Accepting Peace

This morning I was challenged with the question: "Can I just accept that everything is working out in a way that will be best for me?", and that I might not understand why I am being challenged with things I don't feel are the best possible situations, in all possible scenarios. Okay simply put, can I be happy even when I am not?

We can learn to live with things we don't like. Temporal things, or even permanent things. For decades the Palestinians have been living in a situation, they would most likely change in a heartbeat. They have few choices. Leave or live with it and try to change it. The refugees of the world, living in refugee camps, probably had few choices. Stay and risk life itself, or travel and hope that if not prosperity at least living would be an option. In America, we have so many choices. We can choose to educate ourselves. There are libraries in most neighborhoods, if not libraries even bookstores allow you to sit and read in many cases. There are public schools that operate at low cost or no cost to some. There are job training programs available. There is usually housing or shelter available to all, low cost or even no cost. For those who prosper there are a vast many more options, where to live, how to live, and whom to live with.

When choices are taken away, is peace possible? Inner peace or community peace? Can the wealthy (those with more choices) of the world really expect the disadvantaged (those with few choices) to peacefully accept their lot? If you were told, not asked, to live in squalid conditions of disease, hunger, cold, resulting in a constant threat to your safety, how would you respond? Given a chance at getting more options and more security through a one time risk of a violent action, which would you choose? When hope is lost that you yourself can make a difference peacefully, and all that is left is that someone else will come to your rescue, which never seems to happen, how long will you last before more dramatic actions will be justified in the name of self preservation?

In America, with our right to bear arms for our own protection, there is an implicit understanding that those arms might be used against another person in the name of self preservation. That peace and the right to live free may require bloodshed or at least the threat of bloodshed to preserve it. Can we really expect every single person who owns a gun to hold it in a state of readiness, fully willing to use it as a defense to truly ward of those who might harm us, but not use it? Doesn't the US Constitution's granted right to bear arms, guarantee that guns will be used in certain circumstances. Is using a gun living with the unfortunate circumstances life deals out, or altering our surroundings to make them like what we think we are entitled to? Who is to judge the use of violence to maintain security? Could a person stealing food at gun point be committing an act of self defense? Is someone defending their homeland against an invader committing an act of self defense? Is avenging 9/11 to insure future peace an act of self defense? Even if innocent people are killed? Even if tens of thousands of innocent women and children are killed in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 as a whole? Just that they could have, and might someday be a threat, regardless of whether or not they were?

If America can defend it's shores with military might, that cause innocent civilian death in foreign lands, what makes the Palestinian actions so wrong? Are not both programs of death to achieve security? Who gets to judge one wrong and the other right? The one with more choices, because of the size of their military?

Could it be that we, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, still live in a world where the strong survive at the expense of the weak? The same constitution that grants Americans the right to bear (and implicitly use) arms to defend ourselves, grants the right of freedom, liberty and justice to all Americans.

Inner Peace

When you have something bothering you, a deed still to do, a past deed done wrong, is inner peace disrupted?  When there is no inner peace is it easier to leave other things undone or do other deeds wrong?

Can civilizations follow the same path?  Is what goes on inside the head of one person, mimicked throughout society?  

Can letting go, in meditation, in prayer, help one find peace within?  What is the group form of letting go?  Is the choice to forgive past transgressions, our own or by others, possible through such mediation or prayer?  Is it a logical choice or an emotional one?  How would a group emotional choice be made?  How does one who relies more on logic than emotions make an emotional choice?  How would one who is naturally more emotional in their convictions overcome them with logic?  How in society would logic overcome all perceived bias?

For the global warming crisis some think we now face, it took more than science to convince the world at large that it was real.  It took more than a few politicians.  Yet political power could not stop the word from spreading once our neighbors started to question.  Neighbors who question the weather outside, question the catastrophes we see afar, see the rapid change in our landscape as brought to us by videography and photography, all in concert with a majority of scientists now shouting the danger.  Who shouts from inside us when there is something we must realize so we can move forward, overcoming past roadblocks?

How do we find inner peace, once we have strayed from the strait and narrow path?