Monday, June 14, 2010

A FLAG DAY MESSAGE



Peace.  We hear about the lack of it.  We sometimes crave it.  Our soldiers fight for it, and then maybe we don't even know what it is.  Maybe we have to experience, it before we know what we have been missing. 

Is it a sense of well being?  Or is it lack of noise?  Is it found in the presence of a person you love or a friend you feel comfortable with?  Is it a three legged dog named Harry sleeping by a cold fireplace on a stiffling day with an ice cube melting next to his muzzle?  Or a vibrant crape myrtle blowing in the breeze on a hot June afternoon?

Maybe the answer is that peace is different for different people.  Or just maybe it could be all of the above.

For me, today it is house wrens busying themselves on the porch and tissue thin white butterflies darting in and out of the grasses and weeds, surrounded by horses oblivious to the bucolic, extraordinary environment in which they eat hay and an occasional carrot.  Watching the billowing clouds settle over the South Texas sky, I find peace.  Perhaps this peace is found in the absense of 'having to be'.  Having to be somewhere at some time to do something.

Maybe this hour, this day is peace.  The sustaining peace that sees us through the rough spots, the disasters and the dilemmas.  Now is all we have.  Why fill our minutes with anything less than peace?  It isn't realistic to assume we can live like this all of the time, but it is realistic to feel we can escape to these pockets of peace that thread the needles in our lives and offer us clarity and wisdom and vision when we need it the most.

So on this flag day take a moment to salute the red, white and blue that our soldiers lay down their lives for so that we may live in peace.

Bow your head and say thank you to those who have lost their lives so that we have the ability and the opportunity to find our pockets and moments of peace.  And pray that they have found theirs.


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