Shantih

Is it peace that passes all understanding, or the full-throated melancholy of the sea? Is it water, or air; is it fire? If it is the breath of the void, it must take form in one of these ways; if it is the breath of the void, it can be fear in a grain of dust.

And so it is the greatest commodity of all — peace, peace in our time, in our space, in the interstices and the nodes, the centres of power and the paths of the underworld. For the small people and the large, the downtrodden and the high-handed, peace can never be too valuable.

And here I hold in my hands a chunk of it, worth more than diamonds or rubies.