“There is a seen order unfolding in front of us every day on our streets and in the news. In this visible order, violence reigns and children are shot in their schools and warmongers prosper and 1% of the world hoards half of all we have. We call this order of things reality. This is “the way things are.” It’s all we can see because it’s all we’ve ever seen. Yet something inside us rejects it. We know instinctively: This is not the intended order of things. This is not how things are meant to be. . We know that there is a better, truer, wilder way.That better way is the unseen order inside us. It is the vision we carry in our imagination about a truer, more beautiful world — one in which all children have enough to eat and we no longer kill each other and mothers do not have to cross deserts with their babies on their backs. This better idea is what Jews call Shalom, Buddhists call nirvana, Christians call heaven, Muslims call salaam, and many agnostics call peace. It is not a place out there — not yet; it’s the hopeful swelling in here, pressing through our skin, insisting that it is all meant to be more beautiful than this. And it can be, if we refuse to wait to die and “go to heaven” and instead find heaven inside us and give birth to it here and now. If we work to make the vision of the unseen order swelling inside us visible in our lives, homes and nations, we will make reality more beautiful. On Earth as it is in heaven. In our material world as it is in our imagination.”
