“We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.” – Virginia Woolf
World War I ended today. Reparations finally paid off after 92 years…
And in the interim, war has gone on, seemingly without ceasing. So much has changed in our world – and in our lives – since 1918 and yet, nothing really has.
In my life, I will strive to seek for justice, for integration, for laughter, for awakening, for some sort of peace that still involves growth and exploration. I dive steadily inward, always keeping in mind that the shore, and the plants, animals, and people of the shore, are also in the great ocean, swimming with me.
It is this inward diving that reminds me to think of you, and to not simply react, but try to choose to act, and try to recall the choices that are arrayed around me: choices of easy war or uneasy peace, or some actual power in relating to some alien force, some juggernaut of emotion, thought, or need. It doesn’t even matter if this juggernaut – a thing which once carried a God, and now simply carries the potent energy of that God, without the reminder to pay attention to the sacred – feels personal, communal, or political. What is the difference between skirmishes amongst community members getting trumped up into lasting rifts, and skirmishes amongst countries being trumped up into righteous war?
Sit down upon the cushion with me. Let us breathe. Let us not demand 92 years of reparations. Let us recognize our choices, make amends. Without the navel gazing process that is so scorned, change is simply not possible for us. We will fight these wars endlessly. Let us sit, breathe, and observe ourselves. Then, when we rise up from the altar, we can rise toward action. We will engage ourselves to this beautiful new day.
Comments