This internship holds so many responsibilities alongside huge amounts of exciting opportunities. This blog is being authored through a welcomed exhaustion that holds with it wonderful amounts of spiritual fulfillment. Yet my heart is heavy. Peace... oh wonderful, beautiful, radical peace! Won't you be with us all?
The huge responsibility of stepping into the shoes of peace internship is to have a deep sense of just what peace actually is. Sometimes the harder we try to grasp at it, the less concrete it becomes. Inner and outer peace are wonderful ideals that we hold as this sort of end goal to achieving some type of heightened oneness or spiritual being, yet peace is hard.
As I write these words, I mourn the loss of so many who have been named in the news with the shooting in Orlando, Florida. Members of the LGBTQI community have endured a heavy and oppressive history that now includes yet one more tragedy. In the storm of this mourning, I also mourn the victims of history who were never named publically. I also still embrace peace. Perhaps peace is what prevents tragedies like this. Perhaps peace is what truly releases the heart.
I stand in solidarity with the community that I call my own. More than standing with my community, I wish I understood better how a tragedy like this could have been prevented. Was there a breakdown in inner peace? In outer peace? In being passed peace? While these questions cannot ease any sadness or change any events of the past, can they possibly create a brighter future?
As I consider these things, I hope you will also ponder them with me. Peace to you, my unknown friends. Please pass it along in some way. It only takes a spark...
Blessings,
Matthew