On Israel and Palestine

The only true protection against violence is to eliminate hatred.

The way to eliminate hatred, is to eliminate injustice.

To do this, we need to see and feel the injustices from which people suffer. Choose to do no harm, and help those who suffer.

To do this, we can seek to act only from love.

We can learn to live according to the inner understanding that we are One with each other on the earth. For when one suffers, we all suffer. When one triumphs over adversity, we all triumph. We are all each others keepers – One in the hands of God, whose names are infinite.

We can choose to act and live from this understanding, centered in love, recognizing that anything else will cause more suffering – for ourselves, and for the “other” whom we have forgotten to be ourselves.

In the company with others, supporting and supported, we are part of a greater spiritual reality that includes All people, and whose foundation is Love.

As we choose the path of Love - and no other path - the world grows in peace.

It happens in every small act of love in our everyday lives. It is born in every act of courage to act out of love - especially when other emotions would urge us to act out of self protection that would harm another.

It is there waiting for us in our everyday lives.

It is there waiting for us in our collective lives, in the larger acts between peoples, and among nations.

Every act of peace, and of love, matters, and makes a difference.

I am reminded of the Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.