All is well in the world today

As I sat on my back patio early this morning, I observed all that was going on around me in this, my little sanctuary from the world. Cloud, my Shih Tzu Zazu (from the Lion King) brought me the morning report that all was well in the backyard, having taken a stately, sniffing walk along the perimeter of the fences, checking for anything new or out of place. She touched noses with Daisy, the rambunctious mongrel, who had frolicked her way to the back fence and back, and then stretched out on the patio to soak up the healing, life-giving rays of the morning sun.

The blackbird troubadours were busy pecking pellets of dog food from Daisy and Mufasa’s dog bowls, leftovers from their evening meal. They were a cacophony of black missiles as they noisily zinged from roof to trees, back and forth announcing their takeoff, flight and landing to all the world. The cooing of the ground doves were the gentle background strings to the blackbirds’ trumpets. And every now and then, a passing truck gave a percussive note or two to the symphony of the moment.

The morning was also a symphony of visual beauty – my mango tree loaded with countless yellow and brown blossoms, bougainvillea popping pink, orange, white and purple blooms, all on the canvas of the lawn, ferns, gingers, breadfruit, otaheite and other trees each with its own palette of green.

All this happening in the moment, and Cloud laying in the sun. All is well in my world today.

Then, I came inside and checked what’s happening in the world today. A Facebook friend had posted a photo album of the most horrific scenes of children killed and injured in Gaza. While horrified, I was transfixed. I could not stop looking. I was seeing and feeling the pain of the mothers and fathers who had to endure this ultimate tragedy, the one that no parent ever wants to think of.

All this happening in the moment, and Cloud still laying in the sun. All is well in my world today?

I thought of the insanity of believing that one could create peace with fear, violence and fighting. I remembered Gandhi’s terse wisdom: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. What can I, as one person out of 6.5 billion people in the world do about this, I asked myself. The scenes were in such sharp juxtaposition to the morning moment on my back patio. How could all be well in my world, if all is clearly not well in someone else’s world?

That’s a question that I am not sure that I have an answer for. All I know is that I will continue to affirm that “all is well”, for that is the reality that I desire for myself and all people in the world – in Gaza, Israel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Jamaica. To think otherwise is to create that other world, the one that is the antithesis to the peace that I felt on my back patio this morning. To believe that all is not well is to negate the energy of that moment, and to allow fear to triumph. My peaceful, loving thoughts make a difference not just to my life, but to the world. Every thought, every word, every deed is transmitted as, in and throughout the energy field that is the Universe. There are no secret thoughts – once you have a thought, everyone knows, as it becomes a part of everyone.

Who is to say that my thought of peace on my back patio in Jamaica may not stop a bullet in Gaza? For perhaps, just perhaps that thought found it’s place in the heart of someone who was about to pull the trigger … and didn’t.

All this happening in the moment, and Cloud still laying in the sun. All is well in the world today.