Instruments of Peace

St. Francis of Assisi… Many of us associate him with his love and caring for animals. And that would have been enough.

He organized a group around renunciation of the the world’s riches… and so his friars were known as the begging friars… I’m not as interested in that… although an aversion to building up riches is certainly not a bad thing in an order! And as a result, they embrace the poor and are ardent workers for social justice. They also embrace the joyousness of creation and repudiate the notion of original sin. And that would have been enough. Any of these would have been enough.

But then there’s this lovely prayer that I focused on today. Those words are a wonderful gift. The notion that we should be instruments of Peace. So simple and so profound. So incredibly challenging. But we can be enough, if we put our minds to it.

We can be instruments of Peace. We can be Peace.

 

 

The Peace of Deep Winter Magic

Anyone who knows me knows  can drop into a story between one heartbeat and the next. I’ve always cherished the notion that the animals speak at MidWinter so all can hear. In all the stories I’ve read and written, they speak Peace.

In my story telling mind, everyone speaks Peace except for us. I do what I can, I do what I must, but the humans need a louder chorus.

It’s why I listen to the little creatures in my heart, who want their stories told. I know. There are places I could get locked up and you notice I’m carefully not saying the voices in my head… but if that’s so, they’re usually merry, so why complain?

But seriously, we need Peace. We just found out we’re in a drought. what measures will we take to make the Water safe? And not just safe for us. We kill ourselves, that’s one thing. But all of Nature doesn’t deserve to die because we’re asses.

So tomorrow night, listen for the whispers of the rest of the world. Listen to what the wild has to say. And if you’re not a fan of the Solstice story, it’s also told in the Christian World about Christmas eve…

All they are saying is give Peace a chance. Why won’t we consider this?