The response to the last issue of The Queen's Chronicles, "Wage Peace" was very strong and very moving. It made me think that just one peace issue is not enough. There is so much to say, to do, to feel, to share. 

We have been inundated lately from all fronts - economic, political, environmental, astrological, spiritual - with predictions and threats of terror and trauma. These are indeed scary times. What is at stake is our safety, our peace of mind, our centered inner selves, our very lives, and the lives of all the species who share our lovely planet home. Indeed, Mother Earth, Herself, is very vulnerable right now.

What to do?

We can shrink in fear and wallow in our worries - just close down. OR we can use this time to work toward the expansion, openness, and love that we all know in our heart of hearts is possible. We know that worrying is like praying for what we do not want. So, instead, let us put our intentions, attention, and energy toward what we do want.

We can actively resist the urge to freeze. We can breathe deeply to fill ourselves with the air of the ages, the oxygen than can calm us. And as we exhale, we can sing, chant, talk, shout out our love of life and our sacred prayers for peace.

I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace. "What do you do?" I asked her. "I'm a therapist," she replied. Surely she has many opportunities every day to create peace in her professional capacity. As do we all. 

One by one and all together we must learn and practice the ways of peace, cooperation, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. We must put our spirit into action and, be the change we seek - in our hearts, in our homes, in our relationships, and in our communities. Surely, this is the humble but firm foundation of Peace on Earth. We are the world, after all.

I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn't even say, "Hello." It just starts right in with, "You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let's do our piece and make peace - in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all."

Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors, and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions, and expectations.

A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, "Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us." This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of armed response.

The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. "Let me call back again," he implored. "I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good." The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.  

But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?"  

Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire - be it in Syria, Afghanistan,  The Congo, Palestine, or Chicago. No one wants to live and work in a war zone.

The way I see it, we are at a crossroads in our evolution. Either we will figure out how we can all live together on one planet without violence, or we won't. We are modern dinosaurs and it is up to us whether this meteor storm that swirls around us creating devastation in its path will drive us to extinction.

I have just been reading Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss about the original Siamese Twins who were, in fact, from Siam. Here were two men, fraternal twins, a double-boy, physically dissimilar and with radically different and antagonistic personalities who lived for 64 years connected to each other at the chest by a five inch long band of muscle and cartilage which housed their single stomach.

They married two sisters and had 21 biracial children between them - this, in the constrained society of the Victorian American South. These twins managed to make an awkward, untenable, sometimes unbearable situation work because they had to. They couldn't just walk away or hurt the other without suffering that same harm themselves. They learned how to live together because they had no choice.

Can we do less? If we don't do it who will? And if not now, when? The times could not be more crucial. And we Queens, are just the ones to lead the change. We must make ourselves accountable.

So let's walk our talk and create peace in our own lives, in our own country, and in the world. Not out of a misplaced sense of duty, but because it is a joy and an honor to do so. Because we can do no less.

 With best blessings for peace on the planet.