Indulgence, War, and Peace
My afternoon in Paris
Today I went into town and bought a party dress.
While my size was being couriered over, I wandered to a favorite shop to buy Georgian tea. Then the Jewish Quarter to get falafels for dinner. And the large Italian specialty store for a bottle of wine and fresh truffle cheese.
At a leafy cafe I watched the people go by, checking if what the fashion articles say about “what French girls wear” is true. Kinda. But it’s not nearly as glamorous as they imply.
It was one of those days that Paris does brilliantly when it’s not too hot or cold or rainy to go out. It was a perfect afternoon of indulgence.
On the way home my Uber driver was listening intently to a piece on emissions trading on the radio. As we hit a traffic snarl up he sighed with real feeling, “Will the world ever know peace?”
“Well, Paris won’t,” I replied, looking around at the honking cars.
Then I noticed the radio voice describing the meeting between Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Peace here, disaster there
“I’m afraid of a world war,” my driver went on. “And when it happens it will be in Africa.” He went on to explain the ins and outs of geopolitics in western Africa.
After I got home I thought how I felt in the aftermath of the November, 2015 attacks on Paris. The following week I was sent to work in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Luxembourg, where I finally felt temporarily safe, but stunned that life went on as normal there.
That’s what is happening again, but this time we are the ones enjoying life in relative safety, while war rages in Ukraine and lives are devastated and lost in Greece, Morocco, Libya, and elsewhere.
The world is ever smaller. Georgian tea, Israeli falafels, Italian cheese, and a Malian taxi driver in a short afternoon. How can we fail to be aware of what is happening elsewhere, of all the connections?
When will the world know peace?
What to do?
Laws, meetings, new technological standards — these things are needed of course to counter climate change and broker the end of hostilities. But peace is not only the absence of something. It is a positive creative act of will.
This week DL Nemeril and I met to do an earth healing. The feeling of peace was so palpable we were both left reeling slightly, yet feeling lighter. Next week I will travel to London where I’ll meet ZD Finn and others for the equinox. It takes many evoking peace, sending out a positive visualization, a feeling vibration, that others gradually respond to and that becomes a new backdrop to replace the abrasive energy we have accepted as “the way things are.”
Balance, a new beginning, and peace
The autumn equinox is a point of balance, Rosh Hashanah, a new beginning. These markers on next week’s calendar are worth a pause to reflect and change course. While being grateful for the little snatches of respite we may enjoy.
This weekend I’ll attend an engagement celebration — another kind of new beginning.
May the world find peace.
