PEACE BE WITH YOU

Peace be with you...

And also with you.

I always loved those words from the church services of my youth. The handshake and the wishing of peace to be with another person. This small act always awakened the desire for peace within myself. The still small voice came alive. That space within me that so easily gets shut down, drowned out by the noise, stress and chatter of daily life and the machinations and posturing of my well developed ego.

It is a space of richness, strength, calm, and infinite possibility. Why I consider living from any other place is beyond me. It feels so right, so good. But oh the mind and the ego like to be clever, to chat along, to feel right, to be martyrs, to play old tapes, to tell their stories loudly in our ears.

Welcome in free will. Take a choice. Do I live mindfully... or cleverly? Do I live peacefully or lazily? It is a choice, and one which tricks us into old habits... Peace is not the absence of war. It is not passivity. It is deep, strong and active. A conscious choice, made again and again and again. It takes huge discipline and sustained effort. Its rewards are itself, made actual in every facet of our lives and our relationships.

Thich Naht Hanh, as my dear friend Leigh reminded me today, talks of cultivating the seeds of anger or of love and peace. We have both inside us. It is up to us which we water. We must choose to BE peace.

So now I hand you over to the wise words of Stacy, aka Mama-Om, who started my day well, making me think about silence, and mindful parenting...
http://mama-om.blogspot.com/2010/12/quietness-that-is-waiting-for-me.html

To close, a quote she has on her wall which I would like to share onwards...

I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. — Rainer Marie Rilke

Peace be with you.