My photographer friend Russell Taylor captures winter morning fog in northern Oregon’s high Cascades. Sunlight travels through the dark spaces of the Cosmos, to land in these ancient woods, on this hidden trail.

Read time: approx. 1:45 min.

I am beginning to share publicly a commitment I have made privately. It’s this: In every dimension of my life I choose to live nonviolently. Why? Because violence and trauma saturate every dimension of life on this planet.

Twenty-two years ago this month, people in my town responded to an invitation to bring their broken hearts to grieve the fresh wound of violence unleashed a month earlier with the 9/11 attacks, to grieve the massive loss of life, and to stand in heartfelt solidarity with those crushed by the weight of trauma.

For 22 years we’ve brought the treasures of our spiritual traditions—treasures of wisdom, truth-sharing, peacemaking; treasures of hope, and love, and possibility for healing, and new ways of being human, together, in this world.

We have treasured fresh insight into ways we might be humankind: human kind—of a kind—in the rich mix of our diversities.

I wish I could say that 22 years later our world is less violent, less traumatized, because of our witness of faith in the possibility of conversion of heart, where violence and trauma are no longer transmitted but transformed by Love.

But the daily headlines suggest otherwise.

Still, I believe with all my heart that our witness of nonviolence, of peacemaking, of solidarity with the broken ones, and the broken elements of all of Creation, is worthy work. It’s necessary work.

Peacemaking, I discover, doesn’t just happen because I will it so. Cultivating a nonviolent heart is a daily work of weeding out even the most subtle forms of interior violence and othering. 

It’s a daily work of purifying and amending the soil of the heart, planting good seed; watering and daily tending with care what is new, and growing, in the midst of all that is still unlovely. 

Rewilding the human heart to its original beauty is worthy work. And I believe with all my heart that we are the right people for these times, equipped with every form of capacity and gift, to live generously, nonviolently, especially for the good of those who have not yet dreamed of a world drenched in peace.

If you want to cultivate your own nonviolent heart but don’t know where to begin, reach out. Let’s talk.

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