Peace out

Where does peace come from?
Within? God? Diplomacy?

What do we even mean by “peace”?
Calm? Happiness? Cease-fires? Mediation?

The word “peace” is so ubiquitous that we’ve ceased paying attention, ceased knowing what we’re saying.

Kind of like when you rapidly say a word so many times in a row that you forget what it even means anymore and have to stop and think about it.

The philosophy of language is really quite interesting; I took a class about it in college. (In France, in French, which just adds one more layer of interest to an already pithy subject.)

One of the most compelling concepts from the class is that a word is really just a symbol, a signifier of something else. In order to have meaning, it must be attached to something other than itself. When different people look at the same word, they may (and probably do) call up different “attachments”: different images — different significances — for that word. This concept partially explains why word-association games where you say the first thing that pops into your head are so telling about an individual’s psyche and life experience. While there are absolute, objective truths — definitions — of words, what a word actually means to an individual is so much more than that.

So what does “peace” mean to you? Stop and think about it for a second. (I know that it’s an odd feeling to STOP and THINK about something, isn’t it? I’m serious: do it right now.)

Honestly, 2 thoughts immediately come to my mind.

In the movie, Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock plays a gawky FBI agent who’s infiltrated the Miss America pageant. I love this movie. However, the movie is tainted for me because at the very end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT!), Sandra’s character says “And I really do want world peace!” *Groan* Totally out of character and cheesy (not that other parts weren’t, but this was unbearably so). It bothers me most because it’s disingenuous: They had just spent a fair amount of time making fun of the fact that “world peace” was an automatic answer for the ladies in the pageant, the robotic answer, the expected answer. Maybe they do, in some sense, want world peace… but they don’t even know what that means, and they haven’t even stopped to think about it! Over the course of the movie, Sandra’s character has gone from an intelligent, but clumsy, tomboyish, overworking, hygiene-challenged shell of a woman who scoffs at pageantry to a compassionate, beautiful, confident woman. I would hate to think that being the latter includes giving up your ideals and emptying your brain as well. Even if, at her core, she actually does want the world to be at peace, did she REALLY have to say it like that?

The other image that “peace” brings up is in the Mass when the priest says the word a handful of times right before the sign of peace. This repetition never really stuck out to me until I heard Dane Cook’s spiel about it. Now, he’s making fun of it, but he does it in a way that’s not offensive. And honestly, priests say it at least 5 times right before the sign of peace:

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever 
R: Amen
The peace of the Lord be with you, always.
R. And also with you
Let us offer to one another a sign of peace.

 

I think my example illustrates just how omnipresent “peace” is, from the secular to the religious. We talk about it all the time. But how many people actually achieve it?

World peace: So many people working towards it (so many people working against it), but even if it’s possible, this is still quite a long way off.

So what do we do in the meantime?

Seek inner peace.

I’ve found that the only time I truly feel at peace is when I’m living contemplatively. Living contemplatively can happen both in the most hectic times of life AND in the most calm. (cf works of Thomas Merton)

In the hectic times, the goal (whether I make it or not) is to keep the eye of the storm in the core of my being. Though the winds of the hurricane roar, there’s always the quiet center in my soul, and the fury outside cannot penetrate it. (cf. Henri Nouwen’s Out of Solitude)

In order to maintain that center, it’s necessary to quiet oneself occasionally. Just be. Allow yourself some sabbath time. Allow yourself to sit and daydream. Allow yourself to ignore just one pressing issue and just sit. Invite God into your heart, your gut, your mind, and allow Him to heal, clean, and sort through things for you.

I quite often ignore both of these forms of contemplative living, somehow forgetting all the good that comes out of it, and how much my time is multiplied when I take the time to focus on God.

And so I write this post not as someone who’s a master of peace, but as someone who yearns desperately for it, and forgets all the time how to get back to it. So I’m writing now in thanksgiving to the Holy Spirit not only for the reminder, but also for the gifts that make it possible…

Pax vobiscum.

The Weeds and the Wheat

Hey friends (those of you who still visit) sorry it’s been ridiculously long amount of time since the last post. It seems we’re much more busy that we had hoped and haven’t had the amount of time to devote to really good posts. I guess posts here may be more sporadic.  This post was written a couple of months ago, sorry for the delay in publishing it.

