The Open Road to Peace

Traveling… wending your way away from home. For me it’s an itch I get in the Spring. Is it the faintly remembered graduation impulse? or is it the newer my work stretches to the end of June and then… summer vacation, is taking me away…

I love the going away and the coming home.

Part of the going away that we need to remember is to keep our hearts and minds open to the people and cultures we encounter… When we’re leaving we often think about fleeing… getting out of town… but we’re also journeying to some place… we just might not know where yet…

Hitting the open road… hitting the open mind… Setting out with our minds set on Peace.

Off and running on the Peace journey…

Good Boots for the Walk into Peace

You can’t over-estimate the importance of a good pair of boots.

When you get good boots, they’re old friends. They hang in their with you for years at a time. You get them resoled and resewn. You polish them or you don’t. You put the waterproofing on… and you wear them. You wear them because they tell the world who you are and you wear them because they’re the most comfortable things in the world.

Old friends, those boots. Who better to walk into Peace with? Who better to dance the dance of Peace with?

Peace, my dears. And may your boots be comfortable for the whole journey!

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The March of Peace

Well, it took three days of writing the Peace of March before it dawned on me that I was also writing about the march of Peace. I don’t know whether I’d thought about it before, but March is perhaps the month most in motion. The wind blows, the plants sprout, the ice breaks up. For most of us a longing is born to get out there in the world, to sit in the sunshine, to dig in the garden, to walk in the woods or the town.

That makes March the perfect month to catapult your Peace dream from the drawing board to the world. Time for those first tentative steps. I’m trying, (and talk about fits and starts and not knowing exactly how to do what I want to do) to raise money for two small projects in Staten Island. Poor, poor Staten Island, devastated by Superstorm Sandy. I’ve never done fund raising before, and I’m trying on a grand scale (why start small?). But the money’s really only the by-product, much needed and well appreciated to be sure. What I’m really trying to do is to get 1,500 people involved in making a difference in their neighbor’s lives. These neighbors may be 200 miles away, but they’re neighbors nonetheless.

And you? where’s your entrance to the Peace Road? Your walking may be slow and tentative, but it still counts. You’re on the Great Peace March. We’re walking toward life’s being easier, better, kinder, sweeter, more just for everyone involved. Let’s go, but on your good walking shoes and get involved in Life.

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