Generally, we have a polarised view of the world, divisions created by our values system.

Our list for nature goes something like this: monarch butterflies good, white butterflies bad, kauri trees good, pine trees bad.

We tend to apply this to people, towns, countries, every aspect of life.

Good/bad. Comfort/discomfort. Love/fear.

We all operate according to this system. It's what we call being human.

But we also have that divine presence in us that keeps insisting that the world is not black and white, it is a rainbow of diversity, the many colours of incarnation that pour forth from God and return to God.

So how do we see creation through the eyes of love?

On my own, I can't do this.

But I can sit on my own road to Jericho and wait for Jesus. He will always stop and say, "What do you want?" and I will cry, "Lord, that I might see."

It is his touch that makes the difference.

The first thing I notice is that there is no difference between a flower and a weed, except my judgment.

My good and bad definitions disappear with his healing, and everything has its own beauty.

When we see beauty in everything, we see with the eyes of love.

The word ‘love" can be a cliché even in a religious context.

It has been so trivialised that in some contexts it has lost its meaning. But believe me, love is the stuff of spiritual journey.

Love is the impetus for journey. Fear is the inhibitor. Love - fear.

How do those operate in my life? I'm made a list of the effects that I recognize.

Love always calls us to a larger place.

Fear always tries to draw us back to a narrow place.

Love has a quiet soft voice.

Fear had a loud strident voice.

Love is compassionate.

Fear is judgmental.

Love is initive.

Fear is divisive.

Love is a slow feeling, a movement of the heart.

Fear comes quickly as strident thought.

Love sees beauty.

Fear tends to see ugliness.

Love opens me up like a flower.

Fear closes me down.

Love is my spiritual identity.

Fear belongs to my animal instinct for survival.

Whenever a strong thought or feeling arises, I can stand it against this list and see where it belongs. I'm surprised at the times fear has looked highly respectable and love has been as simple as a bowl of soup on a cold day.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Seeing this, one of Jesus' disciples "put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"

Tragically, throughout the centuries much of humanity has failed to heed the Lord's wisdom.

And worse, today's swords are far more lethal. Bullets, bombs, missiles, tanks, land minds, aircraft carriers, fighter jets inflict far more carnage than ancient swords could ever do. And modern nuclear weapons could obliterate life on earth.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (http://bit.ly/1TW3Gj5) world military expenditure was estimated at more than $1.7 trillion in 2014.

President Obama's proposed fiscal year 2017 Department of Defense basic budget comes in at a whopping $582.7 billion. More than the next seven largest military budgets combined - including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

As reported by the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1XgNZWD), American foreign arms sales rose to $36.2 billion in 2014, continuing to ensure the U.S.'s position as the world's single largest arms merchant - controlling more than 50 percent of the weapon's market.

Many of these weapons continue to be sold to poor nations like Chad, diverting precious money that should instead be going to meet people's basic needs.

Speaking to a group of young people in Turin, Italy in 2015 Pope Francis said, "There is the hypocrisy of speaking about peace and producing arms, and even selling weapons to this one, who is at war with that one."

Seeking fresh insights to counter the worn-out, death-dealing argument that powerful militaries and lethal weapons are needed to defend one's nation, I turned to Eli McCarthy, PhD, director of justice and peace for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.

"It's unrealistic and unwise to keep arming groups in conflict situations. The ‘war on terror' for the last 15 years has exacerbated the problems and overall failed to get at the root causes of conflict," said McCarthy.

Instead, the U.S. government and international community need to invest much more in training and research on nonviolent resistance strategies like unarmed civilian protection, he noted.

"There are many courageous persons in regions of conflict risking their lives engaging in trauma-healing, restorative justice, inter-religious dialogue, mediation, early warning systems and nonviolent resistance."

McCarthy said creative diplomatic efforts including all key stakeholders, and genuinely addressing the basic needs of people are essential to easing tensions and conflict.

He also emphasized the importance of investing in industry transition in U.S. communities that rely on the arms industry for jobs.

We need to use humanizing language towards all, and work to reduce cultural marginalization, added McCarthy.

"Justice, right reason, and the recognition of man's dignity cry out insistently for a cessation to the arms race," wrote St. John XXIII in his prophetic 1963 encyclical Pacem In Terris ("Peace on Earth").

Let each of us pray and work for the day that justice, right reason, and the recognition of the dignity of every person prevails over the evil of the arms race, the arms trade and military arms in general.

May the Spirit of the nonviolent Jesus lead us to disarm our hearts. For only people with nonviolent hearts are capable of building a nonviolent world.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

My initial reaction to that question was somewhat confronting.

Besides the "Francis factor", I saw very few signs of hope in the Church.

This response was probably strongly influenced by the heart-rending stories of pain, suffering and broken trust that have been told by survivors at the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

So I began anew to seek out the signs of hope.

Two areas that both the Church and the world are willing to name and address, are the evil of human trafficking and the ecological crisis. The Good Samaritan Sisters share concerns and hope for both areas.

Recently the Vatican sponsored a conference in Rome, authorised by Pope Francis, which was a collaboration between the British government and police and the Catholic Church, to address the evil of human trafficking which extends across all country boundaries. There, the heroic work of religious women was named and acclaimed.

The conference called on all politicians worldwide to give this issue greater recognition.

Soon afterwards, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, announced that the US State Department is planning to work with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to map and co-ordinate the Church's efforts on a global basis, to help combat the crime of human trafficking. Continue reading.

Mary McDonald is a Good Samaritan Sister who has worked as a teacher, principal, facilitator and consultant in education for many years.

Source: The Good Oil

Image: Catholic Religious Australia

Many of the first astronauts and cosmonauts who returned to our little blue dot in the universe brought back messages of peace and human unity. Coming from members of the military in the Cold War period, these messages of global cooperation were especially striking.

In October 1967, a committee of lay leaders from International Catholic Organisations put together the Third World Congress of the Lay Apostolate in Rome, what some called "the greatest event in the history of the Church in this century" after Vatican II.

Among the lay leaders invited to address the more than 3,000 participants in the congress, US astronaut James McDivitt was invited to a panel of "witnesses" along with Lady Barbara Jackson (Barbara Ward), Roberto Tucci, SJ, PT Kuriakose, president of the International Movement of Catholic Students, and Auguste Vanistendael of CIDSE. These interventions are recorded in the Congress proceedings, God's People on Man's Journey.

In his address to the congress, McDivitt, the former Commander of Gemini 4 in 1965 and subsequently the commander of Apollo 9, commented on the great changes that were taking place in the world as a result of technology and communications during the period of renewal taking place within the church.

Commenting on the teachings of Gaudium et Spes, McDivitt said:

"I'd like to talk a little bit about what the 2nd Vatican Council said. They talked about a one-world community, and in space it's truly one world: when you look down from space, you don't see the boundaries of national all you see is the boundaries between land and water.

"It's really and truly just one world - and you go round it in a very short time: it makes you feel very insignificance as a person, by you know that there's a lot to be done down there, and it should be done together…" Continue reading.

Source: Daily Theology, Kevin Glauber Ahern, PhD, is an assistant professor of religious studies at Manhattan College. From 2003 to 2007, Kevin Ahern served as the President of the International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS-Pax Romana).

Image: NASA