Women's capacity to give birth is the only power that's kept the human species going through time, including times of famine, drought, and war.

In the Christmas story, Mary's capacity to give birth is the power that delivers the Divine Child and the promise of peace on earth.

I believe that, in this time of impending war, each woman has the opportunity—the invitation—to birth the Divine Reality of peace into the world.

Each woman, whatever her age, can call upon her pro-creative power—her belly-centered power to promote creation—to send a prayer for peace to those who would otherwise choose conflict.

Here's the Belly Queen's take on peace-making in the political world. As always, the process begins with ourselves and requires some courage:

1. Take some quiet, uninterrupted time to gather the sense of disarmament into your own body and mind.

• What would it be to declare a truce in the wars you've been waging against yourself and others?
  
  
• What would it be to unveil all the secret places in your psyche where you hide insecurity, criticism, greed, aggression, resentment, envy, desire for revenge?
  
  
• What would it be to dismantle these "weapons of destruction"?

As you identify and dismantle these weapons, acknowledge the feeling of peace taking place in your own body and mind in terms of images, sounds, physical sensations.

2. Breathing deeply into your belly, magnify this feeling of peace within your body's center.

• With each inhalation, as your belly expands with the incoming breath, let the associated images, sounds, and sensations swirl into your belly and expand there, growing brighter, clearer, more vivid.
  
  
• With each exhalation, as you draw your belly back in toward your spine and press the breath out, let the images, sounds, and sensations concentrate, becoming even stronger, more radiant.

3. Acknowledge, or consider the possibility, that our belly centers resonate with the earth's center.

Likewise, consider the possibility that you can convey a message from your belly directly to another human's belly by sending it to and through the still, reflective center of the earth.

Determine to whom you wish to send your message of peace, nonaggression, and disarmament:

Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, whomever.

4. With each inhalation, continue to build the feeling of peace within your belly.

Now, with each exhalation, send this feeling as a message to and through the center of the earth to the recipient of your choice.

Send it without fear. Send it with fierce compassion

5. Rest.

And whenever you choose, return to breathing into your belly and breathing out—birthing—your prayer for peace.

To magnify the power of your peace-making, practice this prayer after moving through the Honoring Your Belly sequence, bellydancing, or while sitting with a circle of womenfriends.