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"I am open to the guidance of synchronicity and do not let expectations hinder my path." Dalai Lama

In 1986, for the first time in history, twelve of the world's religions gathered in Assisi, Italy, to pray for world peace. Each religion had its own peace prayer. In January 2002, in light of what happened on September 11, 2001, Pope John Paul II invited the leaders of these religions to come together again in Assisi, Italy, to pray for peace. In November 2001, I was in my mother's house and she told me about this event, but didn't know any of the details. Ah, I would love to go to that, I thought, but knew very little about when, where or who?

That evening I checked my email and there was a message from an American friend telling me about the event. The next day I heard from an English friend, who told me she was going and that you could fly to Italy for a penny with a low-cost airline! The signs that I should go were looking great. However, at the time our four children were all under six years of age, and getting away wasn't always easy. I decided to really pray for guidance, although I felt I should go anyway.

I was taking one of my daughters to ballet and in the same building they were preparing for a Christmas fair. I decided to go and have a look at some of the books they had. As I browsed I noticed some CDs, and took a look. To my amazement I picked one up and it was a CD from Assisi, Italy - Canto Gregoriano Coro Francescano di Assisi - so I booked my one penny flight.

I went for about six days and it was an amazing experience. It inspired me so much I decided to organise a peace concert in Dublin for June 2002, and I would invite people from the same twelve religions to say their relevant peace prayer. I also thought I would invite people from different cultures to perform at the concert as well as a good friend of mine, James Twyman, who had been an inspiration for a lot of this work.

I kept visualising the event and trusted that it would all come together perfectly. However, I had no idea how I would manage to get representatives for the twelve religions.

One afternoon I was minding our four children, three of whom were out playing, when the front door burst open and my eldest daughter (age five) came running in totally hysterical crying:

"Macdara's got knocked down, Macdara's got knocked down!" Macdara was three at the time. I literally bolted out of the house and saw that a big people carrier car had stopped in the middle of the road, and Macdara was lying motionless on the ground in front of it.

At moments like these everything is dropped apart from an absolute single-minded focus of knowing that your child is all right. I leaped over small walls and bushes to get to Macdara as quickly as I could. When I got to the front of the car, Macdara was lying there with his face gashed, his side cut and a look of deep shock on his little face.

I managed to keep myself relatively calm as I looked at the driver and spoke.

"What happened, what happened?"

He replied with a shocked tone.

"He ran out from behind a parked car and I didn't see him."

I didn't have time to discuss it. My only focus now was to get Macdara to a hospital as soon as possible.

"Where does it hurt?" I asked my son.

I checked his neck and back as well as I could, and decided I wasn't waiting for an ambulance, so I asked a neighbour, who was a policeman, to drive us.

By 1 a.m., after a number of medical examinations, much to our total relief, we knew Macdara was all right. He only had cuts and bruises.

The doctor attending Macdara was a foreign doctor whom I thought was Italian. I asked him where he was from. To my surprise he said, 'Baghdad, Iraq'. I assumed he had emigrated to Ireland, given all that was happening in Iraq at the time (this was 2002 when Saddam Hussein was still in power, there were sanctions on Iraq and they were being accused of having weapons of mass destruction). I asked him if he had emigrated to Ireland.

"No, I am here to learn how to be a children's doctor because I want to go back to Iraq and help the children there. Many of them are dying from cancer because of the bombs that were dropped during the Gulf War," was his reply.

Now, imagine how you would feel if this man was helping to heal your child when children in his own country were dying - humbling, to say the least.

"What's really going on in Iraq - what about Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction?" I asked.

"Whether we like him or not, Saddam is the current leader of our country just like you have leaders. We may not agree with him, but he is there anyway. I don't know about the weapons of mass destruction the same way as you wouldn't know in this country. I just want to help the children who are dying because of the aftermath of the Gulf War, and the fact that we have no medicines because of the sanctions."

I told him about some of the peace work in which I was involved and he was very pleased to hear about it. As I spoke, a thought came into my mind. Maybe this guy is a Muslim and could say the Muslim peace prayer at the peace concert in June?

"What religion are you?" I asked.

"Muslim," he replied.

I invited him to come to the peace event and say the Muslim peace prayer, and he said he would.

A few weeks before the peace concert I still needed to get many people from the different religions - how would I get them? I had no idea. Well, as word spread about the concert some people from a beautiful faith called Baha'i invited me to a UNICEF meeting. Well, it was amazing, for at this one meeting I met about four members of the least well known religions, who all agreed to come along and say their peace prayers. However, I still hadn't heard from the Iraqi doctor, who I had tried to contact a number of times since Macdara's accident. About a week before the concert I finally heard and he said he would be there.

The peace concert was fantastic! Most of all, having someone from Iraq read the Muslim peace prayer after the extraordinary way we had met and, given all that was happening in Iraq at the time, was little short of a miracle, and a deeply humbling experience.

When you decide to take on a project that will serve the greater good of humanity, it is important to hold the vision deeply in your heart and surrender your need to know in advance how it is all going to happen. The universal intelligence, that I call God, will weave a mysterious series of events to manifest that vision into reality. During this process of manifestation we need to be awake to these events, which can sometimes be painful, sometimes pleasurable and sometimes totally beyond rational understanding. In a nutshell, we simply need to trust and take guided action.

An Invitation to Have a Group Meditation for Peace

Invite some friends over to spend an hour meditating and feeling peace.

Create a wonderful atmosphere in this space - light, heat, fragrances, inspirational writing/quotes. Make it a really sacred space and time. For that hour imagine that peace prevails on earth.

To learn more about Laws of Spirit click here

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