This month’s post is about leading children towards peace.
As you may remember, I struggled a little last time the challenge was about teaching children but in the end I came to the conclusion that experiencing feelings of peace is a way to learn peace.
Eleven months on, although I agree with my earlier conclusion, the way I think about peace has changed – my personal understanding of peace has changed. What affects it, how I can create, share, support it, and what ‘it’ is. Definitions in the dictionary really don’t cover it any more.
Along the way I’ve read many other B4Peace blog posts. I’ve read about the hurt and anguish people have experienced and about the joys that bring warmth to their lives. I don’t often comment on them because I don’t feel I have anything to add, but those posts have added something to me.
They show me how much of peace is about learning to overcome the past.
They often highlight how far people have travelled on their own journey to peace, and how others have helped them along the way: mentors, teachers, guides and loved ones. Everyone who thinks about peace has taken a first step on that journey, and whatever age we start that journey, we all have much to learn.
In other words, it’s not just children we need to lead to peace. It’s also those people, like myself, who have woken up to a different way of thinking.
In a very real sense, I am a peace child.
I joined the B4Peace collective in January 2013 completely unsure as to what it would be like, and I thought of peace in very defined terms and tried to keep it all contained within the confines of my writing – the reason I set up a blog in the first place.
By the end of the year I was starting to feel steady enough on my feet to take a few chances. I was a peace toddler. I was taught, by all the fantastic posts I read, to really value the peace in my life, and to think more about how to widen its impact.
My education is ongoing; I still stumble, and I make tons of mistakes, of course – but I am learning.
And isn’t that what the child in every one of us does?
Be peaceful,
EJ
🙂
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Love this, EJ. We are all peace children. I love the Beginner’s Mind, you have adapted here. I am listening to a book called Mindset that advises we take a developmental mindset rather than a fixed mindset. We are all works in progress, but Bloggers for Peace are works of peace in progress. {{{Hugs]}} kozo
Hugs back Kozo 🙂
That’s a great theme for the future – works of peace in progress. I love it! x