Peace is finding the good about people and nature and showing how good these people and things really are. It is getting along with the world, no matter how much confrontation there is. We can still find peace ... Once on a school retreat I met a lot of people I didn't know well. In the past I had judged them harshly. Through discussion sessions and prayer together, I got to know these people and found they were so good inside. This taught me how important it is to get to know people, even ones we might not like.
The heart always has an object of love; it is always attracted to some sign of beauty. Whatever the heart holds its attention on, it will acquire its qualities. Rumi said, "If your thought is a rose, you are rose garden. If your thought is a thorn, you are kindling for the stove." Being between the attraction of the physical world and the ego, on the one hand, and spirit and its qualities on the other, the heart is pulled from different sides. But ultimately behind all these various attractions lies one great Attractor.