the first diary more closely.
One of the “problems” with trying to understand her, I think, is that she went to a lot of trouble to keep us from focusing on her. She didn’t talk about herself very much. So that means there’s not a whole lot to go on, and so it’s no wonder if you have felt puzzled. We can dig into her biography and dig and dig, but we will probably end up unsatisfied and have to come back to her message, which is what she wanted us to do anyway.
I grew up when you did. The other night I was imagining being 8 years old in 1953, living in an apartment on Paseo Boulevard in KCMo, and what if I had been looking out our windows and I had seen this woman striding down the street wearing that outfit? Wow. What a sight she would have been!
Sorry I had to leave this afternoon, but I am back now. I want to tackle this knowing someone, especially, ones self.
I so remember the primary learning studies I had to sit through in learning my profession. Those early days of which I was so impressionable. Kansas, we all have to understand what steers a person in the direction that person goes, and why. I went and re-read the beginning, as I said I would. I just feel there is something missing, at least for me, to get a handle on her. I first must understand her to get a grip on why and how she is doing this project. Maybe, cause it is just me, I may be looking way to deeply into this. I just think there is something there that I must be missing, as to her make-up on her innermost feelings and how she developed her strategy for her resolution of her dilemma she was in. Like for instance, was it her enviroment totally that drove her this direction, or was it her genetic make-up that made waves in her soul….or perhaps maybe it was both. I just know, I can detect her feelings of ethics and morals and standards, I think….:o)
For the most part, there is some external reason for our action. I know what is stated in the preface of this presentation, many ppl were in that same boat then. They did not do what she did. I just seem to have this need to know what steered her in this direction of need and resolution. It is admirable what she did. I am not stating anything against her one bit. I am, I suppose, just trying to understand her more. This is just me…I am analytic as a person. It is just me..:o) Sorry to keep harping on this. I would love to have known her personally. Frankly, she sounds like a person with strong will and determination. Maybe in the next part of this series, I will be able to get more of this through my thick skull…..:o)
I have to agree with Shril, we all get to where we are in life in different patterns of travel. I suppose, it does not matter how we get there but that we got there, that is the magic of it all.
This is a wonderful series, Kansas. There is so much to learn and take from this one woman’s life experience.
I remember well the days in my life when I had anxiety and worries and concerns. . .mostly over the thought that I could not. . .would not measure up. To what? My own idealized version of who I thought I “should be.” And they were some pretty gosh awful high standards and unrealistic things in that vision of who I thought I should be.
When one discovers and learns the way of inner peace, (to whatever degree one may), it is amazing how your life, everything around you and everyone around you changes. To be without worries and concerns lifts you up to a place of much clearer vision. You see and understand things in a different context. You do whatever it is you choose to do with that. Use it as it seems appropriate to you.
I am firmly convinced that when we can deal peacefully with those within our closest relationships, we can live in a world filled with peace. It truly begins in the small places and expands magically and exponentially from there.
Many of us need to take a step back from the vision of “SAVING THE WORLD”, and begin by saving ourselves. For in truth, we are the only one we can save. Others, we can only influence by “walking our talk” and “living our truth.” It is always so.
I am really enjoying everyones comments and contributions to this concept of peace. Great job Kansas and everyone else.
Incidentally, the song is right. . .”Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with Me. . .”
Thanks, shirl. It’s very useful to hear your before and after accounts of how it feels not to have inner peace and then how it feels to have it. It’s such an experiential thing that it often doesn’t translate well into words. “You had to be there,” comes to mind. And yet even if many of the people who have it can’t explain it, the rest of us can see the effects of it. Not to mention the effects of not having it.
As with everything in this life, it is a process, this gaining of inner peace. But it is a process so worthwhile that it is of the greatest personal importance to each individual. Do it for yourself first, and then share it with everyone.
If anyone wants examples of all the silliness I put myself through during the process, just ask. If there was a road block to be found, I found it. . .LOL. . .I had more But, but, but’s and what if’s than anyone has a right to hang on to. . .so if one so stubborn and heels dug in to outmoded and useless ways of trudging my path through life can find such a beautiful and open trail to travel, I dare say anyone can.
Just one more thing. . .
If anyone has the mistaken belief that I have somehow “arrived,” please rethink that. It is a forever journey, the journey to inner peace. I have made my way to a level of it, but I could hardly say that I live anywhere near the neighborhood of the Dali Llama or others we know of. The neighborhood I am in is pretty awesome as it is, but there are plenty of steps left to take along my path. The first step may be the hardest, but each step that follows just increases the joy and the beauty of the journey.
