Sick of peace yet? 🙂
Sweetness and light can be sooo annoying.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If you didn’t feel annoyed, or possibly even threatened, by anything that went before in this series, you may find your peace capacity tested over the final days of this series as we set out Peace Pilgrim’s 4 Preparations, 4 Purifications, & 4 Relinquishments.
What she says next sounds incredibly simplistic.
Please, we want to say, it can’t be that simple.
I think that’s true, and not true. It could be that simple if we just did it, but nooooo. So for 99.9% of us, it’s not that simple. If it were, we would all be doing it and there would be peace on earth. Ha. So maybe saying it is easy, but doing it is hard. She keeps telling us that, but excuse me, I didn’t hear you.
As you read these first two of what she calls The Four Preparations (just wait until we get to the purifications!), I suggest keeping a few things in mind:
l. It worked for her.
- It took a long time.
- It was hard.
- She thought it could work for anybody.
- It’s the same as, or very close to, almost all other “peace paths.”
- She’s saying it the best way she knew how, and directing it to an audience of millions of people of varying degrees of sophistication and intelligence. (Sometimes I have to laugh, thinking she may have had to simplify it the most for sophisticated people.)
I have taken mercy on you and have edited a bit to shorten it.
From Steps Toward Inner Peace. Reprinted with permission.
NOW, when I talk about the steps toward inner peace, I talk about them in a framework, but there’s nothing arbitrary about the number of steps (or their order). This is just a way of talking about the subject. Just take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps, it will become easier for you to take a few more. In this area we really can share. None of you may feel guided to walk a pilgrimage, and I’m not trying to inspire you to walk a pilgrimage, but in the field of finding harmony in our own lives, we can share.
Some preparations that were required of me.
The first preparation is a right attitude toward life.
This means – stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface-liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That’s what we are doing here now.
It is through solving problems in accordance with the highest light that we have that inner growth is attained. Now, collective problems must be solved by us collectively, and no one finds inner peace who avoids doing his or her share in the solving of collective problems, like world disarmament and world peace. So let us always think about these problems together, talk about them together, and collectively work toward their solutions.
The second preparation has to do with bringing our lives into harmony with the laws that govern this universe. (She means things like The Golden Rule.)
We are our own worst enemies. If we are out of harmony through ignorance, we suffer somewhat; but if we know better and are still out of harmony, then we suffer a great deal. I recognize that these laws are well-known and well-believed, and therefore they just needed to be well-lived.
So I got busy on a very interesting project. This was to live all the good things I believed in. I did not confuse myself by trying to take them all at once, but rather, if I was doing something that I knew I should not be doing, I stopped doing it, and I always made a quick relinquishment. And if I was not doing something that I knew I should be doing, I got busy on that. It took the living quite a while to catch up with the believing, but of course it can, and now if I believe something, I live it. Otherwise it would be perfectly meaningless. As I lived according to the highest light that I had, I discovered that other light was given, and that I opened myself to receiving more light as I lived the light I had.
So. . .
Does any of that appeal to you?
Does any of it irritate you?
Does any of it make you fearful?
Does it accord, or not, with your experiences?
What do you read between the lines?
Express yourselves, any way you like.
Thanks a lot.
SCHEDULE UPDATE: Instead of extending this into next week, I’m going to get it all in tomorrow, with maybe a wrap-up on Friday. So tomorrow, we’ll have all 4 Preparations, Relinquishments, & Purifications.
Introduction to Series: LINK:
Day 1: LINK:
Day 2: LINK:
Upcoming:
Tomorrow: The Four Preparations, continued
Friday: The Four Purifications
Next Week: The Four Relinquishments
Here’s a funny fact for you–the first day of her first walk? She walked alongside the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, getting signatures on her petitions! The girl was not shy, lol.
I’m going to chat with myself for a little while until somebody else shows up. At the tail end of Day 2, katiebird said this: “Does working on this, typing these thoughts, repeating the word peace make you feel it?”
My answer would be that focusing so much on it makes me acutely aware of the moments when something other than peace rises in me. That makes me stop and look at it. And that puts me in the position of realizing I suddenly have a choice–either fall back into the unpeaceful, unconscious stuff, and act out of that place of un-peace, damn the consequences. . .or stay awake to it and observe/investigate, without judging it as good or bad, and then see what happens next. So far, in every case it has turned into a bit of better understanding (for me) and I have felt relieved that when I did act it came from that place instead of from the original unpeaceful place.
