Don’t ask. I don’t really know why I picked this photo out of my digital pile.  But now that it’s up there, I feel bound to use it and what springs to mind is this. And I’m putting it in the header right now, Peace and Poppies…like what happens in Flanders fields when we get it wrong and now I can see where this is going to go… yes… it’s about how it isn’t easy creating peace.

I’m not talking about all the usual suspects that can’t seem to find their way to peace…you know, like the big places of Afghanistan and Iraq and that whole sad ongoing Middle-East scene…no, I’m talking about the peace we are each responsible for.

Peace within and peace without.

And this morning I discovered that an email I sent yesterday disturbed the peace.

It certainly wasn’t intentional. I sent it with all good intentions and with what I thought was a genuine spirit of curiousity. But the studies tell us that the majority of our ability to communicate with each other is through non-verbal body language…

That should have been my first clue, as obviously email has no body language…so we are left with the other very real statistic that tells us that 50 % of us get the message wrong.

Seriously, I’m sure I read it was 50%…I will research that further, but suffice it to say that it’s a miracle we manage to get our messages sent and received with anything close to resembling understanding.

All that to say, that when I got the rather angered response, I tried quickly to mitigate and soften what I’d thought was already a fairly soft message. The content isn’t the point and no, I will not reveal what/who the email concerned; the point is, I failed to cultivate peace.

I’m working on it. I’m trying to communicate kindness before I ever hit send. Mostly I think it’s working. I am sorry when it doesn’t.