Sat, Dec 12 – DAY 14
World peace has other connotations. It can mean harmonious, responsible connection with Creation. It may apply to how we engage the natural world in which we live.
Do we actively tend to the needs of the environment in which we live? Do we find out what is out of balance in the places around us, and help to restore equilibrium where we can? Do we regularly make sustainable, equitable choices as consumers and advocates, as people who relish the outdoors in play and work? Who reside here so that we can be close to this breathtaking world?
Peace may arise from communing with the natural and sacred places around us. Yet our peaceful connection to the environment also implies reciprocity and stewardship, a holy commitment to care for the world in which we live, as mandated by our own creation stories in Genesis. — Rev Gail
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. — Isaiah 55:12
When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed. ― Fred Rogers
The Peace of Wild Things — Wendell Barry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.