I handed my passport to a uniformed Soviet official. He looked at my picture, and he looked at me, and he looked at my picture, and he looked at me. The look he gave me was, I think, the most hateful stare I have ever received from anybody in my life. It was an icy rage. It was the first time in my life that I had experienced that kind of energy so directly and personally. I just stood there, shocked. Finally, after quite a long period of time, the official handed me back my passport and told me to go. I went to the transit lounge of the airport, where my traveling companions were waiting for me. I was very upset. I felt as though the man’s energy had poisoned my being. I had absorbed his hatred, and I was reacting strongly to it. Then, in one moment, everything shifted. I thought, “If being exposed to his energy could make me feel so terrible after ten minutes, what would it be like to live inside that energetic vibration all the time?” I realized that this man might wake up, spend much of the day, and go to sleep in a state quite similar to the one I had just experienced from him. A tremendous feeling of compassion came into me for him. He was no longer a threatening enemy, but rather someone in what seemed to be intense suffering…..Sharon Salzberg

diving into this human experience requires a wild faith, following the frayed thread of soul encounters all the way through the sacred and the profane……maybe some of us know, some of us let go, some of us hold so tightly we can never lose what has died in our gripping…….

The little steps we take in the name of peace and nonviolence enable us to feel a connection with others all over the world who are taking their own small steps for peace. “As peacemakers,” Catholic writer Henri J.M. Nouwen suggests, “we must resist resolutely all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life.” We are here for the future to do what we can by practicing peace and nonviolence. Why now? Because like the Indian mystic poet Kabir, we can say, “Something inside of me has reached to the place where the world is breathing.” We are here for the future. Writer Coleman McCarthy voices our understanding, “The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it, for anything to matter more that the struggle for peace.”……Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat

alive & forgetting

I want to remind myself and others that our homes can become sacred places, filled with life and meaning. We do not need cathedrals to remind ourselves to experience the sacred…..Gunilla Norris