It’s a science experiment. 🙂
So, kb, I’d say that “working on it, typing these thoughts, repeating the word peace,” has sharpened my practice.
Reading along with the series. Very good stuff. Like it so much that I’m sitting here in sweats, stinking like a dog because I got back from a run, and decided to read and write about peace instead of jumping in the dang shower — where I must go now.
I’ve got some spirituality issues. I’ve sat on a mountaintop. And discovered that all I’d been taught about religion was wrong. Since then, I’ve dabbled with ideas and practices which might be called spiritual rather than religious. But, to borrow from Bono, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
So the spiritual parts of the Peace Pilgrim can be difficult for me to read without bristling. (I’m the kind of angry white dude who wants to physically throw the door to door bible thumpers off my porch). But I am enjoying the read. Taking from it what works. Love the series. Keep it up.
Thanks, Joe. I can personally relate to everything you said. The finding out that everything I thought about religion was wrong. The dabbling. The bristling. The desire to throw Bible thumpers off the porch. I have found what I’m looking for, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel some of that in some circumstances, cause I do. Just thinking about missionaries ringing my doorbell makes my blood pressure rise.
What I don’t understand, though, is the part about running. 🙂
Quite by chance several years ago, I discovered the solution to door-to-door religious proselytizers. Two nice, rather overweight ladies came to my door offering me information on something–Jehovah’s Witnesses, I think. I smiled sweetly and said, “This is a Buddhist household.”
They looked a bit startled, said “Oh,” and went away immediately. Must have taken me out of the database, too, because no more such appeared as long as I lived in that house.
Whatever works.
I have to tell you something funny that a “Buddhist household” will appreciate. Speaking of dabbling. Of all the forms of Buddhism, I have always been most attracted to the Tibetan version, even going so far as to attend the local temple for several months. Recently, a long-time Zen practitioner friend of mine said, “Tibetan Buddhism is the Buddhism you’d get if they taught it at Hogwarts.” I so laughed. It’s true! The robes, the incense, the magic. Love it. You can imagine how a Zennie might react to all that luscious rigamarole. As another friend of mine says, “It’s the Catholicism of Buddhism.”
Oh, absolutely. Love that description! All those whistles and bells, lots of noise and color, pretty-colored prayer flags. Great fun.
I’ve had the opportunity several times to meet and talk with Tibetan monks, and they are a hoot. Not at all serious, lots of laughter. Zen is a little too austere for me as a steady diet, all that staring into nothingness stuff.
A friend of mine, who is a longtime Zen practitioner, has a regular sitting at her house on Sunday mornings, and I’ve gone for years whenever I’m in the area. It’s a mix of whatever Buddhist and Taoist folks happen to be around.
A few years ago, they did over the hayloft of her barn to provide a beautiful, open space for meditation–suitable only for summer, alas. A couple of visiting Tibetans were brought to see it while construction was ongoing, and in blessing the space the senior Rinpoche called it “The Cow Barn Sangha Group.” Never mind that the particular barn was never used for cows. That’s now its name. LOL
Chogyam Trungpa was a wonderful Tibetan Buddhist whose book entitled “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” is, to my mind, a seminal work describing the very nature of the pitfalls resulting from the “pomp and circumstance”, so to speak, of religiosity.
In his introduction, Trungpa says;
For me I think there are elements of “Peace materialism” that often get in the way of our living peace, of radiating peace, in our own day to day lives. Just as we may associate a depth of spirituality with the amount of time we spend chanting or meditating, or that we journey to a mountaintop and spend time there, I think we can lose our way with our ability to perform peace, ( i.e.; “I love”; “I nurture”; “I celebrate”; “I peace”), by believing that the experience of peace is itself somehow intrinsic to the rituals or techniques or rhetoric we employ to describe “it” to ourselves. And maybe we use our periodic demonstrations of “peace advocacy” sometimes to counterbalance other behavior we engage in that is decidely not peace oriented. We may march against war on the one hand, yet drive a Hummer or fail to accord full respect to our fellow men as equal. We may soothe our ego by marching against the war, and then we return home for dinner and lament the deteriorating property values due to an infusion of “minorities” in our community.
(I hope this makes sense. My mind is a bit convoluted right now, plus I’m in a small hurry, but I wanted to get this out, unformed though the perspective might be.)
