Welcome to 5 Minutes of Peace, a time for you to reflect, recharge, and renew. 5 Minutes to Awaken Something Within Yourself, created by ThePeaceRoom. Love. Here is today's message for you. Today's book passage is from Thoughts and Meditations by Kahlil Gibran. Earth, how beautiful you are, Earth. And how sublime, how perfect is your obedience to the light, and how noble is your submission to the sun.

How lovely you are, veiled in shadow, and how charming your face, masked with obscurity. How soothing is the song of your dawn, and how harsh are the praises of your even tide. How perfect you are, Earth, and how majestic. I have walked over your plains. I have climbed your stony mountains. I have descended into your valleys.

I have entered into your caves. In the plains, I found your dream. Upon the mountain, I found your pride. In the valley, I witnessed your tranquility. In the rocks, your resolution. In the cave, your secrecy. You are weak and powerful and humble and haughty. You are pliant and rigid and clear and secret. I have ridden your seas and explored your rivers.

I heard eternity speak through your ebb and flow, and the ages echoing your songs among your hills. I listened to life calling to life in your mountain passes and along your slopes. You are the mouth and lips of eternity, the strings and fingers of time, the mystery and solution of life. Your spring has awakened me and led me to your fields where your aromatic breath ascends like incense.

I have seen the fruits of your summer labor. In autumn, in your vineyards, I saw your blood flow as wine. Your winter carried me into your bed, where the snow attested your purity. In your spring, you are an aromatic essence. In your summer, you are generous. In your autumn, you are a source of plenty. One calm and clear night, I opened the windows and doors of my soul, and went out to see you.

My heart tense with lust and greed, and I saw you staring at the stars that smiled at you. So I cast away my fetters, for I found out that the dwelling place of the soul is in your space. Its desires grow in your desires, its peace rests in your peace, and its happiness is in the golden dust which the stars sprinkle upon your body.

One night, as the skies turned gray and my soul was wearied and anxious, I went out to you. And you appear to me like a giant, armed with raging tempests, fighting the past with the present, replacing the old with the new, and letting the strong disperse the weak. Whereupon I learned that the law of the people is your law.

I learned that he who does not break his dry branches with his tempest will die wearily. And he who does not use revolution to strip his dry leaves will slowly perish. How generous you are, earth, and how strong is your yearning for your children lost between that which they have attained and that which they could not obtain.

We clamor and you smile. We flit but you stay. We blaspheme and you consecrate. We defile and you sanctify. We sleep without dreams but you dream in your eternal wakefulness. We pierce your bosom with swords and spears, and you dress our wounds with oil and balsam. We plant your fields with skulls and bones, and from them you rear cypress and willow trees.

We empty our wastes in your bosom, and you fill our threshing floors with wheat sheaves and our wine presses with grapes. We extract your elements to make cannons and bombs, but out of our elements you create lilies and roses. How patient you are, Earth, and how merciful. Are you an atom of dust raised by the feet of God when he journeyed from the east to the west of the universe?

Or a spark projected from the furnace of eternity? Are you a seed dropped in the field of the firmament to become God's tree reaching above the heavens with its celestial branches? Or are you a drop of blood in the veins of the giant of giants? Or a bead of sweat upon his brow? Are you a fruit, ripened by the sun?

Do you grow from the tree of absolute knowledge, whose roots extend through eternity, and whose branches soar through the infinite? Are you a jewel placed by the God of Time, in the palm of the God of Space? Who are you, Earth? And what are you? You are I, Earth. You are my sight and my discernment. You are my knowledge and my dream.

You are my hunger and my thirst. You are my sorrow and my joy. You are my inadvertence and my wakefulness. You are the beauty that lives in my eyes, the longing in my heart, the everlasting life in my soul. You are I, Earth. Had it not been for my being, you would not have been.

Thank you for listening and thank yourself for taking five minutes of peace. We are all connected on a path of love, service, and peace for ourselves and others. We're glad to be together with you on this path. And if you would like to know more about The Peace Room and our Reiki treatments, crystal healings, training sessions, and certification workshops, go to www.thepeaceroom. love. Join us here again whenever you need five minutes of peace.