While we may forsee the OUTWARD APPEARANCE of peace upon a people or nation, it is the UNDERLYING THINKING that must change to create a true and lasting peace. To change the conditions of our outer world, we are invited to ACTUALLY BECOME the conditions of our desire from within. When we do so, the new conditions of health or peace are mirrored in the world around us. To bring Peace to those whom we love in this world, we must first BECOME that very peace in our thoughts, feelings, and bodies.
Once I enter wilderness, I am more honest with myself. The lure is less what I can tally or photograph than what I can sense: the quiet, intangible qualities of desert, mountain and forest. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of the wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. Prayers in the wilderness were like streams in the desert for me -- something unanticipated and unchronicled welling up, and because of that surprise, appreciated all the more. Not until I actually left the wilderness was I conscious what had been the extent of my thirst.