Peace, this short one syllable word is something people ask for all the time, especially during November and December. Peace to me is a mystery, we all ask for it, but do we really obtain it? Do we understand what peace is?
Many religions preach about the ways to obtain peace, through love, through sacrifice, through meditation, through humility, through…. you put any word here and it’s probably something that someone has said. But do we really gain peace through all these things? When we talk about our personal aspect of peace then there is a high possibility of us obtaining a moment of peace. But what about the world? The mystery of World Peace is one that I’ve often pondered on. Can we just have a moment where no one is at war?
There are two things that I’ve heard this week that have made me question the actuality of peace and how fleeting it is.
I saw a post that said, “the opposite of war is not peace, it is creation.” This made me think about all the things that come after war, creating a new government, new alliances, new boundaries. Is that truly creation? In a human sense it is.
The second thing that I heard (not for the first time) was Leslie Fish’s song “The Sun is Also A Warrior.” The song is about a man that calls on God to explain war, but of the things that God tells him he is not satisfied that they are really worth all the death. So God removes war and provides peace. God is saddened because he is a God of war but provides peace anyway. After sometime the human calls God back stating that the lives of his people are pointless because they are just slaves to the King. He begs the God to bring back war, and so the God does and reminds the human to remember what is worth fighting for.”
This powerful song reminds me that peace isn’t always the best answer, but we must acknowledge what we are fighting for. Peace then is still a mystery, does it truly exist outside of personal peace of mind, body and soul? How do we obtain world peace? Can we obtain world peace?
All I can do is create peace in myself and share peace with people around me, because change starts with me, therefore peace starts with me.
~Candice C Carver
Sometimes all we can control is what happens inside of our own selves. You’ve gone me lots to think about today Candice. Thank you.