Peace is not easily obtained. All month, I’ve been using the image of the garden as a metaphor for Peacemaking. And it’s a good one, because gardening is very labor intensive, you must prepare the soil, choose what you will plant, figure out how those things work together and that’s when the work starts.

As with gardens, Peace is labor-intensive and much of that labor is just plain hard work. The hope is, that if the wind and weather cooperate, it will not only feed you for the summer but also enliven and strengthen your diet throughout the year. Again, with Peace the hopes and the goals are enormous and long-term and are affected by many variables.

However. with gardening as with Peacemaking, there are those magical moments when you pull up, say, the first spring onion, or you accomplish a small milestone and life it made infinitely better. Savor those moments, because there will be more work to do right afterwards! But at the moment? how sweet!