May 2, 2005
PEACE IS APPARENT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Peace Is Apparent
- Article: Writer on the Lam "Ready or Not, Here I Come"
- My Schedule
- Ashland's World Wellness Weekend features Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Spiritual cinema DVDs available in rental shops: "What the Bleep Do We Know" and "Indigo"
- Peace Quote
PEACE IS APPARENT
There is absolutely no discord in the world we are not privy of and conspiratorial in creating. There is nothing "too good to be true."
Writing a book (the forthcoming "Living A Radical Peace: Creating Life Anew") espousing and revealing the radical substance of peace and its defiance of status quo perspectives on reality can nourish new perspectives. I've been regularly blessed to enjoy a freer, less entangled, and as it were a higher perspectives on various events. I've also had plenty of personal "in my face" opportunities (which some might view as challenges) in which I've had to choose my response. The former has fueled me with a witnesses gratitude, compassion, and power; and while it's seemed that I may have "crashed and burned" oftentimes when I didn't in those more personal latter moments live my higher truth, instead it's drawn me into a more sensitive awareness of peace.
Being consciously aware of peace, the disruptions I have sometimes allowed myself to be drawn into (be those anger, impatience, frustration, etc) instead at first revealed to me in feeling as well as in mental acuity, the distinction between those two states. Then I realized how eff-balance my perception was and that there wasn't really a distance between them at all. With my bitter angst I'd woven a chainlink coat over the reality of peace that was present even in that moment beneath the guise. That angry warring only existed because I was allowing another emotion and plan to rule. In acquiecsing to it I was in fact pledging allegiance to a fabricated substance.
Not only do I desire to actively create more of the peace I sense, I'm also aware of the disrupted and scattered energy I've tossed like shrapnel into the whole of our field of energy, into this physical world within which we all live within. I know I've just prevented compassion from loosening within a leader's heart and, thus, elongated a war; caused someone in another land to turn their back on someone in need; prompted a mother somewhere to yell at their child - maybe even hit the kid. I also know that energy will eventually come back to affect my own life.
Walking down a street walking my dog each night I pretend I'm a scale and try to measure, to guage, the amount of peace versus anxiety thriving inside me and which direction I'm weighted in.
There's nothing like the real thing, and, as usual, we run from that which we need the most, desire the most - peace. Why are we so afraid of it? Well, my thoughts about that makes up part of "Living A Radical Peace." Meanwhile, it's a good question to contemplate on your own. Join in - there's never too much of a good thing.
ARTICLE - WRITER ON THE LAM
A bit of a humorous treat next. Local folks in Southern Oregon may have already read my humorous travel piece that appeared in the Mail Tribune a few weeks ago, entitled "Ready or not,here I come."
I'm including the link here for some pleasure reading:
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/0403/life/stories/01life.htm
It's also an example for other writers reading this piece of what happens when you toe the line of editorial direction. I'd written a 5400 word feature out of "love" then decided it was actually worthy of publication.
After reading the first page of that long piece, the editor was laughing but told me, "I can't read or print all this. If you can capture this sense of starting out fresh, setting out to change your life and keep it under 1200 words, I may print it. Maybe in January, that traditional time when people promise to make changes in their lives."
Well, lots of material got trashed, other situations were bent into new shapes, but the next day I'd submitted this 1200 word article. That's what writers do - we file our stories and meet the word count. That's how we get checks to cash! (Notice that writers also wait - The piece didn't finally get printed until April)
MY SCHEDULE
Class for teens through SOU/Ashland's Youth Programs:
"The Write Way to Be Published" (for ages 15 - 18)
Dates: July 23 and July 20th (2:00 to 5:00)
Fee: $59.00.
Pre-registration through SOU required. For info go to: www.sou.edu/takeaclass.com
Teaching two classes at the Willamette Writers Conference, Portland, Oregon
August 5th - 7th, 2005
Information will be loaded onto the Willamette Writers website soon (www.willamettewriters.com) with registration beginning in June.
ASHLAND'S WORLD WELLNESS WEEKEND, June 18th & 19th
Being held this year on Father's Day weekend, two sons of very famous fathers have made their own marks in the world, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Martin Luther King, Jr., will be the keynote speakers for this extraordinary weekend.
For info, go to:
http://www.worldwellness.org/News.asp?NewsID=2004
SPIRITUAL CINEMA MOVIES NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD:
If your Video store doesn't carry Indigo, make sure they know they should. Enjoy a simple movie with a moving messages.
If you've seen "What the %$&*#(Bleep) Do We Know" then you know what the fuss is all about. If not, rent the DVD allow yourself to enjoy a wild ride that will show you the potentials of possibilities our moment by moment lives allow!
TWO PEACE QUOTES:
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."
-- John F. Kennedy
Wishing you well,
Claire
