Daily Reminder #157: Dona Nobis Pacem

I've put my reiki "healing hands" behind my globe and will post them below
in their entirety in hopes that you may feel the love generated
by them and that they may add a little peace to your day.

Today is the 7th Blog Blast for Peace, the brain and love child of Mimi at Mimi Writes by which she has inspired bloggers across the world to share thoughts and hopes and images and prayers for peace in our world.


At about the same time that Mimi first announced the date for this year's event, I received a link to a very interesting website called the Center for Nonviolent Communication from a friend of mine. I set it aside to use for today's event because it aligned with something I have been thinking about for a while now.


I'm politically very progressive. There's a very cool website called The Political Compass that evaluates where you are on the political grid and I am sufficiently liberal that I fall south-east of Gandhi and the Dali Lama, so you can imagine that yesterday's political results have left me feeling a bit of despair. But I digress.... As part of my political junkiness over the past few months, I've spent a lot of time at Huffington Post reading not just their articles but the comments of readers. To say the least - the language in much of the posters is anything but courteous. Much like what passes for news media, these days, it consists largely of people "yelling" at each other in print.  But what bothers me as much as that is the nature of the headlines there... to the point that I wrote to HP about it. Their headlines there are awash in "so-and-so SLAMS X." Their favorite words include words like SMASH, BASH... even when the article reveals that no such violent emotion or word-play was actually involved in the exchange. Politicians have "hit lists" and "take each other down." Glenn Beck and Fox news foment fear and paranoia and the rest of the is media not far behind.only somewhat more subtle in their approach....


Jon Stewart put it nicely, I thought when he compared the media using it's magnifying glass to "light ants on fire" instead of illuminating issues - and then offering a week of reports on the sudden onset of burning ants. (He said it much better, but I'm too lazy to find the exact quote. You can listen to his speech here, if you missed it. It's worth a listen.

If you click on the photo you will get a larger version

Anyway.... I'm being long-winded here and wandering in the woods before finding the path, but my point, I guess, is that words have power. Profound power. What we say and how we say it not only impacts the people we speak to. It impacts us. The energy and vibration behind our words - especially when they are spoken out loud - vibrates in our own bodies even as it vibrates out to those to whom we speak them. We become the things we say, and if we become conscious of that, maybe we will become more conscious and careful about the things we think and speak. I have found myself muttering (and sometimes shouting) insults at my TV during my recent weeks of political obsession and frustration. It may offer a second of instant gratification, but in the end, I don't like the way it feels.


We tend (well I do) to think of Peace on some grand scale - calling an end to war and violence - and I'm not opposed to that. I'm very much for it. I don't understand why people want to kill each other over religion or land or oil or any of the host of other absurd reasons human being use to justify massacring one another. I don't understand why people want to carry guns or why they feel justified in executing other human beings to prove that killing is bad.  Because of that I sign petitions and write essays and letters. I think it's good to do those things.


But of late I have begun to think that maybe peace needs to start at home and radiate out, that the more of us who learn to be conscious of and to moderate our angry hate-filled thoughts and words, the more of us who learn to meet hate speech not with counter hate but with compassion, with a heart open to understanding the pain that germinates that hate, the better the world will be. It's harder to grow hate in minds and hearts that are fertilized with kindness and compassion. It's harder to grow hate in minds and hearts conditioned to look for our co-humanity with even those whose thoughts and actions we most despise. It's harder to go to deny food or health care to someone in whom you can see yourself than to "that poor person" or "that liberal" or "that conservative,"  "that immigrant," etc. And it's harder to go to war and point a gun at someone when you think of them as a fellow human and not as "the enemy."


I don't know the answer to fixing the world or to creating global peace. I don't even know the answer to creating peace in my own heart. But I think being very conscious of my un-peaceful thoughts and words may be a good place to start.


I post a gratitude list each day. I'll keep it short today, but I don't want to forget. 


Some things I'm grateful for today:

• the Blog Blast for Peace
• Peace seekers
• electricity
• heat and hot water
• the internet
• my home
• my cats
• the US mail
• my camera
• life
• Peace wherever it lives
• Peace in my heart when I can find it
• everyone who reads this post and posts their own

Dona Nobis Pacem

It's that time again. The annual Blog Blast for Peace when bloggers from around the globe take time to send a wave of prayers for and thoughts of and about peace out into the Universe. This event is the heart child of Mimi at Mimi Writes.

What to say about peace in a world that seems so hell-bent on its alternative... I'm find it hard to find words for the jumble of thoughts that are churning around in my head.

