Hello there, friends of Unity Joy of Life.

Lately, I've been getting my lessons from birds! Especially this morning. You see, I begin every morning in the hot tub and this is where I do my prayer, my meditation, I get in my zen, and I start the day. And, this morning, I kept hearing from our chickens. We have ten chickens and they were just clacking away and making all this ruckus! "I want to be fed right now!" That's what they were saying at least in my mind, that's what they were saying. They were just making so much noise! And so I yelled at them,

"Stop that!"

I threw water at them.

"Stop that!"

Nothing.

They just kept getting louder. And I thought, "Man, this is really hard to meditate with all this noise going on."

And then I remembered the Buddha. The great Buddha said, "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." Meaning, don't seek peace in the outside world. And if God is everywhere, then that means peace is everywhere present, especially within. So I just thought, "You know what? I am going to just tune in to my inner peace. And after about four minutes or so, the chickens were quiet, I went into my zen, everything was great.

That was my first lesson in peace. Peace comes from within. It never is without. However, what do we do as human beings? We always think it's the outside world that's disturbing our peace. A great example comes from this one bird - once again - teaching me a lesson! This one bird that we have, and it loves to just hit its head in its reflection on my green house. Click! Click! Just hitting its head over, and over, and over again - thinking that it's another bird that is from the outside world. It doesn't realize that all it's doing is looking at its reflection.

It's the same with you and me, my friends. So if your world is not peaceful, don't look to the outside world to find your peace. Don't look for the outside world to verify the turmoil that's going on in your life because peace is within. As the great Buddha said, "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."

Do not seek it in the outside world.

So, with that, as we sing every Sunday at a Unity church, "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."

God bless you. Until next time, I'm keeping the faith for you.