Choose Peace

Rainbow after Navajo prayer, New Mexico Photo © Diane Joy Schmidt www.dianejoyschmidt.com

Religions around the world have an eschatology, a story about how things end – Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists and prophecies among Native Americans. They include a vision of a great spiritual and peaceful time, and some, but not all of these prophecies, describe a difficult time of wars and tribulations before that.

I think that we do not have to practically destroy the earth to reach this prophesied time of peace, but we have to promise, and I think we can, that we don’t have to screw everything up because of our greed. We are capable of rising above our own self-destructiveness, our aggressions and territorial survival instincts; our kill-or-be-killed mode of acting. We have evolved past that and are capable of choosing our own destiny. We can choose not to destroy civilization.

Instead of imagining a war of good and evil, to transcend this line of thinking about death, I am reminded to pray for peace, to seek a higher solution, a transcendence of death in a spiritual space.

To pray for peace takes us out of the realm of conflict, to choose to be free of black or white thinking.

Peace does not mean a passive acceptance of unbearable circumstance.
Peace is more like hope – a reminder to reach for something higher.
To choose peace over war is both an affirmation and a reminder to go further.