December 20, 2009.
Today is the fourth Sunday in the Advent Season, the season of preparation and expectancy in the Christian calendar. One lights a candle for each of the Sundays preceding Christmas Day: the four candles celebrate Love, Joy, Hope, and Peace.
Today, is the candle for Peace.
Regardless of one's personal spiritual belief system, there are many aspects of all traditions that are good to explore.
I find that the Advent moment is a time to reflect on the meanings of those words.
Language can obscure as well as illuminate, and it does no harm at all to consider what Love really means, or what Joy expresses, or what Hope might offer....as for Peace, it is a word that is bandied about, on many occasions, and so it is essential perhaps to truly meditate on the qualities of Peace, and what we can do to individually bring this state of mind about.
Individuals effect change.
Look at Ghandi, who was thrown off a train, in South Africa, and who then went on to preach non-violence as the route to change, and the importance of each individual exemplifying this change...in the end, his philosophy helped to create the modern country of India. Nelson Mandela followed Ghandi's precepts many years later, and ended up helping to create the modern South Africa.
Peace...it is up to each of us, as individuals, to model this concept into reality in our own lives.
The larger world mimics what we do as individuals, I think, and it seems that some of the new ideas in physics now point to this. We, each of us, on our own, affect our world.
Peace...today, I light this final candle of the Advent Season, and ponder....
How may I help you to discover special Salt Spring Island & the Southern Gulf Islands? Call me!
