I am reposting this article from Gina’s Professions for PEACE with her kind permission. The optimism Gina displays in her two blogs is absolutely infectious and exactly what these serious times are crying out for. She believes in the power of one to make a difference, and so do I. Won’t you please join us in raising our voices together to become one enormous chorus calling out for a better way?
Uplifted by hard-working and far-reaching organizations such as Playing For Change and untold others from all over the world creating hope-filled expressions of love and peace, I get inspired to raise up my own voice. To sing out ‘this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine’.
I have been sharing this sentiment a lot lately because I need to hear it. I must remember how important every voice is, or I lose hope. I begin to feel disheartened that little ol’ me cannot make a difference. But that is not the truth. So I shake off that falseness, and I claim my rightful place in the choir. A choir of global peace-seekers and light-workers.
Every writer sharing their truth and their journey. Every poet capturing beauty and longing for more. Every photographer looking deeply at the world and endeavoring to share their view. Every musician who captures those elusive notes from within their heart. Every artist using color, cloth, metal, ink, clay, paint and more to share the beauty bursting out from within them. Every chef who creatively combines foods and flavors, bringing out depths and heights for our taste buds and joy. Every neighbor with a smile. Every volunteering pilot. Every caring teacher. Every kind clerk. Every friendly bus-driver. Every compassionate doctor. Every loving human. We are all essential to the choir.
Yes, I use metaphors. Yes, I am a self-taught writer throwing it all out there in neophyte abandon. But I have a passion for peace, and I have an inner pull that insists I share. I have to sing out and add my voice to our choir of hope. I have to sing out about promise. About everything that IS working. Let us focus on the many ways that peace is occurring right now, and help it grow.
I recall Dr. Wayne Dyer in one of his motivational PBS programs, saying [slightly paraphrased] “Right now there are approximately 800,000 people at war. However if we take into account about 7 billion people live on our planet, that means there are 6 BILLION 999 MILLION 200 THOUSAND people who are living at peace. This is a HOPEFUL statistic!” He was urging us not to collapse into despair and hopelessness at the news and negative propaganda, and instead focus on the fact that most people are at peace.
I needed to hear that so I paused the recording and watched it over and over, writing it down. People want peace. We want to find solutions. We want to help those at war to work things out. We want to help raise all children in environments of love, shelter, food, safety and learning.
This post celebrates the fact that we may be only one but together we make an impact! As an anonymous writer observed, “Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.” . As someone who lives in a northern clime I have seen the spectacular beauty of tiny snowflakes drifting down, landing on backlit glass to show off their intricate designs before melting. And I have also been snowed-in by blizzards and witnessed the power of those tiny snowflakes banding together. Let us all band together. Let us all remember that every voice makes a difference. Do what you can. Sing out and add your own voice to the choir.
A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty of a forest. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high. ~Fiona MacLeod
Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve… You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker. ~Helen Keller
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. ~Helen Keller
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. ~Mother Teresa
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. ~Mother Teresa
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” ~ Matthew 13:31-32 NIV
How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world. ~Anne Frank
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little – do what you can.
~Sydney Smith
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Devote your income and labor to others…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
~Walt Whitman
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Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ~John Wooden
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something. ~Henry David Thoreau
In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. ~Kahlil Gibran
