Feeling Peace, from the inside out: for Fathers and Your Families

As my summer dreams of water surface, I share my mandala image of water worlds with dancing amoebae expanding out from the center. Blue, a color of peace and tranquility, washes through our lives daily in the sky and waterways.

Peace is the theme of this June blog, a week after many were murdered in Orlando, Florida. Fathers are also the theme.

That said, due to our high tech age, sitting still may be the new smoking, so when and if possible do less of it, and more dancing, swimming, walking, yoga, working out, martial arts, etc.

Why is there so much violence in the world, mostly perpetrated by men? As a non-television watcher I recently have been watching tv and movies and am stunned by the amount of violence, and the corresponding apparent sex appeal implied with guns and rifles. Looking over the many available movies to watch on netflix, I notice how many of them highlight a man (rarely a woman) in a defiant stance with gun in hand. Is it surprising that there is so much random violence? It is instilled in us on a daily, if not hourly basis. Watching the news with war coverage may leave us with the same feeling as watching a war movie. In both instances, we are at a safe distance. It is not real. Yet it is exciting. Therefore real violence must also be exciting. In fact, if we are involved with real violence, we may even be considered a hero by a country, a religion, a race, or a class.

Violence towards other people, violence towards animals, towards the earth and even to ourselves starts at a central and inner part of us and ripples out, like the waterworld mandala.