It not only makes sense, but goes right around to the original reason I started this series, and which I mentioned in the Introduction–the struggle between the peace we say we want and the actions we actually take. As Peace says above, ” if I believe something, I live it. Otherwise it would be perfectly meaningless.”
I have to say that I admire door to door bible thumpers. They are walking their talk, at least in the sense of “spreading the word.”
I have had a couple of Jehovah Witnesses visiting me every couple of months for a few years now. They share a concern or ask me one of mine and then whip right to different relevant passages in the bible.
As I understand Jehovah Witnesses, only a certain number will go to heaven. I have wondered whether my Jehovah Witnesses ever wonder whether someone they bring into the “fold” could take one of the places. That could be a bit conflicting. Haven’t asked about it yet.
The Mormons who come around I spend less time with. But I read John Kracow’s (?) book about Mormons so I have a bit more knowledge to ask more informed questions.
Anyway, the door to door folk don’t bother me, at least the ones so far.
That is very useful to know, tampopo–your view of them, I mean. The key seems to be that you don’t take it personally and you look for the spark of light in them. Thanks for that. Truth is, they’re a good deal braver than I in many ways. Maybe that’s what annoys me the most about them. 🙂
I know why proselytizing irritates me so.
What could be more arrogant than to approach a stranger, uninvited, and regale her with your best guesses about matters of faith, which by definition are not provable? It takes a special kind of smugness to bask in the satisfaction that your irrational beliefs are superior to other peoples’ irrational beliefs.
I have no objection to anyone believing that heaven and hell are corporeal places, or that there is a god who has a plan for their lives, or that smearing cream cheese on your elbows will help you win the lottery. Your personal faith is none of my business.
I believe that nature intends cooperation slightly more than competition, not because I can prove it, but because it gives me enough hope to keep from cutting my throat. This irrational belief works for me (being extremely long term, vague, and unlikely to be disproved in my lifetime), but that doesn’t make it right or true, let alone better than the myths that comfort other people.
Four 4s for this comment that best fits my perspective on this subject.
I actually feel quite badly for most of the door to door type proselytizers because the strength of their faith, the depth of their belief, and the value of those beliefs seems so contingent upon their success in convincing others to adopt the same doctrine.
There is something ineffably sad about this, how so many are so invested in getting others to agree with them in order to validate their own worth.
The blowhard fascist leaders of the various religious extremist organizations, however, are not in the same category of the door to door foot soldiers referred to above. The door-to-door folks are victims of programs of spiritual abuse; the extremist leaders are the perpetrators of that abuse.
You are right, sjb. There is a huge difference between the smirking Falwell-types who are condescendingly praying for me (snarl, gnash) and those desperate to believe. I am uncomfortable with the latter, but I can be civil.
I guess it’s the smirk which says “I’m right and everybody else is wrong, so get over it, you benighted heathen, you,” that I react to with fury.
Bush has it, too. Smirking is about certainty and absolutism, and since I find that things are really very complicated when I bother to think about them, smug anti-intellectualism drives me up the wall.
And the more power the smirker wields, the more infuriating it is.
Whenever I find myself in conversation with the ones you call “those desperate to believe”, I try as best I can to say things that might help alleviate some of the fear that’s been inculcated in them by the Falwell/Dobson types.
Success in such endeavors is often quite elusive, but since I see them generally as victims first, my inclination is to offer words and insight that might ease their suffering without playing into their delusions. If and when they become too aggressively insistent in their efforts to inculcate their ideas into my own psyche, and I ask them to stop and they keep on pushing anyway, then I disengage.
Your description made me laugh:
“What could be more arrogant than to approach a stranger, uninvited, and regale her with your best guesses about matters of faith, which by definition are not provable? It takes a special kind of smugness to bask in the satisfaction that your irrational beliefs are superior to other peoples’ irrational beliefs.”
Dang – that could be someone’s description of me going door to door campaigning for Kerry!
That’s how I look at others people’s spirituality in relationship to me (religion being to me an entirely different subject).
If people understand and respect the fence between what their beliefs and mine then I am fine with that. If they want to cross that fence, they have to ask me if they can come through the gate first. If I say no and they politely drop the subject (or in the case of bible-thumpers drive away), then we have shared some mutual respect and all is fine.
And if a person sees opening up her spirituality to me and others as a gate through which I am invited to come if I so choose, then I’m more than fine with that (an example of this would SallyCat’s diaries). That can be a very enjoyable and interesting learning experience as well as a way to connect to other people.
