Tales from the desert...Part 6

I spent a little time on a silent retreat this past weekend which was a nice thing. Nothing like a little silence to make things in life clear, which is perhaps why the world abhors silence and does all it can to intrude upon the serenity of our minds.

I finished another book, well ok, three more books. Oddly enough they all had to do with the subject of international conflict, more commonly known as war. One of the books was about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. It was really heartbreaking to me to read about mere children being forced into war, high on drugs, with semi-automatic weapons. Wow. It's hard to even imagine something like that, much less live through it.

There was this quote by Mother Teresa on a little calendar that I have and she said (I am paraphrasing here) that war doesn't begin outside ourselves but it begins in our hearts. It begins with conflict and hatred in our own hearts and spreads outward. The best way to counteract war is to love our neighbors.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's true. If I have hatred in my heart and I spread that hatred around, the hatred grows. However, if I have the love of God in my heart and seek to understand others instead of condemn them, then that too will grow.

So I guess the choice is really ours.

Till then...