Pledge of Peace and Love ~ Day 27

Here’s the thing I’ve been reminded of again and again through this pledge and over the past ten years, the big picture is the little picture. What I mean by that is that the only way I can help change the big picture or make the world a better place, is to live it in my own life. I can’t shift the world but I can shift my world, I can make my choices choices for love and peace.

It was relevant this week because I was thinking about 11/11/11 and wow, shouldn’t I be at some big event on such a momentous date? The answer I found is that I should be with those I love. Love and peace here and now is the important thing on any date.

It was a loud message and I somehow just started seeing the big picture differently. Even the big names of the day talking about change and shift can’t change the world single handedly. They provide information and inspiration for people and then those people can take that back into their world and create their own shift. They can’t shift it for you, just like nobody can shift it for me but me.

However, I do believe that your choice for love makes it that much easier for me to choose love too. The more love there is, the more we can feel it and the more we feel it the easier it is to be in that place of love. Which brings me back around full circle to the big picture is the little picture.

Thank you for each choice you have made from love in your picture that brought love more into focus in my own.

Pledge of Peace and Love ~ Day 8

It seems my peace practices begin each morning on my walks. That shouldn’t surprise me really since my walks are a form of meditation for me. As I was walking this morning, I crossed the street and noticed a variety of allen wrenches in the road. They were spread around as if they fell off the back of truck and had scattered. Most of them were where a car would park along the side of the street but a few were in the main part of the road. My heart nudged me to pick them up, but my brain said, “Well they aren’t really in the street and they aren’t sharp, it will be fine.” So I kept walking. I got as far as the sidewalk when a car drove by. I heard the clink of metal hitting the pavement as a tire drove over one of the wrenches. “Sigh,” says my head, because now it knows I will heed my heart as I should have done in the first place. So I turned around and picked up every wrench I could find and put them in a neat pile on the curb in case anyone came back looking for them. As I picked them up I knew that some of them really could have punctured a tire if they turned up as a car drove over them.

As I walked away I thought of a story my daughters and I listened to recently, Ella Enchanted. (It’s nothing like the movie by the way.) Part of the story talks about big magic and little magic and how you have to be careful of big magic because you never know how it will change things. For instance, if you changed the weather one day it could impact crops and people could starve when you thought you were just making it sunny for your party. Today was just little magic. Either way I don’t always know how my magic or choices for peace and love will impact others. I’m ok with not knowing because the part that I do know is that every choice for peace and love creates more peace and love in some small way. My heart already knew that and that’s enough knowing for me.