Peace. The word.
A meditation in the midst of the world's chaos.
Peace.
The word — what does it mean to me, here, now?
There is so much I cannot control.
I know this—
have always known this—
but I am only now learning to accept it.
The fire of the world’s conflagration
burns beyond my reach.
The arc of my children’s lives—
beautiful, unpredictable, wholly their own—
curves outside my grasp.
The system, the storms, the endless demands—
none of them mine to tame.
But this breath is mine.
This response is mine.
This still point within me—
that is mine to return to,
again and again.
EF Schumacher once wrote that
“peace begins with me.”
Christ said this, too:
"Blessed are the peacemakers."
Not the peacewishers.
Not the peacehopers.
The peacemakers.
It begins within.
It begins here.
With me.
So I sit.
And I breathe.
And I remember:
Peace is not the prize at the end of the race.
Peace is the way I run.
It does not come when the inbox is empty,
when the pager is quiet,
when the system is fixed.
It comes now—
or not at all.
So I take my pulse.
I find the rhythm.
And I begin again.
Peace.
’Word.’
