SOLON & BEYOND, Week of October 19, 2017

by Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning, dear friends. Don’t worry, be happy!

This column is being written early because we are going on our yearly vacation in Rangeley. Have been thinking seriously lately about the definite need for PEACE in our troubled world!… and so, hoping to get some of you, who read this column each week, to think about being a peacemaker.

Confucius had some wise words on how to start: Peace in this world: “When things are investigated, then true knowledge is achieved, when true knowledge is achieved then the will becomes sincere, then the heart is set right (or then the mind sees right); when the heart is set right, then the personal life is cultivated, then the family life is regulated; when the family life is regulated, then the national life is orderly, then there is peace in this world.”

Make Peace: As citizens, we have a large responsibility . Our daily lives,, the way we drink, what we eat, have to do with the world’s political situation, Every day we do things, we are things, that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive. (words by Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step).

Eleanor Roosevelt had some good advise back in her time; The basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Christ, some of the other great Jewish teachers, Buddha, all preached it. Their followers forgot it. What is the trouble between capital and labor, what is the trouble in many of our communities, but rather a universal forgetting that this teaching is one of our first obligations.

And now some thoughts from President John F. Kennedy: Building Peace: “But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace, in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.”

More thoughts from people in the past longing for peace in our world, President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Lasting Peace, 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 government had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Become a Peacemaker: Each day you are provided many opportunities to practice peacemaking. St. Francis wrote. “For it is in giving that we receive.” By giving peace you will receive peace, and after you are at peace, your problems all dissolve . By becoming a peacemaker you are literally providing yourself with a remedy for all your anxious moments. Today be on the alert for any opportunity to become a peacemaker. Words by Wayne W. Dyer, There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem.)

I really like this one by Abraham Lincoln for his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. “With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us strive on to finish the work we are in…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I am going to use two of Percy’s memoirs in this column because he truly believed in peace! (Working Together: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much, words by Helen Keller.)

And…”Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me; let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be.” Words by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson, 20th-century songwriters.

There I go, dreaming again! I was afraid that would happen after the fact that this column and little paper reached out and reunited two brothers after 50 years….But amazing things happen, and wouldn’t it be great if the above words inspire some of you to become peacemakers and help to settle the mess this world is in? I shall pray on it!