“Establishing peace in ourselves is the only way we can expect to have the clarity to then express it in our daily lives, in the difficult interactions we have, where peace is sorely needed. Our ability to embody nonviolence and compassion will bring those values more powerfully into the world than any speech we can make.”
-Swami Ramananda
Making the Ask by Rosemary Trommer
Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
—The Wizard of Oz
Give me a heart that breaks,
a heart that longs to open
wider and wider, always revealing
more space. Give me hands
that long to serve. Make them strong
enough to build what must be built.
Make them fall in love with letting go.
Make them unable to hurt. Give me a mind
that leans toward generosity. A tongue
that speaks in only we. Feet that run
toward those in need. Eyes
that see beneath the masks. Ears
that hear the silence
that is the staff for every sound. A nose
that follows the fragrance of truth.
Blood the same red as everyone else’s.
And give me a heart that breaks again
and again, the way ocean waves
break, unpredictable, an endless
breaking, an endless release,
in which nothing is ever really lost.
While most of us are not in a position to fight terrorism or negotiate peace in the world, we are all responsible for our own little corner of this planet and the significance of what we can do every day to give birth to peace is a point that has been hammered home in a very violent way. Peace in the world is dependent upon nothing more than our own combined ability to know peace in ourselves and express it in how we live.
The divine manifestation is ubiquitous,
Only our eyes are not open to it.
Awe is what moves us forward.
Live from your own center.
The divine lives within you.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen,
but experienced, unity and identity in us all.
Today the planet is the only proper “in group.”
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.
You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere.
The world is a match for us.
We are a match for the world.
The spirit is the bouquet of nature.
Sanctify the place you are in.
Follow your bliss. . . .
-Joseph Campbell
