Passover is a celebration of liberation. The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt who, with Divine help, were freed from bondage to wander forty years in the desert, where their faith was tested and refined until they were ready to enter the Promised Land. 

We read in the Passover ritual that this story is still happening today, and indeed it is. As a human family we are still enslaved - to violence and war as a way of solving our differences; to a mindset that enables us to destroy our environment for the comfort and gain of a few; to a system of economics that allows billions of people to suffer extreme poverty; and to a male-dominance mentality that oppresses women in the most horrific ways.

Like the Jews of old, who were freed from mighty Pharaoh's rule, we today must free ourselves from these ways of thinking and being which hold us in bondage as surely as if we were in chains. Only today there is no one Moses to lead us to the Promised Land. We are all peace leaders now, each one responsible for freeing first ourselves and then assisting others. The Divine help that sustained Moses is also available to us - not in the form of a burning bush or the parting of the Red Sea, perhaps, but in the form of that living Spirit of Peace that resides within us all. When we tap into that source of peace, we too can perform miracles.

The Easter story also reminds us of our passion and potential for peace. The death and resurrection of Christ is a metaphor and a mirror for what is possible in our own lives. We can die to the old ways that no longer serve us, and be reborn into a more evolved state where we can lead and inspire others to remember themselves as they truly are - whole and holy beings, joined with one another in a single web of life. It is the same story of liberation - we are called to free ourselves from that which obscures our inner light to embark on a sacred journey, the end of which is a promise fulfilled - the promise of Peace on Earth.

These two stories are a useful frame and reminder for our task in these perilous days. We are called to re-awaken that seed of our higher selves that remembers peace, justice, nonviolence, freedom, and the brotherhood/sisterhood of all as our natural state, and we are called to move from remembrance to action. Both Moses and Christ were 'activists' in that they refused to tolerate and collude with the oppression of their day but chose instead to lay out a different, righteous path for their people. 

In the world of today, many of us call that new path the way of peace, or a culture of peace. As the Judeo-Christian world enters this week of celebration, we have the opportunity to resurrect our passion and commitment for peace as the way we live, taking whatever is the next step in our individual journeys, so that collectively we might end our wanderings in the desert and come at last to the realization of the promise that is encoded within us all - the promise of peace.

Louise Diamond and the team at The Peace Company
May Peace Prevail on Earth!

The Peace Company: http://www.thepeacecompany.com/