Many months have passed since I have written in this blog. These have not been idle months. They have been filled with personal discovery and growth, accompanied by changes in life's expression. I am not given to expounding endlessly the play-by-play of my life. The accumulation of experiences over time, combined with the suspension of over-thinking and -analyzing them, can create a wonderful thrust of understanding and evolution at a carefully chosen moment. Words fall short, so I am often silent.

Stepping down from active participation in the Department of Peace campaign has been tremendously liberating and lightening. Ultimately I will create a world at peace by making my world peaceful. And at this time that means building peace in my family, in my workplace and in my community. The constant day-to-day organizing and effort of participating in the Department of Peace campaign was a distraction from actually creating my world at peace. So I eliminated that distraction from my life.

Awareness has dawned that we will soon have a Department of Peace. It is inevitable. There is very little standing in the way. But it will be only a small step in creating a world at peace. The real work lies in personal choice. Just as the Department of Agriculture can only recommend good nutritional choices, so the Department of Peace will only be able to recommend good peacebuilding choices. School lunches have (arguably) benefited from the USDA guidelines, yet personal choice has yielded an epidemic of obesity. So while schoolyards may become safe havens from bullying under DoP guidelines, our personal choices in relationship with each other will ultimately determine whether we live in a peaceful world. The Department of Peace will take a small but essential step forward when it uses taxpayer money to launch makingpeace.gov. The rest of the great work is entirely up to each and every one of us, personally.

I absolutely love the community of souls that have built and that sustain the Department of Peace movement. These are simply the most wonderful people I have ever encountered! The movement itself is of far greater value than the bureaucracy it will eventually establish. The energy of the people involved is changing people's lives all over the planet. This is wonderful and profound. I intend to stay involved with the Department of Peace campaign to the extent that I can be a conduit for that energy into my family and community. So I hope to see a lot more of these wonderful people in the months and years ahead. I am filled with gratitude for these connections.

So if it all comes down to personal choice, what is it that we must choose? How powerful is the choice? Words fall short here, but experiences indicate the path. I visited the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Manhattan a few months ago. Standing in front of a painting called Gaia, which shows harmonizing with nature on the left and conflict with nature on the right, I was struck by how powerful we are as participants in creation. Our poor choices arise from ignorance of that power. With knowledge, it becomes clear that we have only to turn to the left to fall into nature's embrace. Nature is an inescapable fact of our existence here. To be in conflict with nature is to be in conflict with ourselves and with each other.

I stood in front of that enormous painting for a long time. When I had absorbed it to the greatest extent available to me, I closed my eyes and turned my body to the left, and with intention turned my world to the left with me. Life is different now. The world is settling down. Peace is coming. Peace is here, if you choose.