You Are a Sacred Piece of the Puzzle

Today, as I travel home to California from the United Nations, I would like to share the core message that I shared for the International Day of Peace in New York.

I am of the belief and my particular spiritual path guides me to believe, that while there are many great narratives about who we are as people and how we got to be here, the foundation of each message from the religious or spiritual to the scientific or rational, believes that it all started somewhere. I call this initiating moment the Luminous Light of Beginning. From my perspective, if there was such a beginning, then it means that we all have a common ancestor ... Creation itself! And if that one shared belief is true, then we are all family.

All of the people and the animals and the rocks and trees and even the stars, are all our relations. And it also means that each and every fragment including each of us carry within us a piece of that most sacred event.

I see the world and all of creation as being like a jigsaw puzzle bought at a garage sale, where the lid is missing and while all of the pieces are there, we don't know what the wholeness of the picture is, because the photo of the finished puzzle is not there.

I see each of us as being like one of the pieces of that puzzle. Neither is more important or less important than another. And yet, like the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, we are each entirely unique in what we have to offer to the whole and we are each sacred.

I think that achieving peace is creating a world where instead of all trying to be the same or trying to convert one another to a particular theology or culture or way of being, we instead acknowledge and honor the beauty of our diversity and the unique gifts that the "other" has to offer.

My work toward peace in the world is to simply acknowledge the amazing awesomeness of each of you, and to get you and everyone else in the world to do the same for others and our planet. For me, this is my highest calling.

That's why the World Peace Violin resonates with people around the world. It isn't about doing it right or creating an instrument that follows the guidelines of all of the other wonderful violins in the world or the creativity of the great violin makers, it is about how we can take many diverse pieces of the sacred (like you and I), and bring them together in unity with the vibration of each piece being honored. When I did that with the World Peace Violin, even though all of the experts said it had to done by following the right or one true way to make a violin, the combination of all of the differing pieces left to their own sacred nature, produced a chorus that produces a symphony of beautiful sound.

Let us each work to see the sacred in the other. Don't try to change their nature, just honor them in the same way that you would want to be honored yourself. In this way, we can all become advocates and activists for a peaceful and sustainable world. These are my thoughts.

May we each be blessed and seen and heard and appreciated.

Peace,
Patrick