As anyone knows who visited my blog during the elections last year (and any time since), my otherwise mild mannered self is rabidly political. I find it hard to maintain my sense of peace and live-and-let-live in the face of people whose views seem so counter moral to me (as I'm sure my views seem to them). I don't understand levels of greed that allow people to leave others homeless so that they can have more money than any one human being needs. I don't understand people who think that if they have health insurance, that's all that matters, that the inconvenience of having to wait a day for coverage trumps waiting a life time. I don't understand people who feel that they have a right to legislate someone else's morality. I don't understand people who claim to be Christians yet ignore things like "even as ye have done it unto the least of these... and do unto others... and judge not lest ye be judged and... my list goes on and on." And I find myself becoming the thing I hate, feeling judgmental and cranky and anything but peaceful. When I listen to the Glenn Beck's and Limbaugh's, to the Ann Coulter's and Sara Palin's I have a hard time living my own ethic. I know that these are wounded souls on some level, but they speak hate and live to spread fear and discord. They prey on ignorance and the ugliest aspects of the American Spirit and thought I try to send love, I find myself often drawn into the vortex. Peace will come, I hope, when people like me don't get drawn into that vortex but rise above it, when we stop giving it power and put our energy into being for equal rights and healing rather than against petty dark souls who really aren't worthy of all the attention that they get. I still struggle with finding that capacity for peace in my own small life.

It's much the same, it seems to me on the grander international scale. I have often bemoaned the fact that the leaders of Israel and Palestine leap at any excuse to fight. One crazed lunatic blows himself up and peace treaties are thrown away for over-the-top retaliations that breed more crazy lunatics. It makes my head spin and it makes me sad. But aren't I the same here in my tiny kingdom? I let the hate mongers make me foam at the mouth.

I'm still carrying a lot of anger about what was done to my country over the past years, dragged into a war that should not have been, dragged into the moral perversity of torturing other human beings and imprisoning them without trial in conditions that are less than decent. I'm carrying a lot of anger that those who supported this horror are still fomenting fear, obstructing putting these mere mortals into American prisons (like we couldn't handle them... what are they? Sorcerers? If they were that powerful they would have escaped already...).

I don't like wars but I have less certainty than I once did about what's right and wrong. Is it peaceful to give over the people of a nation to those who kill people for disagreeing with them, who abuse women as a matter of "faith," who have perverted a peaceful religion into an instrument of mass murder and suicide? I have always believed (and still do) that violence begets violence. And yet I don't know an answer to hate as a faith. I don't know the answer to it on the world scene or on the local scene where there are those who think my friends shouldn't be able to love each other because they are both men.

I am grateful for our new president. He hasn't proven to be Superman. Hasn't leaped the Republican Party in a single bound, fixed the broken economy with a snap of his fingers, or gotten jobs for every citizen in 10 months. He has taken steps, though, at home and abroad. He has opened doors to talk with others about the issues that divide us. That alone has shifted the energy of the whole planet. Yes, I want all the guns beaten into plow shares and I want everyone to have a home of their own and a high paying job and more than enough to eat. And I want it yesterday. But change takes time. People who visit me regularly, know that I have had a major miracle in my life. A year ago in July, I wrote to an organization that helps people like me and asked if they could help me get a ramp to make my home easier and safer to get in and out of. For months I didn't hear anything and I figured that I hadn't made the cut, but then about 6 months after I applied, I got a call saying that they wanted to make a house inspection. Turned out that not only would they give me my ramp but a new bathroom with a walk-in shower and a more user friendly kitchen. I couldn't believe it. I was excited but then it seemed like nothing was happening... 5 months passed as paper work and applications and drawings were made. And then suddenly tons of things happened. For two months my home was in chaos with people hammering and pounding and painting and working... and "suddenly," my home is a new paradise of sorts with an entry I can use without panic. I can take a shower without wondering if I'm going to live through climbing in and out of the bath tub, and my kitchen... what can I say about having storage and counters and a sink I can reach? What can I say about having my washing machine where I can get to it? Thank you, for one thing. But my point (yes, I do have one) is that change and miracles don't always rise up in an instant. Like most things, they grow and evolve and then suddenly - like a flowers blossoming on a tree - they are miraculously there.

I practice gratitude religiously. Years ago I learned a Hawaiian adage: energy flows where attention goes. What we pay attention to, we bring to ourselves. I start and end my day giving thanks for all my blessings, by name. I give thanks for water when I drink or when I shower. I give thanks for the life force of the food I eat. I give thanks for my friends and my cats and for money to pay my bills (even when I don't quite have it). I think I want to remember to give thanks for world peace in the days to come (even though we don't quite have it yet).

This is long and rambly and I'm not sure where I'm going, having dragged anyone patient enough to read through all these words. I guess where I'm winding up is the belief that peace starts within. I don't think we can sit around hoping it will come to us. I think we need to generate it. I think we need to radiate it from our hearts and make the effort to generate love even to those we find despicable. (Limbaugh? Bin Lauden? Ugh.... I didn't say it was easy, but...)

And maybe first and foremost we need to generate it towards ourselves. I know I'm not going to always succeed. It's too much fun being pissed off sometimes and enjoying the wit of people like Jon Stewart to give up on crankiness completely. But still, I commit myself here and now with this post, to add my thanks for societal and world peace, to be grateful for every word spoken in peace, every step taken to stem violence and rape and murder, to give thanks for the Mimi's of this world and all of us who have participated in this blast for peace.

Peace be with you. Peace be with us all.

