It should or should not…

scapish

pigpeace

I have long said that everything happens, exactly as it is supposed to be, in the workings of the universe.  All the moments up until this one, and all the “next” moments.   They are all  occurring one right after the other.  But all at one time.  This moment.

But back to the first sentence.  It all unfolds.  I am here because of a million moments before this.  Chance encounters of strangers on the street in Bucyrus.  Crops failing one year in Bavaria in the late 1600s.  A new inn opening in the town of Freiburg, 1430.  A ship arriving late in New York.   Who knows, exactly what those moments were. But.  They were.  And because it all lined up the way it did, with my grandparents meeting, and their grandparents meeting, and their grand-generations backward… here I sit.

Just as do you.  The universe unfolds that way, and here were are, sharing this moment together.

Today in Nice, France, another horrific terrorist attack.  That is what scrolls by the news ticker on the TV as I sit here an write.  At least 80 dead, they are saying.  One hundred injured.  A truck plows into a crowd.  Lives, gone. Just like that.

It is hard to make sense of it.  This just should not have been.  These sorts of thing should not happen.  Violence. Crime. Wars. Genocides. Illness.  Life gone too soon.  Life gone not soon enough.

At times, it is hard for me, to stand by my belief that all moments are occurring just as they should.

But this event has brought me here, writing about it.  Thinking about how I can bring some sort of peace into the world.  Some little bit has to help.  Or make a difference.

And maybe that’s it.  Maybe that’s all we can do.  Is to bring peace into the world, right where we are.  We talk about it, and wave flags, and change our Facebook Profiles with neat French flag backgrounds in support.

But the real change has to come in the every day.  It has to come where we sit, and work, and eat, and play, and breathe.  The peace has to arrive in our every day situations.  The non-reactiveness.  The acceptance.  The giving, and the kindness.  It has to start now.  In this moment.

It just has to.  We have to.


“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
― Fred Rogers

 

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein