Peace

 

Buddhism

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings Peace.

the Buddha

Christianity

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace.

Galatians 5:22

Islam

And the servants of Allah . . . are those who walked on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say 'Peace'.

the Quran, [25:63]

Judaism

Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.

Job 22:21

Sikhism

The greatest comforts and lasting peace are obtained, when one eradicates selfishness from within.

Guru Gobind Singh

The Secret of Peace

Make your mind cling to God.  Let it do all things for God and leave the results, success or failure to God.  Let it leave the loss and the profit, the elation or the dejection to God.  That is the secret of Peace and Contentment.

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”

- Robert Louis Stevenson

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. They way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”

-         Margaret Young

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

-         Zora Neale Hurston

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.”

-         Helen Keller

“Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you…If you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you, and even if it is troublesome for a time, it will gradually fade out, if you sincerely bless it.”

-         Emmet Fox

“My business is not to remake myself,

But make the absolute best of what God made.”

-         Robert Browning

“Anybody can observe the Sabbath but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”

-         Alice Walker

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

- Ursula K. LeGuin

Virginia’s Secret Santa

Around the Christmas season, thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus arrive at Post Offices around the world. If St. Nick were to actually read all the letters, the more vital job of delivering the gifts might get a little delayed.

This story is not about a letter to Santa Claus, but a letter about him. In 1897, an eight-year old girl called Virginia O’Hanlon, asked her father whether Santa Claus actually existed, or was a mere myth, as her friends said. Her father deftly suggested that she mail her question to “The Sun”, a noted New York newspaper of that age. Virginia took her father at his word, and addressed her question to the editor of “The Sun”.

Her question and the response, ran in the Sept. 21, 1897 edition of the paper. It has since become the most reprinted editorial in history. Here’s a brief excerpt from it:

“…They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little…Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.”

The un-named editor who wrote the reply was Francis Pharcellus Church, who was the lead editorial writer of the paper, owned by his brother. Francis Church had been a war correspondent during the Civil War, a time that brought about so much privation to the country, and resulted in much bitterness within the ‘United’ States.He could have easily chosen to ignore a child’s innocent question, or deflected it as her father had. Instead he chose to instill faith and trust in the unseen, and consequently the letter has struck a chord with the world’s adults. 

To read the complete editorial go to http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me.

I pleaded, outlaw--wise by many a hearted casement,
curtained red, trellised with inter-twining charities,
For though I knew His love who followe d,
Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him,
I should have nought beside.
But if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clange d bars,
Fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter
The pale ports of the moon.

I said to Dawn --- be sudden, to Eve --- be soon,
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover.
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see.
I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him, their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue,
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind,
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue,
Or whether, thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn of their feet,
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following feet, and a Voice above their beat:
Nought shelters thee who wilt not shelter Me.

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of Man or Maid.
But still within the little childrens' eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me.
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair,
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's
Share with me, said I, your delicate fellowship.
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace,
Underneath her azured dai:s,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies,
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spume d of the wild sea-snortings.
All that's born or dies,
Rose and drooped with,
Made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful, or Divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the Even,
when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset heart,
I laid my own to beat
And share commingling heat.

But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know what each other says,
these things and I; In sound I speak,
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.
Let her, if she would owe me
Drop yon blue-bosomed veil of sky
And show me the breasts o' her tenderness.
Never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbe d pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noise d feet, a Voice comes yet more fleet:
Lo, nought contentst thee who content'st nought Me.

Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke. My harness, piece by piece,
thou'st hewn from me
And smitten me to my knee,
I am defenceless, utterly.
I slept methinks, and awoke.
And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours,
and pulled my life upon me.
Grimed with smears,
I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst like sunstarts on a stream.
Yeah, faileth now even dream the dreamer
and the lute, the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist,
I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist,
Have yielded, cords of all too weak account,
For Earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.
Ah! is thy Love indeed a weed,
albeit an Amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must, Designer Infinite,
Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my
mind.

Such is. What is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,
Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle,
Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere Him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal; Cypress crowned.
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether Man's Heart or Life it be that yield thee harvest,
Must thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit,
Comes at hand the bruit.
That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea:
And is thy Earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing;
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of Naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting ---
How hast thou merited,
Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot.
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.
Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie

“Embraced by the Light” is the author’s first person-narrative of her near-death experience. “Near Death” is not an accurate term, since technically she was dead, probably, for a couple of hours.

On Nov. 18, 1973, 31-year-old mother of eight, Betty Jean Eadie, entered a hospital to undergo a partial hysterectomy. Because of ensuing complications, she died in the hospital. This book is her account on what she underwent following her death.

Ms. Eadie was born of Sotch-Irish and Sioux Indian parentage. Her parents’ separation led to her being placed in a religious boarding school, which derided her Native American heritage and fostered images of a wrathful, unforgiving deity. It did not however, kill her spiritual hunger, which sent her to various churches, but left her with a vague sense of unfulfilled yearning.

In her after-death experience, she speaks of the presence of guardian beings who have watched over her, of concepts of space-time different from what we experience on Earth, her meeting with Jesus Christ, and what he revealed to her about the secrets and laws behind creation:

“By understanding these laws we are better able to serve those around us. Whatever we become here in mortality is meaningless unless it is done for the benefit of others. Our gifts and talents are given to us to help us serve. And in serving others we grow spiritually.

Above all, I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing. We are here to help each other, to care for each other, to understand, forgive, and serve one another.”

Ultimately, Ms. Eadie’s life is not so much about death, as about life.