When somebody won’t take no for an answer, whatever the topic, it does seem like a control issue more than anything else.
I’m sure that is a part of it but when it comes to matters of faith, there are people who are so certain that what is true and right for them must be true and right for everyone else that they sincerely believe that whatever they do is for your own good which gives them license to go right ahead and do it no matter what.
You hit it right on the head for me. . .and brought me a BIG Smile too!
is, for me, something of a contemplative exercise. Small dog, wags a lot, spends much time being a good Democrat and peeing on the bushes, so about 95% of my part is standing around and holding the leash.
This morning, and thinking about the earlier peace diaries, it occurred to me that–bear with me, here–people like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the nasties must be in an enormous amount of psychic pain.
Yes, they have us so conditioned that, like Pavlov’s puppies, at the mere mention of them we bark and snarl and carry on. Think about it–they so deny their own humanity that the pain manifests in their lives. Look at Cheney’s so-called health. Look at how Bush injures himself. Look at Rumsfeld–we don’t get the particulars, but he’s an old man and does not look well.
They have such vested interests in maintaining their facades that they put all their lives into clamping down tightly, controlling. I suspect it’s because if they were to acknowledge, even for an instant, their intrinsic humanity and admit to the smallest inkling of a search for inner peace, that all their defenses would collapse and the construct they have wired together would shatter. So they live in fear. Fear so overwhelming to them that they overflow with it and spatter it out all over the world.
Nasty stuff, fear. Makes you clench your insides. Makes you hold on to negative thoughts and experiences. Makes you very, very sick.
None of this is to say I don’t want to see the sumsbitches in the dock at The Hague, then locked up for life with the keys thrown away. Just that I am trying to summon some compassion for other sentient beings. In doing so, I am finding that their ability to affect me through fear is greatly diminished.
spends much time being a good Democrat and peeing on the bushes
Lol! You are in fine form today, Mem.
You have expressed so clearly what I think in my moments when I can view them from a compassionate place.
It is when I consider the consequences of their actions that MY fear explodes. Peace eludes me.
Another kind of peace, another kind of walking. Take a look at Jim Staro’s diary here about a Peace & Justice march they’re working on for March 18 in North Carolina, in case you’re going to be in the neighborhood. Fayetteville (“Fate’ville”) is home to Fort Bragg. ‘nuf said.
When Peace talks about the need to work on collective problems collectively, that’s another thing it seems that we’re already doing with our blogs. Just as (from yesterday’s selection), we are already doing the work of trying to “bring truth to falsehood.”
Kansas – I only have a moment or two so I haven’t absorbed the two preparations or thought about what they might mean to me.
Hope to get back here later today.
This caught me out: “Stop being a surface-liver “
Immediate mental image of a liver – the body organ – bobbing in froth of water. Eeeew – who wants to be a surface-liver?
My first really good laugh of the day – thanks.
I read an interesting piece this morning. The author was talking about Peace. My paraphrase of it: We ask for peace, we search for peace, we pray for peace, we talk about peace….. but consider that peace comes out of joy, so perhaps we should be seeking JOY, or what we most often call happiness, rather than peace.
She went on to suggest that we don’t ever see two people who are in joy fighting with each other over anything. When we feel joyful within, all seems right with the world and everything in it. We are not looking to argue, fight, kill, maime, or otherwise exhibit un-peaceful behavior.
It brings another thought or perspective to be considered. I found it worth thinking about.
It sounds a lot like quitting smoking, which I have not been able to do for more years than most lives last.
Yet, all it would take is to simply not smoke.
This aspect of it reminds me a lot of what katiebird’s Eat4Today is all about. Anyone can do it theoretically, but most of us find it something of a stumbly sort of process, so yes, we do need that “collectivism” that support, which we are trying to build over there for eating, (and oh, all right, damn it, excercising, may it rot in hell the awful stuff!)
And here I guess we are trying to build it for – well, most of us will never attain the transcendence of Peace Pilgrim, and I think we have to “give ourselves permission,” as the pop-psychos say, to attain what we can.
For me, that is not drinking coca-cola classic or sweetened tea, and keeping hate out of my heart, and being at peace with the fact that I will probably not ever be able to quit smoking or achieve the spiritual heights of Peace Pilgrim.
I quit smoking on Feb. 11, 2004, but it took a fatal heart attack to get me to make the choice. (Obviously I was brought back to the land of the living, for which I’m very grateful.)
