What Can I Do?
I awoke this morning at 5:00 a.m. My usual waking time, from years of rising before my children so I could have a little quiet time for myself and then anchored more deeply during the time I owned and managed a fly fishing lodge on the Lower Laguna Madre.
Usually, I greet these hours with hopeful expectations, but this morning, my first thoughts were “I wonder what’s going on in the Ukraine.” I sent a prayer for those people who are suffering the unimaginable. I refrained from looking at the news while I used the early moments of my day to touch Spirit.
As I go about my day, spending time with my children, grandchildren, and friends, working on my client projects, writing these posts, my mind occasionally wanders to this tragedy, and I wonder, “Where will this end?”
More importantly, I wonder, “What can I do?”
This thought stayed with me as I read Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment (his Monday morning newsletter). The theme this week: Love Starts a Ripple.
He shared this: “Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ wisdom that ‘Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.’”
A couple of weeks ago, I began saying the ho’oponopono prayer (I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.) for anyone with whom I didn’t feel peace when I thought of them or any situations that left me with an “icky” feeling. I felt that ickiness subside.
Ten years ago, I had the blessing of seeing the Dalai Lama when he visited San Diego. During his talk that morning on the SDSU campus, he shared: “Creating inner peace for oneself leads to a peaceful family; a peaceful family leads to a peaceful community; a peaceful community leads to a peaceful world.”
We may not be able to bring peace to the Ukraine today, but we can begin to create inner peace that in turn will spread out to our families and our community-and from there, the world.
So what is one small act that you can do today, that will bring peace to your heart, a relationship, a situation?
