In the Sahara one day, I climbed over a dune to descend into a deep bowl of sand. Sitting at the bottom I encountered for the first time absolute silence, stillness that is indivisible. For there are two silences: a silence can be no more than the absence of noise, it can be inert; or, at the other end of the scale, there is a nothingness that is infinitely alive, and every cell of the body can be penetrated and vivified by this second silence's activity.
Trust that truth whether good or bad, pretty or ugly, is still truth . . . the knowledge of anything true brings freedom and empowerment back to oneself.
I remember when I used to dismiss the bumper sticker "PRAY FOR PEACE". I realize now that I did not understand it, since I also did not understand prayer, which I now know to be the active affirmation in the physical world of our inseparableness from the divine; and everything, especially the physical world, is divine. War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. Love will overflow every sanctuary given it. Truth will grow where the fertilizer that nourishes it is also truth. Faith will be its own reward ... God answers prayers. Which is another way of saying, the Universe responds ... Only as we have reason to fear what is in our hearts need we fear for the planet. Teach yourself peace. Pass it on.
