The Risk of Peace

Creating peace on this planet requires risk. Did you already know that? It surprises me that so many of us think we know what peace is. I’m not sure we do. I’ve been working with peace as a spiritual priority in my life for more than fifteen years, and I’m not sure I know what peace is. On the other hand, I definitely know what a chocolate chip cookie is, and I also know how to create one. Peace isn’t the same thing as that. There is no recipe, and its form morphs as soon as we think we have it pinned down. Peace is the biggest umbrella idea I know other than God. God, bless Her, as a word, puts off enough people that I’m sticking with Peace in this entry. So let me ask some rough-and-tumble questions in no particular order: What is an economics of peace?rnWhat is a family of peace?rnWhat is a government of peace?rnWhat is a church of peacernWhat is a war of peace?rnWhat is a zoo of peace?rnWhat is a classroom of peace?rnWhat is a stock market of peace?rnWhat is a surrender of peace?rnWhat is a chocolate chip cookie of peace? I don’t personally know the answers to these questions, but I know that if I’m asking the questions, then the answers exist in me somewhere, or else I wouldn’t be asking them. I am a fan of that wondrous poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In his Letters to a Young Poet, written in 1903, he writes: “...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” Are you willing to take the risks needed to created peace on our lovely blue and green marble Earth? Live the questions now. The more of us who do so, who say yes to the questions, who risk living the questions, the sooner we will create peace on earth. Visit Dr. Susan Corso's website Originally posted for Ode Magazine