My Stomach Quivers

 

As I watch “Walk for Peace” on social media videos some are live; some pre-recorded. I watch them daily, later in the day. I watch Aloka, the Peace dog in his videos with them as well. As I watch some of the live footage or footage taken just an hour or so prior tom my viewing my stomach quivers. Yes, it quivers. My stomach shakes as if it were crying. And then I feel the depth of the desire for peace.

I watch the faces of the crowds watching the Monk and Aloka do their “Walk for Peace”. There’s this feeling of odd connectivity that I feel with the people witnessing in person the “Walk for Peace”. Then my stomach quivers even more. They want what I want. We have something in common. That something in common is needed and we hope it’s not too late to agree on that.

Those moments, there are no political parties. Or so it appears. I ask myself, “What percentage of people feel the quiver who are watching?’ I know those that have not scrolled past such videos or have gathered in person as the Monks walk past must have a quiver of some kind occurring that I have felt.

It’s not the only time I’d ever wanted peace or imagined peace for the world or in my lifetime. Yet, it’s the need for it. The urgency I feel is greater than I’d felt in the last 50 years of my 63. My insides don’t just shake or tremble—they ache. They ache for the silence that peace brings. I long for the silence of living that the only noise I might hear aside from nature is the nothingness of nothing which to me is peaceable. Agreeability too can be peaceable. Nonjudgement is peaceable.

Chaos, the opposite of peace, can be brought about by nature. Yet, humans create more chaos leaving little peace to be had. It is through their greed and many other factors that bring about unnecessary chaos that diminishes peace for all.

Yes, perhaps there will always be some form of chaos; however, for those who think it’s okay to force chaos on others—so to shatter the peace, be it temporary peace or permanent peace. Those who adore chaos will have their wills mirrored back to them in a way they’d only imagined the destruction for others they abhor.

In life there is a comeuppance. We do not know what others who adore chaos will face on an internal level. Usually those who commit such chaos don’t know either. Most of those committing chaos have never been through internal hell. The example I could give would be one my husband had said to his mother when she worried that I’d been locking up my office in an empty office building late at night, “Mom. The person attacking Jody would be in for a surprise. They would regret it.”

Just like when chaos is delivered to those who don’t settle for peace. In the end they will be destroyed and/or they’ll regret it.

In other words, Not sharing the powers of leadership would destroy the very thing that would allay their fears (white men fear being ruled by women and people they’d enslaved and stolen from for centuries). Peace is where fears are laid to rest. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher