Our world is undoubtedly not in a state of peace.
We are not taught peace growing up,
but are exposed to the ways of conflict & war.
What if each of us was equipped with peacemaking skills?
A Peacemaker's Toolbox
This series will focus on practical ways we can learn to choose and foster peace within ourselves, our families and communities.
I heard a story the other day about a man who grew up in New York...
He went to a prestigious university to study art and business and started to become a successful artist. He traveled and landed at an income-sharing intentional community near us. Discontented still, he moved in with one of our older friends who had been a medicinal herb farmer and acupuncturist most of her adult life. She asked him why he wanted to live with her, take care of the cows and be a market gardener.
His reply:
I just want to find peace.
This story propelled me to reflect on
- How difficult it can be to experience peace in this world
- The fact that this young man was seeking peace as a goal in life above all else struck me as odd.
I realized I don’t even have peace as a goal in life. Who does in this day in age? And if we do, how do we go about it?
Peace is our birthright.
Personal Transformation: Peace Within
There are many conversations whether we achieve peace by going within and personally cultivating it. Then we meet the world from a peaceful place and therefore can work toward transformation. That is the theory of personal transformation.
Community Transformation: Peace in outer structures
The other conversations deal with peace on a larger scale: in our relationships, families, communities, business, governments, and finally world peace on a massive scale. In case world peace on a massive scale seems like too amorphous a goal (it always has to me), let us focus on building peaceful close relationships to tangential ones that we encounter daily in our communities and businesses.
This series will address peace from both angles, while focusing moreso on peace within Our Relations.
My theory is if we teach ourselves, our children, etc peaceful ways of responding to situations and if we have those tools, the ripple effect can happen on a larger scale. Having peace within ourselves is not enough if we don’t know how to make peace in our most intimate of relations, homes or businesses.
I want to do this to reinforce peace in my own life. I want to stretch myself and learn and grow while writing these articles. I hope this can be a growth experience for many of us. I hope we can be vulnerable about the ways we are currently not peaceful, about the things we need to work on and how we can each step forward as agents choosing peace.
Things you can expect in this series:
Articles focused step by step practical skills to learn how to choose peace in the realms of
- Self
- Families
- Personal relationships
- Non-violent communication
- Rituals to speak from the heart
- Community Skills
- Earth Relationship
- And much more...
