Buddhist teacher and vipassana meditation teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, once said, “To bring about peace we [human individuals] must learn to live with peace.”
Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and wife of Clytemnestra, declares in Homer‘s Iliad, “Peace is for the women, and the weak. Empires are forged by war.”
While Clytemnestra’s role is unclear in Homer’s Odyssey, according to the Iliad, Agamemnon dies at the hands of wife when, “…stepping from the bath, on its very edge, [as] she [Clytaemnestra] threw a cloak like a tent over it, fettered her husband in an embroidered robe, and cut him down.”
Stanislav Grof, the avid astrologer and European psychiatrist who pioneered the field of Transpersonal Psychology and developed Holotropic Breath Work, asserts that the first emotional trauma we suffer is that of birth, leaving our mother’s womb and entering life on earth.
All actions following the delivery of a infant need to assist in closing the emotional rupture of being expelled from the warm, soothing and protective uterus.
Words spoken to an infant while holding her or him mend the wound of physical separation rent at birth.
He, like many others believes that everything that occurs within our lives, all human interactions are but an externalization of our internal world.
Tom Jenks, former editor of Esquire, and presently co-editor of Narrative Magazine, asserts in his Advanced Writing Workshops that good dialogue, “…works like a swords fight, each character wielding his words in sharp and incisive fashion that increases tension and raises the stakes.”
What would happen in life if we wielded our words to breaking down barriers, and slice through the layers of pretense and defensiveness that separate us both within and divide us without?
What if our words became swords that healed our wounds, mending us to each other, and ourselves?
I love your posts. The way you bring different cultures and belief systems together is wonderful. In my commentaries I’m always looking for ways to united people and site what is common between us rather than what separates us. I’m Blessed to have friends from many countries and many faiths. I’ve learned something from all of them. This past Easter season I wrote an essay entitled, Treasure in Broken Vessels, subtitled The Many Noble Truths of the Buddha and Jesus Christ. It is still on my blog. Though their paths diverge there are many similarities between these two exalted Masters. I enjoy reading your Blog and one day I hope that you will come to New York and allow me to give you a personal tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
You just made my day. Your comment catches the essence of not only of my blog posts, but also why I write. Thanks so much for following my posts and also taking the time to share how and why you enjoy them.
And yes!!! please hold a raincheck on your invitation for me to visit the Met. I love visiting museums around the world. I visited the Metropolitan Museum nearly a decade ago when our middle child was around 7 years old. I loved the Gauguin’s paintings, particularly his South Sea works.
As an abstract painter who has practiced process painting for nearly 2 decades I simply love museums. They also inspire my writing.
Since that time we’ve been to the Louvre, d’Orsee, the Guggenheim and Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao and the Royal Museum of Brussels.
Returning to the Guggenheim would be wonderful and I feel more prepared to appreciate the many great works of art it houses.
Please know that I will calling on you sooner than you think.
I love Mother Theresa, her words makes me calm and realize something valuable about life. Some say actions speaks louder than words but words are equally important.
Thanks Chester for such a succinct and wise comment. Please come back.
Peace and blessings to you and yours.
anjuelle