Carol Ann Morrow - Peace Therapy

Peace Therapy Carol Ann Morrow Illustrated by R. W. Alley Abbey Press Foreword Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. So begins the well-known prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. For a time, Francis lived the life of a knight, which, for all its chivalry and romantic ideals, also included battles and prisons.

It was in prison that Francis embraced a new mission, a mission that we might today call Peace Therapy. He turned from an outer knighthood that protected the peace of Assisi to an inner commitment to become a person of peace. As he grew in peace, he was able to tame a wolf, challenge a sultan, and greet the violence of Sister Death with a word of welcome. Reflecting on our own place in Gods peace, we can see how every global conflict begins with fear, envy, anger, mistrust, and deceit. How can we decry violence on our streets and war in foreign lands when our hearts harbor the same feelings of aggression? We can expect the outer world to mirror our inner turmoiland it does. Peace Therapy is a pocket-size declaration of peace in words and pictures.

May it help you to achieve peace within and to live out peace with your entire beingbody, mind, heart, soul. 1. Be at peace with yourself. Even as God calls you to growth and progress, God loves you as you are. You have worth beyond measure, for you are a child of God. 2. Dont make war with parts of yourself that you cant change. Accept your shadow side, your brokenness, your weaknesses, as well as your strengths.

Inner peace unifies the parts into wholeness. 3. Ground yourself in values that youve chosen with intent and deliberation. Then determine where your own attitudes and actions are at war with those values. Only you can end the conflict. 4. Recognize if youve made resentment, distrust, hostility your armor against a world that has hurt you in the past. 5. Unclench your jaw and your fists and drop your weapons. 5. Unclench your jaw and your fists and drop your weapons.

When your posture is tense, guarded, and wary, you are preparing for battle, not for peace. Let your body be a diplomatic envoy in a world seeking peace. 6. Maintaining an enemies list taxes your energy and hardens your heart. Look for the good that God sees; love your enemies. When there are no enemies left, there will be peace. 7. Disturbing the peace is a crime.

When you rant and rave and stomp and fret over lifes petty grievances, arrest yourself! 8. When theres someone with whom you have conflicts, begin to make peace in your imagination. Picture yourself at peace. Slowly enlarge the image to include the other person. Put that picture in your minds pocket and look at it with love now and then. 9. Work through your anger. Those who hurt you do so out of their own insecurity, ignorance, and weakness, not strength.

Be strong and move beyond your anger toward forgiveness. 10. Accept responsibility for the times when youve hurt others because you lacked inner peace. Make amends to them when you can. 11. Kicking the cat, slamming the door, honking your horn in complaint are not the postures of peace. Be aware of how your unexamined feelings burst forth in inappropriate ways. 12. Peace sees similarities among people, not threatening differences that form barriers. 12. Peace sees similarities among people, not threatening differences that form barriers.

Identify a differencea value, an attitude, a choicethat threatens you. Dont judge that difference, but seek to understand it. 13. Terrible wars have begun over the control of territory and the exercise of power. Consider your own need to possess and have power over others. The more you can let go of this need, the less reason you have to disturb the peace by acts of violence. 14. Speak gently. 14. Speak gently.

If you hear violence in your language, it comes from a place within your heart. Choose the vocabulary of peace and serenity over words of damnation, curses, woe, and complaint. 15. Use a gentle voice to call family members to the telephone, for dinner, or from play. Invite rather than command; anticipate cooperation rather than resistance. Be patient. 16. Measure your words of judgment. 16. Measure your words of judgment.

People seldom benefit from harsh criticism of their character or actions. Choose words of praise and acceptance, words that build peace. 17. Be at peace with your circumstances. Allow what you have no power over to just be as it is. Where you do have power and something needs changing, do what you can and then let go.