Imo, you’re thoroughly right, shirl, in that there’s really no ‘arrival’ to a state of being, which is always a matter of process. Even the ground beneath our feet, the earth on which we live, are entirely matters of process; this is how & why they exist. As human beings we have no existence, either, outside of process: manifestation, sustenance, transformation. I believe our journeys toward enlightenment follow the same law, too.
ABSOLUTELY
Big hugs, wench. . . .(oh it is always a great day when you can hug a wench, even better if it is wildersness wench. . .LOL)
Shirl
Shirl, my heart just skipped a beat when I read this comment
I have been struggling with this notion at work. I see so much wrong and I rail and I rail and yet no one is listening. Just this weekend, I decided, after many tears, to give up railing against all that is wring in my district. I will still speak the truth (even if it angers someone, as I cannot control another person’s reaction). More importantly, I will simply change my class and my teaching styles to reflect the changes I want to see.
Oh, Toni. . . I am so appreciative that anything I said may have been helpful in any way to someone else. It is a tough one to let go of, “Saving The World!” I made it even harder for myself, I was “Defender of The Universe” and certainly that entailed “saving the world” too. And if not the universe, if not the world, then saving those I love and care for, eh?
It can’t be done. And you have it exactly right. Live within your own integrity. Do, say and be those things that have meaning for you. Speak your turth, walk your truth, live your truth. Everything else will fall into its place. And you are so right about others reactions. You can’t claim them or be responsible for them.
Bravo for you!! Bravo!
And big hugs
Shirl
Ho! Shirl, I’m entirely with you here, in terms of ‘manifesting’ the light as a matter of emanation, so to speak, rather than force.
As they say, when you open the door to a dark room, the light rushes in. . .never does the darkness rush out to overcome the light.
yes, I believe she was right, war would be impossible.
kansas has another insight into her thinking: to have so much when so many have so little.
This would also be impossible, I think, if we were mature and harmonius people. I am fond of saying that greed is the single greatest cause of all war and suffering, and just as in its time, greed itself was an evolutionary step – early man needed some instinct to make him collect more berries than he could eat so he would not starve in winter, so will its diminuition also be an evolutionary step, a step in the maturing process of becoming harmonious people.
And as Peace Pilgrim points out, if as a species, we wish to survive, we will push ourselves into taking those steps.
Earlier today, I went back and read all the comments on the introductory diary, so I’ve been mulling over those as well as these.
What strikes me is the intense longing for peace. We all want it, but we don’t know how to “do” it. Someone, shycat?, on the first diary talked about how advertising corrupts our expectations, so we want more more more.
I have come to think that peace is like that, as well. We think, especially in our society, that it has to look a certain way. I fretted for a long time that I wasn’t doing things correctly, and lord knows I have lots of anger, especially at the present political moment. But I’m coming around to where I’m just willing to hang out in the process, and have whatever is, be whatever is. In the moment, in now. That’s peace.
If it looks different for, say, Thich Nhat Hanh or Peace Pilgrim or Pema Chodren or supersoling or AndiF, OK. Like Teacher Toni, I’m trying to give up the futility of railing against the wrongs out there, because I am reluctantly realizing I can’t fix the entire world. But I can work on fixing myself.
And by fixing, I don’t necessarily mean doing anything in particular. Just letting go of the anger and a lot of the mind stuff and being. So, I try to just be.
Easier said than done, did I mention?
Oh you so have it right. Letting go of the anger, letting go of having to fix others, focusing on doing those things which bring you to a place of peace and becoming the truest you that you may become. . .that is it, in my view.
It’s that physics thing again. . .what we push against, pushes back. That is not exactly what most of us are really wanting or looking for. Everything that we wish, desire and envision for “the world” or for “others” it is for us to manifest those qualities in our own lives, in ourselves first. . .then those who may be influenced by those qualities we display will be.
If we honor and love ourselves, we will give that out to all around us and we will honor and love them.
Perhaps not easy, but truly much easier than we think it will be. Let go of it and grab onto those attributes that will fill your heart as you craft who it is you wish to be. The really only hard part is choosing to do it.
Bravo to you too!!
My only comments would be critical. Intellectually critical. But nonetheless, passively negative. And in the spirit of building a more positive, peaceful world, what is the point of saying divisive things about a beautiful woman (that was meant for the Peace Pilgrim, but it applies to you as well). I love the series so far.
But why do you feel that if you disagree with something here that what you have to say in negative? I believe that we need to hear opposing views in order to be better informed to all possibilities.
Because sometimes I argue just to argue. I’m a lawyer for FSM’s sake.
And sometimes, it is just best to sit back and listen. That’s my view. I guess I could have not written at all. But I like KS’s series. So I wanted to say hey. That’s all.