Blog Blast Reminder

I have been so self-absorbed and so just disconnected and I still am a bit. Hopefully after the royal visit from my niece on Thursday I can get myself regrounded and blog with more purpose again. Nate and Dan and Mary have been wonderful and helped me do a great clean-up so that the house is looking wonderful. Yesterday Dan set up the back bedroom so my guests will feel welcome and hopefully reasonably comfortable. I want to go to the kitchen and take some final photos as it is now almost ready to be declared my own. It's so beautiful and so much easier to manage than what I had before. I'm still in a daze of disbelief and joy mixed.

BUT my main purpose this morning is to remind myself and anyone else who might pop by that Thursday is the annual Blog Blast for Peace hosted by Mimi at Mimi Writes. The Blog Blast is an international mass prayer for peace. If you want to join in, go to Mimi's and pick up a "globe" thingy, make it your own and then on Thursday sign in and explore all the peace prayers from around the world. I finally made my globe this morning. If you click on it, it will take you to Globe Central where you can pick up your own and register to join the circle of peace.

Dona Nobis Pacem

It's blog blast for peace day, a day created by Mimi at Mimi Writes - when twice each year bloggers all across the internet and all across the world create a cyber prayer for peace.

I think the American public made a prayer for peace on Tuesday when we elected Barack Obama and I'm happy that this time as I blog for peace I feel like our prayers are flowing with the tide rather than against it.... I don't quite like that analogy. Maybe this is better. I have felt for so long like here in my country we were caught in a vortex of darkness, led by a pathetic man who was/is venal and greedy and probably something of a puppet to darker forces of this world. Today as I write this I feel like a great cloud is lifting. I love and admire Mr. Obama. I know he wants to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and that troubles me though perhaps it is a wise goal. War never seems like a good idea to me no matter the cause, but maybe controlled violence in the interest of stopping uncontrolled violence is a necessary evil. I don't know. I know we have a better chance of peace with a man who sees other human beings wherever he looks, who isn't so eager to demonize those he disagrees with that there is no hope for a meeting of the minds. I know we have a better chance of peace when we relate human to human instead of ideology to ideology. It's easier to hate a faceless "them," than a him or her whose eyes you look into, whose pain you see.

I was deeply distressed by the ugliness of the campaign that Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin waged. Glad too, in a way, because I think it may have cost them the election. That makes me happy not just because my guy won, but because it says that some part of our consciousness has awakened to the truth that hate erodes us. My country has been like a blind amnesiac in a mine field for the last 8 years, unsure of who we were and afraid to move in any direction. We allowed ourselves to be guided by voices of deceit that led us not out of, but deeper into danger. Like a character in one of the soap operas I'm sorry to admit I watch, who as rewritten the history of the beautiful amnesiac in his care to suit his own purposes, Bush, Cheney and their commitee of thugs, took advantage of our shock and confusion after 9/11. And we let them. We went against our hearts. We went against our spirit. Like a sleep-walking giant we trampled on a lot of lives in our own nation and abroad.

Now we are waking up. Already, our eyes are seeing light again and our spirits are rising. I know this is melodramatic of me, but I feel like Mother Earth herself has breathed a sigh of relief. And I think maybe there are Angels dancing somewhere. Peace feels possible. All kinds of peace. It seems possible that the poor may have some hope again. It seems possible that those struggling with illness may now have access to treatment without choosing between food and care, or a home and medication. It seems possible that affordable energy that will not take from the earth and will provide employment for many who need work may be with in our grasp. It seems possible that in the greater world people may be willing to sit down and negotiate instead of killing each other. It seems possible that we will begin listening to our better natures and that in so doing we will lead by example and inspire others to do the same.

I have long found it devastating that those in positions of power have used the acts of small numbers of troubled people as an excuse to ravage the lives of others, as an excuse to turn away from peace treaties, as an excuse to justify hate and the thing-if-ication of their fellow humans. I believe that thoughts have power and that we draw to ourselves that which we put our attention to. I try to focus on the positive, on beauty and the light. Being as fallable as I am, it hasn't always been easy when the so-called heart of power in my nation seemed bent on greed and war. Still, something in us - and in the world at large - must have shifted. We have drawn a man of peace into a position of power on the international stage. Our better angels have sung and I have to believe that their voices are only going to get louder in the coming days. I hope so. My new president elect gives me hope. Things like the blog blast for peace give me hope.

I couldn't find a vocal version of this song that pleased me so I went with this one. not quite angels, but...

Please check out the hundreds of other blogs posting for peace.

Dona Nobis Pacem

Here's a sing-along Dona Nobis Pacem for anyone who likes to sing.

One last thing: My gratitude for day #6: Well, I"m grateful for the blog blast for peace and for all the voices in this world that speak for, sing for, write for, pray for and live their lives in a spirit of peace.

P.S. A number of people have commented about the angel on my globe so I thought I'd add her story. She was a gift from a friend of mine on the 20th anniversary of my older sister's murder. Her wings read: "Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy." I wanted to include her as sort of a secret tribute to my sister.