“Play teaches that I have a choice beyond survival and contesting with the world. This choice to thrive is based on a trust in the power to love and to give this love unconditionally at the moment of attack, and after the worst of atrocities. The choice to be neither an aggressor nor a victim increases my opportunities exponentially. Only when I stop my dependence on self-defense can I begin to thrive. There is no safety in such a fearful, contest world that leaves little or no room for living the miracle of love. When we thrive we feel loved and are able to give love. Fear may impel us to survive, but it is love that propels us to feel alive, sustains our vitality, and restores our humanity. We are seeking the experience of being alive. The difficulty is that for us to find it, we must not be afraid of life.” – Fred Donaldson

M: On Peacemaking→

“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?” – Kahlil Gibran

The peacemaker in my soul is paces in the backroom, tirelessly at work and often met with failure. To negotiate between logic and love; to choose with wisdom and also clarity.

It is not easy.

” Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. “