And I take your point. It is okay to talk. I’m just choosing not to.
Thanks BJ for responding and I certainly can understand your well “argued” (snark) point of view. Thanks for participating. I always welcome your point of view.
My sister’s last year of life was filled with excrutiating pain. It was a year when we were two against the world, the world of doctors, hospitals and a family that couldn’t show up because it was just too horrendous for them to experience the kind of pain she was in. I prayed every night for peace. I read endless books to her, Sister to Sister, A Thousand Acres, To Kill and Mockingbird, The Fifth Book of Peace, Women in Their Beds and finally books from my Buddhists mentors that she forbade me to read to her until it became obvious she wasn’t going to survive. By that time I knew I had a captive audience and I was commited to saying my final goodnight in a way that would let her go in peace and allow me to remember her final moments filled with that peaceful.
I was blessed that it was so. Letting her go, not having her with me, not sharing our lives was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It literally nearly killed me, that all emcompassing grief. Ten months later I was diagnosed and went on chemotherapy. I wasn’t surprised at all, now that I look back on it, I would have been shocked if my body hadn’t started rotting inside. Just writing this now, five years later, makes me weep. It’s been slow, this learning how to live without her.
Fives week into my treatments I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis with full body involvement. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t hold a phone, I couldn’t walk or have a sheet on top of me. My whole body was in pain. All the furniture in my living room was moved out and a hospital bed, a walker, a portable toilet and wash basin were moved in. Listening to music or having the television on was too much stimulation, it made the pain come crashing down on me. All I could do was lie there and be perfectly still. It was the first time in my life I knew what quiet and calm was. I was in that bed for a year.
It change my life. I had been a Buddhist for over twenty years but until I was forced to shut up, to be still and quiet I didn’t have a clue how important inner peace was and also how much it meant in offering peace to others. I had been studying peace before. I read books, I listened to others, I went to my Shambhala meditations, I had individual session with my Buddhist instructor, I yearned to be better, to do better on my way to peace within myself but it wasn’t until I was unable to fight, to read, to listen, to reach for peace outside myself that the peace I had wanted finally came to me. It was when I couldn’t think or try or strive or dream or pray that peace entered me, came to me, lived in me.
Peace is in me right this minute. It’s just there, all the time there is a sense of peace that is simply there. It’s funny but a part of me wants to say how selfish this post is because it’s all about me when the woman Kansas has written about rarely talks about herself. The old me would be full of apologies but now I’m too filled with peace to go there.
Personally, caliberal, I’m exceptionally grateful that you’ve shared your experience with us, precisely in the way you have. I’m sure you know (as evidenced by your closure above) that it’s senseless to compare ourselves with others, in terms of our capabilities to bless one another with the wisdom we’ve gathered as individuals. Thank you for offering some of yours.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget this story, Cali. I’m really grateful that you told it. It is generous of you, not selfish. Some of our paths require us to talk about ourselves in intimate ways; hers didn’t, that’s all.
Thank you Kansas. You are so generous. Thank you for this series also. It was such a golden moment today when I read this part of the series and, like finding a new author and discovering a gold mine of more works, I followed the links to the first two. They say timing is everything. After watching the Alito hearings all day I read your wondrous words and the phenomenal life of the woman who walked for peace. Pilgrim indeed. The feeling of being unsettled from the hearings were immediately swept up in a warm blanket of kindness and all that is so right with the world.
Oh Caliberal – all I can write is that I am sitting here crying, just so very, very glad that for you: “Peace is in me right this minute. It’s just there, all the time there is a sense of peace that is simply there.”
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
It seems it is so that if we sit quietly and wait the thing we seek will come to us.
What a beautiful example of how that works.
Love and Blessings,
Shirl
Shirl, your words are always like a healing balm. The places they touch get so warm and soothing.
“It seems it is so that if we sit quietly and wait the thing we seek will come to us.”
So true and so beautifully said. I’ll take that thought to bed with me.
Thank you. Cal, who would have imagined a 18 moths or so ago when I made, I think, my very first comment on a blog on your Huge diary at dkos about what women thought about abortion, that it would lead me where it has. I think you had about 950 or more comments on that diary, and it was just too good an opportunity for me not to comment on after being a lurker for so long.
So I often think of you, Caliberal, and that safe and inviting atmosphere you offered for those of us who had been sitting quietly in the wings for so long. And I thank you for that experience.
I never would have imagined that I would write diaries, let alone be invited to co-administer other blogs, have my own blog, and astonishingly have been asked to front page on several blogs. I think no one is more surprised than I am. But I really always feel that you started it all for me, whether you would view it that way or not. [big smile]
Just a great big Thank You
Hugs, love and blessings
Shirl
Shirl, I remember that so well. You told me it was your first time commenting, it touched me so deeply then just as it does now. I think it’s part of the human condition to wonder if we inspire others and how. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your words.
When I first went onto Our Word and saw you I thought of that diary on Kos and smiled such a great big smile. I remembered you posted your first comment on that diary having come out of lurker land. One of the things that was important to me on that diary was to offer a safe haven for women to talk about our right to choose. Sometimes it’s so difficult lending our voice on Kos, it shouldn’t be so but it most assuredly is.
Now look at you, you have so completely surpassed the things I write. You have taught me so much, offered such heartwarming words, giving me so much to think about. You make me so proud to be a woman.
If that diary was even a small part of where you have gone since, I’m grateful. I’m sitting here and thinking how wondrous it is to be a woman. How amazingly incredible we are, how we give to one another, how we share our light and our love.
You do all of that in so many ways. You took that first comment and ran with it and we are all the better for it. Eighteen months is a moment in time and look where you are now. You are simply astounding, a phenomena, a jewel.
You are overly generous. And I wouldn’t think in any way I have surpassed your writing. Two individuals, expressing ourselves in our own unique way. Equally valid in every way.
I can’t see through these heart tears to say any more…
Keep on inspiring everyone
hugs and loves
Shirl
I have been so enjoying thinking about what we learned yesterday from PP and from each other.
Lately I have noticed how words will cue songs in my head. Mostly just the first line or two, then a lot of humming. Yesterday I kept singing/ humming, “Oh to live on Sugar Mountain with the barkers and colored balloons.”
Kansas, you responded to my description of being beside myself by writing about a man who woke up to that thought and realized that was a false self. The real self was there too.
That led me to think, “All ye, all ye in free! Come out, come out where ever you are!”
So, put together, I guess the real me is on some mountain top. The quest is to get real.
“This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.’
How do I do that? What does that look like? Is there passion? Or is it all beige?
What the heck do I do with my anger? And my fear? Where do they come from anyway?
If we were kind to ourselves, would we be more at peace, and therefore more able to act peaceably? What is the difference between self-care and selfishness?
Just a few of the thoughts floating around between songs. 😉
I used to worry a lot that such things as peace or happiness might turn out to be beige, as you so aptly put it. They sure don’t seem that way to me now. They look neon with vitality. They glow in the dark. 🙂
I’m really enjoying your participation.
The evil and the lies, and often even the hatred — they all assume this non-threatening, naturalized, world-weary beigeness. They are beige, bland, boring, formulaic. The talking points. The bottom lines. The policies and guidelines. The media can make even gore and mayhem into beigeness, because it’s the same damn sensationalized thing evening after evening, devoid of any real thought or empathy.
What do we do with our anger? We notice it, we acknowledge it. Where useful, we use it. But we don’t try to live on it. I think someone else has said that anger makes a good spark but a poor fuel. Same thing with fear — when given its proper place, it might keep us from getting killed, but we also know that the fear-driven life is not really living. It’s just constant fleeing at some level.
Very interesting points. Thank you.
I need to reflect on what you have written.
What came to mind immediately was an opportunity I had a few years ago to hear Ellie Wiesel. He spoke of the opposite of love not being hate, but indifference.
To become unfeeling, numb, deadened to the pain of others and our own pain — IMO is the curse of our times — the evil.
As you have observed, that which has been “sensationalized” is really just “formulaic.” The calculated manipulation of our emotions can lead to even a conscious numbing.
“Where useful, we use it[anger].” I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on this.
“…but we also know that the fear-driven life is not really living. It’s just constant fleeing at some level.” That is excellent! Thank you.
Does working on this, typing these thoughts, repeating the word peace make you feel it? (that’s all today)
What a wonderful question! Thank you so much.
Exploring peace – what is its texture, taste, smell? What does it look like on the inside? And on the outside? What does it sound like?
I feel like a party pooper.
I have spent so many years working on my inner peace. Read many books, meditated, occasionally found that inner joy etc., Once I thought I had mastered myself, I decided it was time to share the ‘joy’ and wanted to start living in the real world.
I was assaulted from every angle, literally and figuratively. I came to the conclusion that real peace and joy can only be obtained if one could sit on top of a mountain alone for ever.
My curiosity keeps me searching but mostly I keep my opinions to myself, no one really listens.
And then came Bushco… The rest is history.
But the part in this series that has really caught my eye is how many of us wanted to ‘save the world’. Where did that ‘calling’ come from?? LOL!