Finding peace through pausing

The lovely and gifted Oprah Winfrey inspired this post. Oprah says:

"My prayer for myself, my friends and the world is that we become ever more conscious--aware of our meaning and purpose. I pray for peaceful pauses within ourselves to acknowledge our gratitude for life and all its complexities."

Pausing, whether peaceful or not, is always a good idea. Our world is on a headlong rush into, if nothing else, hurriedness. A pause can be the beginning of peace.

Consider using a timer to practice pausing. Let it go off once per hour.

Now the first pause won't have but a speck of peace in it particularly if you're one of those headlong rushers.

The second pause might have a little more peace in it.

The third might have a speck of annoyance; it could come at the wrong moment.

But persevere in pausing, dear one.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Máiread Corrigan Maguire, upon receiving the prize, said, "In 1891, Alfred Nobel wrote to a friend that in many critical situations success in achieving a pause in violence would prove decisive. That's what happened in Ireland. A pause."

Hours four, five and six. Pause again. In that pause-ful moment, just remember peace.

Just before bed, hour sixteen? Pause again in peace and gratitude for the day gone by.

Set your timer as a wake-up call for peace and begin the day, like Oprah and her friends, with a peaceful pause.

And who knows, maybe some day when enough of us are taking peace pauses, all those pauses will add up to a minute, the minutes to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, and months--it should only be so--to years of peace on earth, goodwill to all.

Image via Flickr user REPRESENT.CO.ZA under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.