helping one another cross

If not for joy with joy, then, what?

Natural Curiosity

Take time to be with something you love in nature that brings out your natural curiosity and delight, It may be a wild iris, the shimmering luminescence of water in a stream, the patterns and colors of a butterfly's wing. Let yourself be drawn to it. Engage your senses. Are you touched by the sense of wonder?
(- Mark Coleman, "A Breath of Fresh Air")

Six of us gathered for Friday Evening Conversation, a surprising number all of a sudden, to consider the language of David Abram. Eleven of us gathered that morning in prison to pronounce a new alphabet of spirituality for those of us who feel their old one moribund. The night before twenty of us gathered in Rockland Public Library to watch and reflect on the film "Welcome" directed by Phillippe Lioret. The film touches.

RP: You used the phrase “strange world order,” could you elaborate?
PL: It’s strange and so wrong that government’s can simply dictate where and when people can travel. Governments talk about illegals and aliens but weren’t the English aliens when they took over Australia?
If you’re walking down the street and it’s raining on that side and sunny on the other, naturally you’d want to cross over to get from the rain. It’s obvious. Why can’t people escaping war and looking for a better life be allowed to do so? The division of the world is too straight, too closed in. Maybe it’s a romantic vision that people should be able travel and live where they like, but it is a vision we should have.
(--from An interview with Philippe Lioret, director of Welcome, By Richard Phillips 17 April 2010) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/lior-a17.shtml

Awareness crosses the street as it gazes on light crossing the street. I am a street person longing for where I am crossing.

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Walked with no one and talked with no one
And I had nothing but shadows
Then one morning you passed
And I brightened at last
Now I greet the day and complete the day
With the sun in my heart
All my worry blew away
When you taught me how to say

Grab your coat and get your hat
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street
Can't you hear a pitter-pat?
And that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet
On the sunny side of the street

I used to walk in the shade
With those blues on parade
But I'm not afraid
This Rover crossed over

If I never have a cent
I'd be rich as Rockefeller
Gold dust at my feet
On the sunny side of the street
(Lyrics by: MC HUGH, JIMMY/FIELDS, DOROTHY)

The traffic in our thoughts can inhibit us from stepping off the curb. Often what is underfoot eludes us even as we are stepping along it. Our words are often blinders over our eyes and we've forgotten the feeling cane for our walking.

Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it's all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals and sages. Seeing your nature is zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not zen.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

Joy is stumbling alongside us as we make our way through streets of dim awareness. It offers it's arm. Cobblestones uneven and roughshod unbalance us. Take joy's arm. Steady your rolling gate with loving assistance. Long for early release or sensible solutions to puzzling journeys.

All I have is the conversation.

Turning with another or several anothers to look within, to look across, to look through what is here or there.

We are merely individuals with arms and feet. We are not dangerous.

We help one another cross. It is an often difficult passage from here to here, from sightless wandering to sighted wondering to insightful blundering where fools trip over crazy wisdom and skim their needs.

Safely.

A morning colloquia

Maine State Prison, Lifetime Portfolio Project, A facilitated conversation, Friday 10Feb2012

Theme: QUESTIONING SPIRITUALITY -- LEARNING TO LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE...ASKING

(or: A SPIRITUALITY IN AND OUT OF PRISON 

 A New Alphabet & Outline for Our Consideration)

Quote: "Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." (--Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in, Teaching as a Subversive Activity)

We have questions. Always. For example: What is spirituality? Or more directly: What is spirituality for me, at this moment of my life, in this place -- What do I think? What am I practicing?

Spirituality is the one thing that is ours. It is our creation. It is our choice. It is our experience. No one can give it to you, nor take it from you. No one can do it for you. Your spirituality is unique to you. How you see the world is your sight. What you think of the world is your thoughts. And how you engage the world is your practice.

1. Questioning. When a question comes to mind for you when you think of spirituality or religion,  write it down.
2. Sit with it a while. Let it form itself within you. Listen to what is taking place. When the time is right we can share our question(s) with each other, and see what emerges.
3. Conversation is what we, as a group, would  be willing to look at with regard to our questions or ideas about spirituality or anything related to it.

