The magic of peace

As I spend more and more time writing, I am collecting a group of authors who are my word heroes. They have a way of taking the words available to all of us and arranging them in a shimmering dance of light that feels like it was made to shine just for me. I imagine you have word heroes that create those beacons of light for you also. I hope you will have time over the holidays to curl up with them for some time for your own magical peace.

Mark Nepro is one of my very favorite writers. He captures in these few sentences what has been bubbling to the surface for me these last few months. Peace is the mission. Happiness is awesome, gratitude can get us there but peace, as Mark writes, is the point of being that leads to joy. This is from Nepro’s book, The Endless Practice.

“It helps to examine what peace means for each of us, How do we recognize it? How do we receive it? How do we enter into it? Once we identify who we are, once we move into relationship, once we quiet our self-centeredness, once we emerge from the pain of becoming, how do we open our hearts to the magic of peace?

After all of these years, I’m beginning to see that tranquility is the depth of being that holds what we think and feel, not the point after what we have silenced what we think and feel. Serenity is the depth of being that holds difficulty, not the resting point after we have ended difficulty.

And peace is the depth of being that holds suffering and doubt, not the raft that we climb on to avoid suffering and doubt. This leads us to joy, which is much deeper and larger than any one feeling. Happiness, fear, anxiety, contentment, doubt, regret, unworthiness, anger, despair–all these and more are the waves that rise and fall in the sea of being, Joy is the ocean that holds all feelings.

These words are the point of light I’m keeping my eyes on as I close the year and begin 2018. I need that light and hope, to keep cultivating my own peace within. That is the most precious gift we can each give to ourselves and to each other. Peace is the mission.

Peace be with you and all that you love this holiday season.

Alice Dommert