Happy International Day of Peace!!!

Remember when I started a series on trying to define what peace is before I left for El Salvador in July?  Well thus far that series hasn’t really been a series because there has only been one post.  But today that is going to change. 

Installment #2 on “What is Peace” will revolve around a reflection by Anne Lamott on peace.  I’ve written about Anne Lamott’s writing before on this blog.  Even as I read more books by Anne, I continue to find her writing to be a source of deep truth and wisdom.  This particular reflection was in Anne’s book Bird by Bird- a book about writing and about life.

Anne was going through a bit of a crazy time in her life.  She wrote this:

I knew my soul was sick and that I needed spiritual advice, and I knew also that this advice shouldn’t be terribly sophisticated.  So I went to see the pastor of my son’s preschool.

The pastor is about fifteen.  We talked for a while.  It turns out he just looks young.  I said that I was all over the place, up and down, scattered, high, withdrawing, lost, and in the midst of it all trying to find some elusive sense of serenity.  “The world can’t give that serenity,” he said.  “The world can’t give us peace.  We can only find it in our hearts.”

“I hate that,” I said.

“I know.  But the good news is that by the same token, the world can’t take it away.”

As with just about everything Anne Lamott has written, her brief thoughts here on peace are filled with truth.  And she knows how to deliver that truth in a way that is easily understandable- or at least as easily understandable as a deep truth can be.

Peace is already in our hearts, we just have to find it.  Perhaps peace is something innate in each human being.  Such peace could only come from God, it is something that God puts within each of us (and perhaps God even puts peace within each and every single living being- human and non-human).  If in fact peace is something innate and it is the Creator who put it in us, this can tell us a lot about that peace…peace is universal, everlasting, more powerful than all evil, and ever-present.

As Anne points out, the trouble is finding that peace.  Human nature and the crazy world we live in make it difficult and sometimes impossible to find the peace that is present within ourselves.  It often seems that everything works against us finding that peace.  Finding peace in ourselves has become so counter-cultural.  It is even more counter-cultural to try to work for peace in the world.

The world can’t give us peace, but there are certainly people and things in the world that can help us find and embrace the peace in our hearts.  There are individuals we can learn from: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Dear, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and so many others.  There are movements and groups and organizations that have set an example of what it means to work for peace: the civil rights movement, the Plowshares movement, the Catholic Worker, the Quakers…  These people, groups, and movements can help show us what peace is and how we might find it in ourselves and create it in the world.

The preschool pastor was so right: the world- the evil, the injustice in the world- can do nothing to take away the peace within us.  Peace will always be present within me, within you, and within every person.  The evil and injustice in the world may mask that peace or make us forget about peace, but the peace will remain with in us.

Taking all this into account means a few things for my search for peace in my life and in the world.  No one and no thing is going to hand peace to me on a silver platter.  I have to find it in my heart through transcending the non-peace of this world (obviously much easier said than done).  Perhaps I have been focusing too much on looking to the world to help me find peace.  Peace is something I have to find first within myself before I can have any chance of leaving the world more peaceful than I found it.

Seeking peace is something active.  It’s not just going to find me.  And so today, on this International Day of Peace, I’m going to try to begin something new.  I’m going to try to spend at least a few minutes everyday actively searching for that peace in my heart.  For a few minutes, I’m going to block out every thing that is not peace and try to connect to that peace that is somewhere within me.