~  ~  ~ MiniLecture: An Alphabet of Spirituality ~  ~  ~

A: Aleph or Alpha

 The first letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet. Hebrew Aleph א, Greek, Alpha; and Arabic ʾAlif ا.” (Wikipedia)

“A” stands for beginning, first things, source, origin. We have to start somewhere. Anytime we consider spirituality we might begin again to look at what we think is the source of the cosmos, all of what we see, our lives, our bodies, our minds, our being here. We ask: Where am I coming from? What am I doing here? Where do I want to be? How can I occupy this very space in a way that will serve as the beginning of everything that will follow?

B: Breathing.

“B” stands for breath. “Pneuma” in Greek; “Ruah” in Hebrew; “Spiritus” in Latin; “Prana” in Sanskrit (“vital life”). 

“B” for us today, breathing, is the great teacher. We have been breathing since the moment we were born, and every second, minute, hour, day, and year since. It is the life energy that connects us to everything and everybody. It helps regulate our heartbeat, our thinking, our every action. The breath is the silent invisible teacher that has been trying to get our attention for a very long time. It has something to tell us about our spirituality.

C: Contemplative

The Latin word contemplatio was used to translate the Greek word θεωρία (theoria). In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation. Theoria (θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation.[1] It corresponds to the Latin word contemplatio, "looking at", "gazing at", "being aware of" (cf, Wikipedia)

“C” is contemplative, or “long aware looking.” Some say “long loving looking” which means to simply, merely, watch and become aware of what is right there in front of you, or what is taking place within you. There’s a quality of “rest” in the contemplative experience, meaning that we temporarily put aside or let fall our ordinary way of distrustful looking at things, our constant judging, formulating opinions and measuring people and situations against or by those opinions and judgments. We seldom see anything fresh or new or innocently. Contemplative practice invites us to free ourselves from the burden of wariness and fear for a brief while.

D: Death

Death is the opposite and necessary parallel to birth. Some think death is the end of life. It is. But not how we normally think of it. It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present. To dwell in the only thing there is, in the present moment, is to be alive. Not to dwell in the only thing there is, the present moment, is to be dead. 

“D,” death, is ‘not this.’  What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, the present moment, here and now. The struggle of spirituality is not to believe that life is always elsewhere. We think it is in the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, and we are unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains. What is this 'nothing?' This nothing is what is itself happening. To be alive, some say, is to be in God -- God being this present moment itself within us and surrounding us. Others feel that the word “God” is too loaded, and don’t use it.

E: Ever-present

The ever-present origin of life and being itself is our very home and dwelling-place, wherever we are, whatever time it is, no matter what we think, however chaotic or difficult things might appear. 

“E”  is ‘ever’ (meaning ‘always’). We long for ‘home.’ We long to belong. We wish for a time and a place when there is no trouble, where we are without fear, and we comfortably and carefully allow ourselves to love what we love. 

This ever-present origin is called by some “God.” Others see it as “Being,” or “Truth,” “Love,” or even “Now.” Whatever you call it, you are safe there, you are safe here. Nothing can harm you -- not the real you. When we allow what is true to be our residence, there is nothing to fear. 

Postscript:

We begin again; we breathe; we contemplate; we die to absence, not this; we dwell within the ever-present origin of what-is-here.

A new spirituality is being born in our lives right now right here. By practicing awareness and allowing ourselves to learn the language of the present moment, we start all over with this beginning, this breath, this caring gaze, this death of falseness and resurrection of who we really are, this entering the present and presence of Being-Itself.  

.   .   .   .   .

~ ~  Let’s find ourselves answering poems with questions, listening to what and who we are...asking  ~ ~ 

As God is

Innocence doesn't know.

Be innocent.

Anything; at all

What, if anything, remains?