From this simple but extreme lesson I think I’ve learned something elemental, that being that when we find things important enough to do, or to pursue or to learn, we generally find ways to do them as far as we’re able. I don’t struggle to keep from smoking now because it’s important for me to live and smoking is seriously inimical to that.
In this sense, yet in a broader philosophical context, I find that the struggle is not so much centered on living according to the principles we deem important as it is in discovering the innate importance of principles we’ve too long been able to marginalize or utright disregard.
OH DTF, you have just reminded me to keep my goals reachable and obtainable. I tend to go overboard on stating my goals…:o) Most of the time, making them never workable for me, anyhow. I too am way tooooo blunt for my own good, let alone others…:o(
Peace, for me, is not being at the froth of a daily basis of working in or being in or being absorbed in. I can for the most part, be at peace at home when I have no one to answer to for anything but me. I sometimes have to bring my work home with me, which I absolutely detest. This again brings back the uneasiness of my job home with me. I tend to put that work off as long as I can to stay away from frustration and anger.
When it comes to the political aspect of things, I can get a lot done with my anger and frustration. I clean like never before. I write letters/emails. I place calls, I just do what I think must be done to get things done for the betterment of this project.
See where I am going in this with me anyhow.
The older I become, the harder it is to get mad at family and stay mad. I just let thing go on and stay way from distention. This keeps me safe and from being involved in others unmerciful lives…:o) I refuse to be drawn in to that too..which can be a chore at the most, at times.
With my patients who decide to not be compliant for their own good, I use to get very frustrated and upset with them…not anymore. I just tell them what they need to do and tell them it is their lives and if they want to die, then to continue the same practices they have been doing and I will send a rose to their funeral. I rarely get any argument in that respect. When they try to manipulate me, I refuse, by telling them up front I will not be manipulated by them. I am here doing my job which is to save them from their own horrors that they have done to themselves. I do not get upset with them…they get more frustrated with me that I do not argue with them than anything. I in the mean time, emphasize the fact that I love them and will do all I can to help them but they must help me to do it as well.
There has been a lot of letting peace in my heart and mind as I have gotten older….I call it maturing. I see older ppl not being as aggressive as the younger ones. So this tells me something..
All in all, I try to use the golden rule in living my personal and professional life. I have to remember too, that I am my patients advocate in the setting of which I work as well. So as you can see, I really have to love my job in the first place to get it done on a daily basis. and that is just with the patients and not the others around me, such as the Dr.s, nurses, labs, x-ray, and any other stimulus that should come along. I am the only one there that does my job..I wear many hats. I sometimes forget to hold my peace in tact. I have to take a lot of deep breaths and bite my tongue a lot, but I get it done with still a smile on my face, which drives some nuts..for they do not know what I truly am thinking about….and makes them return a smile most of the time, which helps settle down anger and hostility.
I really am a transparent person, when one thinks about it…:o) aren’t I? Anyhow, I try hard..that is what it is about anyhow..trying. If I and others don’t succeed, DTF, we at least tried and realized we can set our goals lower to be more obtainable the next time…or even don’t set them at all for that particular desire…:o) Of all the stressors in my life, I certainly do not need to make more of them on me by me than necessary…in the mean time making me feel more at peace, from within.
Does any of this make sense to you all? Anyhow this is me, now you know the rest of the story about me….well most of it anyhow.
The fact that PP is telling us and giving us tools to look into for the purpose of doing this job in our own lives is wonderful..At least she is leading by example…This I love in a person!
Thanks again Kansas. You are one terrrrrfic lady…hugs…
how does cleaning like never before help the political aspect?
Except for that small point, and admitting my own anti-cleaning bias, everything you said makes very good sense! 🙂
DTF, it doesnt help them but boy howdy it sure does help me…:o) I just work out like no bodys business with the vacumn cleaner and mop….:o)
if only you lived closer to me 😀
What Andi said.
I confess I was hoping you were writing letters like:
Dear Senator Bullhockey,
I will have you know that your remarks this afternoon so appalled me that I had no choice but to clean my entire kitchen cabinets, and by that I mean that several out of date products have been “disposed of” if you know what I mean, in a most unceremonious way.
And there is plenty more where that came from.
So I suggest you change your vote on that obnoxious bill, or by noon tomorrow every lime green leisure suit in my husband’s closet will sleep with the fishes, if you get my drift.
And in case you don’t, let me put it this way. I have a Swiffer and I’m not afraid to use it WHEREVER there is dirt.
