POEM: REACH OUT YOU CRAZY PEACEMAKER
Reach out beyond what you know breathe deep into your night fears and test your ancient-people memories. Traverse the borders of your tribe scale the cold face of your doubts refuse to be walled-in by the hate stories and shake off the assumptions you have made. Reach out you crazy peacemaker and shine... ©Ian Adams 2013 ‘Running Over Rocks: spiritual practices to transform tough times’ (Canterbury Press)
REFLECTION: ‘Carry Peace With You is the practice of bringing peace wherever we go. To do this it’s vital that we ourselves are people of peace! Words of peace matter but they are only made real through the peaceful, peaceable and peace-making behavior of which they speak. So peace needs to be nurtured within us. Our peace-intention needs to become peace-making. Like so many practices for a better world in Running Over Rocks this can be costly. Sometimes the story of mistrust between two people, two groups, two teams or two religions can run so deep that peace seems impossible. This kind of scenario almost always requires someone to break ranks, to stretch out the hand of peace (even when they are not the instigators of the breakdown)…’
PRACTICE: ‘A good place to begin this practice is to discover some kind of greeting or gesture (or both) that you can embrace that conveys peace (whether that word is used or not). As with any other gesture-practice such as one that you may use for the practice Fight Dragons, with Humility it’s really important for your words and gestures to be true to who you are, and to ring true in your context. An authentic peace greeting may be a first small step towards a peaceful world…’
©Ian Adams 2013 ‘Running Over Rocks: spiritual practices to transform tough times’ (Canterbury Press)
Look out for short daily posts around the week’s theme on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll be doing the practices wherever we are, and we’ll look forward to hearing how you get on – do let us know!
Ian’s new collection of poems Unfurling is out now on Canterbury Press, also via your local bookshop, and all usual online sources including Book Depository with free delivery world-wide.