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“We are in truth, are one people. […] Division divides us into small, limited self-serving units of greed, breeds discontent, avarice, grasping behavior, lasting wars, seeds of self-seeing future leads to more bloodshed, pollution, destruction, starvation, retribution. Love joins us together; love looks for sameness, for common bonds. Love overlooks differences. Searches for small ways to come together.Love is colorblind and soundproof. It welcomes all people and their ways into its innermost chambers of tenderness, compassion, peace, and joy. Love is the glue that binds us together. Love binds our wounds, love binds us back to our Source, which is Love. Love leads us to love. […] For when we choose love, we, like Saint Francis, say, ‘Lord, let me be an instrument of Your Peace.’ We are, in truth, all one people. Let us be Love. Let us love.”“(Now I’d like to introduce Greg Smith, a member of the Buddhist Order of Interbeing, founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh, during the Vietnam War.) […] Looking deeply, we see that we are all wounded in varying degrees. Some of us are wounded in our bodies because we hurt ourselves fighting the fire or fleeing from the fires. Others of us, many more of us, are wounded where we were attached to property that we lost. Many of us are wounded where we were attached to the way things were. Many of us, some of us, are wounded because there’s a lingering fear from what happened in the past. And all of us are wounded where we are connected to the community, and we are all interconnected and interrelated in subtle ways.We can start healing right now. Keeping the breath in mind, dwelling in the present moment, we begin to heal these wounds. For our own wounds, we can practice letting go. We can practice relaxing our grasp on things that were lost – on impermanent things. We can remind ourselves of what is solid by stopping many times a day, breathing, and saying, ‘I take refuge in the moment.’ For healing the wounds of our neighbors, which are also our wounds, we can begin here and now planting the seeds of recovery. We can extend loving kindness to them now. May our neighbors be happy. May our neighbors be peaceful. May our neighbors be free from suffering.”
