“Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, you will see the things that are in heaven; for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within your soul...”
St. Isaac of Nineveh, 7th Century
I can't tell you how many people have said to me lately, “I had to stop watching the news. I just can't take it. It keeps me stirred up and angry.” We are a people who have reached saturation point with the 24/7 news cycle. We can't absorb any more—and yet it continues. Our only solution if we want peace of mind is to tune out, turn off, and find peaceful things to do, things that do not upset us and make us feel hopeless.
Since spring is here, at least in the deep South, we can begin to prepare our gardens. Instead of putting on headphones to do this, consider listening to the birds sing. Consider being alone with your thoughts. Try placing your focus, and all your senses, on what your hands are doing. There is no better way to calm and ground yourself than to put your hands in soil.
Anyone anywhere can find peace—what St. Isaac called “the Kingdom”—by staying with themselves and doing the simple everyday things of life. We are swept up in the antics and cacophony of politics; by people whose agenda is to occupy our time and attention for their own ends. If they have to sow acrimony to get that, they are more than willing to do so. We seek peace, and yet we have turned our hearts and minds over to this noise and discord. We can't have both—peace and discord.
We can discover the Kingdom by diving deeply into our own soul. There is no other route to peace than by way of the soul, since that is where peace resides. To get there, we must tolerate silence, we must once again learn to live without constant stimulation, and forgo stirring the pot with our anger. Try doing quiet things today.
“No one will say, 'Look here' or 'There;' because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
In the Spirit,
Jane
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