Vipassana, or Insight meditation, is a way of training the mind to see things in a very special way as they happen. Seeing without using eyes is a special way of seeing. We train the mind to use our innate wisdom without using words, concepts, logic, or interpretation. In this training, concentration and mindfulness are united. Then wisdom arises and disintegrates what appears to be integrated. Our wisdom eye registers the constant flux of events that is taking place in every moment in our lives. Although this unbroken flux of events is what life is, one cannot be fully aware of this truth without paying attention to what is happening to one’s mind and body every waking moment. With developed insight, our mind can be fully aware of the evolving, processing, and dissolving of everything that happens to us.

So we train the mind to see things as they happen, neither before nor after. And we don’t cling to the past, the future, or even to the present. We participate in what is happening and at the same time observe it without clinging to the events of the past, the future, or the present. We experience our ego or self arising, dissolving, and evaporating without leaving a trace of it. We see how our greed, anger, and ignorance vanish as we see the reality in life. Mindfully we watch the body, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and consciousness and experience their dynamic nature.
(--from, Wisdom Arising, by Sri Lankan monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana on training the mind’s eye with Vipassana meditation, Tricycle Magazine)

Nothing remains. Just this. And this. And this.

And this is nothing other than what this is. So, we ask: What is this? So, too, we answer: This is what is.

Nothing remains. Is this why we bury or burn what remains of the body at death? Earth and fire receive and consume our "remains," that which held and carried our movements memories and mental calculations when (we say) 'we were alive' those years of 'our life.'

NOTHING BUT DEATH

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

(Poem by Pablo Neruda, Translated by Robert Bly)

It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present.

What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, present moment. Those with no spiritual life are always elsewhere. In the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, indisposed and unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains.

What is this 'nothing?'

This nothing is what is itself happening.

It is white dog staring at green tennis ball by rocking chair, a red octopus resting on his legs, ready to pounce. It is big brown/black German Shepherd dog lumbering into dining room interrupting the trajectory of scurrying Border Collie. It is opening door for two dogs to leap off new deck over cellar bulkhead. It is barking from dooryard, squeaky ceiling floor, blowing hot air, engine noise from passing cars out on road.

To practice meditation or the spiritual life is to practice presence, is to die to what is not this, is to dwell for the time-being here, is to receive and respond to what is here, is to be free from worrying about, trying to fix, attempting to change, or eliminate what is here as it is here.

This radical relationship to what is real and present is, curiously, nothing; is, paradoxically, death; is, remarkably, what remains of us when we have disappeared into the mere moment of our whole attention, our complete union with (what shall we call it?) Reality? God? Truth? Breakfast?

Anything.

"Stirb und Werde!" ( Die and Become!) Goethe's phrase doesn't phase us.

Partake of the great banquet.

Where we are. At all.

(fearless; earth) "Ite: ecce ego mitto vos sicut agnos inter lupos."

Bill Moyers and Jonathan Haidt hold our attention last night. Five of us gather to watch and listen, then sit around table with soup and bread speaking about what we saw and heard.

Our country is more politically polarized than ever. Is it possible to agree to disagree and still move on to solve our massive problems?  Or are the blind leading the blind — over the cliff?Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries. “When it gets so that your opponents are not just people you disagree with, but… the mental state in which I am fighting for good, and you are fighting for evil, it’s very difficult to compromise,” Haidt tells Moyers. “Compromise becomes a dirty word.” 

http://www.truth-out.org/jonathan-haidt-explains-our-contentious-culture/1328368654

Morning light reveals dull grey and tired brown of Bald Mountain out front room window across Barnestown Road.

The absence of snow and residue hard remnant of ground ice is notable.

Meditation is what we conclude will help. (The culture, not the winter mountain.)

Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.  

 (Lao-tzu)

To look into what is looking into, us. To look through what is looking through, God.

We might have to drop all silly notions about ourselves ... and about God.

Holderlin writes in "The Poet's Vocation":

Fearless yet, if he must, man stands, and lonely
Before God, simplicity protects him,
No weapon does he need nor subterfuge
Until God's being "not there" helps him.
(--Friedrich Holderlin, in his Hyperion and Selected Poems)

Or , in another context:

In “On the Process of the Poetic Mind,” Hölderlin wrote:
“Man seeks to articulate his purpose both in an overly subjective and an overly objective state … Yet this purpose can be attained only in a sacred, divine feeling, one that is beautiful because it is neither simply agreeable and fortunate, neither simply sublime and strong, nor simply unified and tranquil, but which is all of these simultaneously – a feeling which is transcendental and where a pure, formal mood has been distilled from it that encompasses life in its entirety.”
He tells us what poetry is by telling us what it isn’t, neither simply this nor that, but a more inclusive “purpose.” It is “beautiful” but not merely agreeable, strong, peaceful. It is also beautiful for its trouble, passivity, turbulence. These are the final stanzas of the ode “Vulcan”:

Man is more pious than all other living
Things; yet, angry with the world outside,
He becomes more himself, free-born,
And, safe in his cottage, rests and wonders.
And there’s always at least one friendly spirit
Who gladly blesses him, and even when
The fierce, uneducated spirit-powers
Are angry, love still loves.

Paul Hoover’s penetrating introduction to the translations points out the importance of Hölderlin’s concept of “coming-to-be through a going away (ein Entstehen durch ein Vergehen) – a way of seeing, I think, in which the poet “becomes more himself.” Hoover says, “Dissolution and union are continual and universal, in Hölderlin’s view, at all levels of experience … It is not a world empty of meaning that speaks in Hölderlin but rather the precariousness of consciousness.” The deity withdraws and leaves the man at the crossroads – but the poet’s embrace of dissolution (in the world, in his mind) empowers his freedom. No wonder Hölderlin was Nietzsche’s favorite poet. From “The Poet’s Vocation”:

But if he must, the man remains fearless.
Alone before god, simplicity keeps him safe.
He needs no weapons and no cunning,
As long as God’s absence comes to his aid.

(From Ron Slate's website, On The Seawall, http://www.ronslate.com/selected_poems_friederich_h_lderlin_translated_maxine_chernoff_and_paul_hoover_omnidawn)

Disappear and re-appear from center of earth. The gods, withdrawing behind the clouds will re-appear from the center of the earth.

Where did you say that, Holderlin? Or was it Heidegger?

I'll watch.

Around; about

The words are true: What you see is what you get.

As we think so we live.

We mind reality.

Our thoughts create the world we live in.

This morning, for a brief awareness, I am, in surround, love.

Holy Now

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

(Lyrics to Holy Now, by Peter Mayer)
(See video featuring song augmented by images by Christine Valters Paintner at http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2011/06/06/everything-is-holy-now/?utm_source=Abbey+of+the+Arts+List&utm_campaign=4b7594de2d-The+Sacred+Art+of+Living&utm_medium=email

Seeing without judging is the beginning of seeing things as they are.

Ease up on yourself, do simply and humbly what is there for us to do, and we will ease up on all our fellow beings, animate and inanimate, allowing each to be as they are for the duration as they, too, reflect, change, and grow.

Cutting Through Anger

Mental noting takes us in a very different direction from getting lost in a story: “Oh, this anger is so miserable; I am such a terrible person because I’m always angry; this is just how I will always be,” and so on. Instead, we simply say to ourselves, “anger, anger”—and cut through all of that elaboration, the story, the judgment, the interpretation.
- Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, "Emotions and Hindrances"

This front room is chapel temple zendo mosque and oratory. It is every place I have been. It is what is outside the windows -- cedar tree chickadee squirrel and ice.

The Course in Miracles, always edging us to see things differently, offers today:

Lesson 037

My holiness blesses the world

This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world, or why you are here Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God.
There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world's thinking Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.
Your holiness is the salvation of the world It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you.
Today's four longer exercise periods, each to involve three to five minutes of practice, begin with the repetition of the idea for today, followed by a minute or so of looking about you as you apply the idea to whatever you see:
My holiness blesses this chair
My holiness blesses that window
My holiness blesses this body
Then close your eyes and apply the idea to any person who occurs to you, using his name and saying:
My holiness blesses you, [name]
You may continue the practice period with your eyes closed; you may open your eyes again and apply the idea for today to your outer world if you so desire; you may alternate between applying the idea to what you see around you and to those who are in your thoughts; or you may use any combination of these two phases of application that you prefer The practice period should conclude with a repetition of the idea with your eyes closed, and another, following immediately, with your eyes open.
The shorter exercises consist of repeating the idea as often as you can It is particularly helpful to apply it silently to anyone you meet, using his name as you do so. It is essential to use the idea if anyone seems to cause an adverse reaction in you. Offer him the blessing of your holiness immediately, that you may learn to keep it in your own awareness.
http://www.themiracletimes.com/acim/lesson_text.php?l=37

Once we grow more comfortable with dissolving dualism and begin to see things non-dualistically, holiness is neither inside nor outside but holiness is itself what is. Inside and outside are only words attempting to locate. Holiness is homeless. It is what is.

Mendicants wander this homelessness and are correspondingly at home wherever they alight.

We are often called to leave the familiar mental home we've secured ourselves within to wander afield in trust and acceptance of holiness leading surrounding and deepening the reality we are, have been, and will come to be, world-without-end, amen!

And while that is happening, some hot oat bran, yesterday's reheated coffee, and cinnamon raisin English muffin will fortify the meander around who and what and where and how I am.

Sanctus! Shantih! See you around;about!

"bonae voluntatis" -- "of good will."

The exhortation is for peace on earth, for men and women of good will.

The Tabernacle

Hope fills me this morning as I fashion letters
into a tree that sighs, that stays put yet moves,
reaching to its limits, swaying and settling,
a compass pointing to its place on earth
where every morning it blocks the sun
for me, at work in my studio,
where I scratch and scrawl and loop
letters into shapes so I can enter the Tabernacle
of their bodies and hear each foot, each syllable
sending its roots to a depth as great as that tree’s,
which has been standing and rooting and swaying
long before I came to memorize its plain mystery,
its wide-bodied hull open to stars at night,
each a point that I lengthen into a letter
and each letter into a word, and with the words
build a Tabernacle for the ten most broken
and the ten most resonant words. I will place them
in an inner sanctum enclosed by hanging carpets,
and outside it, another space enclosed by carpets,
and outside it, another, so that those who wish
to read the words, to say them out loud,
must first pull one curtain back and step inside,
and then another, and another until they arrive
in a hushed space, a soundproofed, heavy quiet
where they come to know that which makes all things
                                     day after day,
and out of which the earth was made.
Stepping behind each curtain they learn
that the mystery of making is not a secret hidden within
but a series of moves, a sequence of steps,
outlined on a blueprint with notes and call-outs,
white on black, constellations in the night sky,
the primordial living Torah, circulating in the letters
as trees circulate light, capturing it with their leaves,
caching it within the soil, then drawing it back up,
watering the tallest branches with the radiant dark.

(Poem by Emily Warn, “The Tabernacle” from Shadow Architect. © 2008 by Emily Warn)

Is "good will" God's, or is it that of men and women?

Yes, it is!

The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about —the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems to be so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known — that is just the very thing, that God is wishing you to do or to be for Him.
And the birth of that marvelous wish in your soul —the dawning, of that secret dream— was the Voice of God Himself telling, you to arise and come up higher because He had need of you.
God is Infinite Mind, and that Mind is ever seeking for more and for new expression. "For such the Father seeketh to worship Him." Now, because you are a human being, you are intended to be a new point of expression for God —a focal point infinite Mind, in fact, somewhat as an electric lamp may be regarded as a focal point for the manifestation of the electric current in the circuit.
(--from, Your Heart’s Desire, by Emmet Fox) http://www.mysoulslippers.com/resources/Your%20Hearts%20Desire%20by%20Emmet%20Fox.pdf

If we practice good will, to friend and foe alike, are we happier, better off, than ill will?

Sir Thomas More: I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.
(--from, A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt)

There's a different realm, a different world, to be lived in no matter whether dead or breathing. It is, as they say, a choice.

When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward.
- Huai-nan-tzu

There is only one way to peace on earth.

In terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

So,

We

Pray!