BECOME THE PEACE YOU SEEK

Turning our passion into compassion allows us to become the peace we seek!

The journeys of our lives are never fully charted.  Some come to us announced. Most arrive unannounced.  Some come as dry deserts to cross, some as an oasis on the horizon, some a distant mirage. And then some are dropped in our laps and lives so vividly that we can barely breathe.

Then we find our lives in pieces, these journeys are often moistened with our tears and fears.  And then, not so surprising, the drought ends. Just like Springtime, our journeys can take root and eventually, with tender care, begin to bloom.

So it stands to reason that if we have compassion and it turns into our passion, or if our passion turns into compassion, then we become the peace we have been seeking.  Seems easy doesn't it?  But is it?

I have often wondered what would remain if we were stripped of every nonessential thing in our lives.  What  is nonessential?  Spending what seems like an eternity in the midst of a kitchen remodel, I have boxes of nonessential things ready to be donated.  So is my life full of dispensible, unnecessary things, people, stuff that I hang on to out of habit. Or is it fear that we lose ourselves if we lose our stuff.  But what if we were stripped of this stuff?  Where would that leave us?  Who would we then be?  Are we morbidly defined by our stuff?

Perhaps when we are stripped down to the essentials we are vulnerable, but we are then real!

My deepest feeling is that with each loss comes a gain!  So removing the nonessentials from our lives we gain!  Personally, I gain a sense of peace, order, vision, and openness. A feeling of being able to breathe again. A spring cleaning of the soul so to speak.  When we are melted down to our core and are completely exposed, our thoughts, our feelings, our vulnerability, it is often painful. 

But it is in the pressing past this pain that our inner core remains.  Our spirit remains.  Our love remains.

We become real! We become the peace we seek!

"Your calling is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

~Frederick Buechner