The Springtime of Peace by Judith Pennington

The deeper beauty of spring is its process. In winter's last
days, as the sun warms the earth, each root and branch awakens to
the patterned memory of who it is and what it can be. Life stirs
and nature's growth in turn awakens all of us to the glories of being fully alive.

Consciousness awakens in much the same way, doesn't it? One
moment, everything is dark and still. Growth begins and we are
excited by movement and its vibrant promise of what is to come.

I have a sense of our world awakening to peace: not a blind
pretense that we are coming up roses, but a soul-deep vision of
the seeds of peace within us, just waiting for the warmth and
light needed for them to flourish. In the quiet stillness of
centering prayer and meditation, we connect with this warmth and
light, and become it. Our joy sweeps across green valleys and
white-clouded blue mountains kiss the sky.

That's how it was for Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi,
Mohammed, Mother Theresa, Buddha and so many others who became
our great peacemakers. They were divinely illuminated in the
silence and carried this peaceful inner light back into our
world.

I remember the power of this impulse in the 1960s and see it
taking hold again today, as people tire of war and destruction.
It is a telling co-incidence that Mel Gibson's "The Passion of
the Christ" comes along now to rip away the veils concealing our
brutality. When people see in this movie the raw atrocity of
violence, and know it for the monster that it is, then perhaps we
will begin to reject it on our airwaves and refuse war in our
lives and as a nation.

This awakening to peace is deeply needed in our suffering
country, and I believe our silent prayers have brought an
opportunity to choose a new symbol of who we are, in the U.S.
Department of Peace. It is an impulse whose time has come, for
within it is the potential to shift the consciousness of war to
peace.

The Department of Peace, initiated by two spiritual peacemakers,
Marianne Williamson and Dennis Kuchinich (D-Oh), holds peace as
an organizing principle in our society. The DoP would teach
conflict resolution in schools; address domestic violence, child
abuse, mistreatment of the elderly, and other issues of cultural
violence; monitor arms sales and weapons of mass destruction; and
in every way seek to prevent conflict, determine the root causes
of violence, and increase our national security.

By raising the torch of peace, the DoP has stirred up some
fundamental questions for each of us to answer: Is there within
us a compartment of peace or a compartment of war? Is it time to
release our fearful struggle for power, position and possessions,
in which we accept conflict and violence as ways of life? Can we
shift to the life-enhancing perspectives of the heart and soul:
that we are one humanity connected to a web of Spirit in which
each person, drawing sustenance from this web, is fed by an
unlimited abundance that supplies more than enough to satisfy us
all?

Some 44 percent of all Americans are waiting for a messiah to
save us from ourselves, when all we need to do is awaken to the
divine life force within us and grow into the peaceful, loving
and awakened beings that we are meant to be, as Jesus and other
enlightened masters have taught us.

Do you feel this inner impulse? Just listen quietly to see. If an
inner light urges you toward peacemaking, then perhaps it is time
to act: if not to support the non-partisan Department of Peace
campaign (dopcampaign.org), then to express your need and desire
for peace in another way, so that peace can make your valleys
green and you can raise the torch of peace in our world.

Each of us is an instrument of the peace awakening on Earth right
now. May we experience it deep within and stir it in others, so
that our springtime of peace blossoms and lifts us into the
Perfection that pours life into every being.

(c)2004, Eagle Life Communications. All rights in all media
reserved.

Judith Pennington is an internationally published writer,
spiritual teacher and author of The Voice of the Soul: A Journey
into Wisdom and the Physics of God, a critically acclaimed book
on the step-by-step evolution of the soul and consciousness.
Visit her website, www.eaglelife.com, to sign up for her free e-
newsletter and paid-for e-zine, OneWorld, whose second issue is a
beautiful resource of the art, poetry, visions and principles of
peacemakers and peace groups helping to bring about a new Earth.