Sincerely,
Brenda
Priceless! Absolutely priceless!
Thanks DTF
Hugs
Shirl
DTF, may I respond to this with, thre are days and then there are days!…:o)
Hell yes, I have written snailmail, e-mails, called, you name it I have done it! There is a time for me to simply lay down the hammer and just polish the furniture, if you get the drift….:o) Fun isnt it…
This is my first comment in one of these diaries Kansas because I missed the first couple of days and just got the chance to read all of them at once. I think I am in the middle of a movement to a deeper spiritual place myself and don’t know exactly where it will lead, but these diaries have helped a lot – so thank you!!
One of my reactions has been to think of the poetry of Mary Oliver. I just pulled out a book of her poems and would love to interject several here, but will settle for just one. It related well for me to Peace Pilgrim’s first preparation about not being a “surface-liver.” I think Mary Oliver is saying that while mountain-top experiences are wonderful – we have to do as Peace Pilgrim did and enter the world full-force with all of its challenges.
A Dream of Trees by Mary Oliver
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.
There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile, I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?
Thank you for the Mary Oliver reminder. “I bend my heart toward lamentation” sums up a lot, for me, of where we are as a society these days.
Having a chance to read this more carefully, I find I really have many questions.
In preparation 1: Right Attitude toward life, PP says, “Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found.”
So what are these?
The potential for conflict seems inherent in even defining these.
“The second preparation has to do with bringing our lives into harmony with the laws that govern this universe. (She means things like The Golden Rule.)”
This one is pretty hard for me. There is this voice – a very whiny voice – saying, “But I don’t want to.”
There are things I like to do. Things that I find calming, even peaceful that don’t have any connection that I can see toward solving world problems. Mowing the grass comes to mind.
Where I really start to get uncomfortable and very resistant are to actions that could solve problems, but the actions are up close and personal.
For example, there are homeless people and there are people with homes. If everyone with homes took in a homeless person, there would be no homeless people – problem solved. Right?
But I don’t want to take in a homeless person.
But if I were homeless, wouldn’t I want someone to help me? Take me in?
And there are people on this blog who have experienced homelessness. People I would love to meet. Could I open my home for them to live with me and my family?
These explorations are making me very uneasy!
It is that not always pleasant but very necessary acknowledgement of where we are that makes progress possible. 🙂
Feels like going down into the cellar to check the foundation – very unpleasant.
So I better start singing/humming…”You’ve got to have friends, to make the day last long!” 😉
Thank you.
I was blessed to have my mother and Nana who told me the Golden Rule every single day. When I was young it was, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Then when I was older it was in the way they lived, when they would gently nudge me and ask me if what I had just done or what I had just said was something I would want others to do or say to me. It was in the years before Sister and I left home, when our Nana and Mom, who both held onto nighttime like a child’s favorite blanket, stayed up with us into the wee hours playing Canasta and listening to stories, when we learned the history of our family, when they told us in so many ways that Jesus walked in everyone of us, that it was our job to be as he would be, to do what he would do, to embrace everyone as he would, to give to those less fortunate, to feed those who were hungry, to share the warmth of our homes for those who were not sheltered.
I gave organized religion and it’s dogma behind in my early twenties but I never forgot Jesus’ teachings. There came a time when I gave back to Nana and Mom. I sent them a framed copy of Nelson Mandela’s inaugural address where he speaks of the light that is in everyone of us. They both called me in tears of gratitude and they said they would read it everyday as they said their prayers.
So much of what is written in Steps Toward Inner Peace sounds like my buddhist instructor and mento, Pema Chodron. These words feel like home. I don’t know where to begin in how similar their writings are so I will just say, tears have welled up in my eyes because I’ve been reminded of being on a path to peace and been shown the way back to that path.
Thank you Kansas. I do believe I will put you on my gratitude list tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that. The wonder is that when we have wandered off there’s always someone to put us back on course. You are that someone to me.
I will end by telling you all one of my favorite quotes, I’m a quotes lover kinda gal. Virginia Woolf said this, ” To look life in the face for what it is. To know it for what it is. To see it for what it is. To love it for what it is. And then to put it away.” I do believe we put it away only when we have completed the pilgramage.
Thank you, Cali.
(Pema Chodron is one of my favorites, btw.)
And thanks to everybody. I’m off to sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up this series, though if anybody wants to continue this discussion in his/her own way, I hope you will.