Do you ever have those times when you’re just bummed out? Like everything you do makes you feel like a freak. I get like this sometimes when it comes to my faith. I’m the kind of person who likes to be around all types of people. More often than not, I find myself surrounded by not just other Catholics but non-Catholics, Protestants, Atheists, Agnostics, people who have no idea what they believe… you get the idea. I’ve met people from all walks of life and have really enjoyed it.

Sometimes though I feel quite lonely because of my beliefs. This weekend was one of those times. I had just been overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness and just isolation from everyone else. I even found myself being ever so slightly jealous of those who experiment with other faiths or who don’t care because they don’t believe in God. I kept thinking that they are free to do as they pleased without guilt or fear of God’s laws or judgment. Then on the other hand I felt isolated from my Catholic family because so many of them would look down upon me for hanging out with these people who live their lives so differently from God’s plan or who do not believe the same things that we do. (Not all of them would but I feel some of them might be at least uncomfortable with it.) I’m too conservative for my non-believer friends and too liberal for my believer friends. I have no home.

I wondered about whether or not it was right to keep company with both types of people. Whether I should spend more time at Church and getting involved with that community or if I needed to spend more time away.

Then came Sunday. The Gospel for a lot of reasons really hit me as speaking to my thoughts this week about the company that I keep and just my feelings of isolation.

“The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’
His slaves said to him,
‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

We’re all growing together. I’m not saying that the people who are non-believers are anyway evil. (Because I think that the weeds represent evil in our lives.) But what I am saying is that this parable put me at peace at my trying to separate out my life into neat little sections. Life isn’t about separation. It’s about being together. I can still be friends with people who are different faiths and who have different values than myself.

The other part that stuck with me is that the wheat makes it to the barn. The good that is in us is what is going to remain.

Misericordes oculos

Turn then, most Gracious Advocate, thine *eyes of mercy* toward us…

Eyes fascinate me.

They show so much about a person (i.e. “windows to the soul”).
They’re so important to our daily lives.
They’re one of the very first things I notice about the opposite sex
If something’s irritating them, we’re all but incapacitated (i.e. why pepper spray deters attackers, why getting something in your contact is one of the worst feelings ever).

Paintings depicting Jesus’ and Mary’s eyes are so compelling… But can you imagine what they would have looked like in real life?!

The first line I have here is from the prayer, Hail, Holy Queen. The Latin for “eyes of mercy” is “misericordes oculos”, and if you break the word down into its roots (okay, okay, I’m like the only one who’s going to do this, so I’ll share the insight, ha ha), the first part is pity or mercy, while the second part means heart.

So in Mary’s eyes, not only do we see regular old mercy, but we are shown the mercy of her heart… Her Immaculate Heart… the fount of her innermost truth and purity.

In our Merton discussion today, we talked about praying from the heart: the simplicity and depth of it, and what we really mean by “simple” prayer and even the concept of “the heart” beyond the actual organ.

The simplest of prayers that the Trappist monks and primitive pray-ers used was “Lord, the meditation of my heart is in Your sight.” In other words, “Lord, you know my heart,” a prayer I actually say quite often when I get to the point where all I feel like I’m doing is giving God lists and lists of intentions.

How tightly these two body parts are tied — eyes and heart — to our souls and our prayers.

Something to think about: How many other ways is your flesh made spritual? Many, if you think about it….

Nothing I Shall Want

I want a house.  I want an iPhone. I want peace.  I want justice.  I want new bath towels.  I want to find someone who love sme. I want. I want. I want.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm  was from Psalm 23. It really hit me the line that said – Nothing Shall I Want.  I really can’t say that there is nothing that I want. This week has been so full of me wanting.  Just thinking about all the things I want that I don’t have.  So today at Mass I brought those things with me to lay down in front of Jesus.  After Communion reflection I kept hearing God kinda whisper to me, “I know your needs.”

It’s ok to have wants.  God knows them.  As the band played Somewhere in the Middle, I thought about how much my wants get in the way of what God wants.  God knows what I need.  That’s His priority.  In the end, we’re going to get what we need.   I hope that eventually I’ll get to the point where I am satisfied always in what God gives me.  When I can say there is nothing I shall want.  Until then, it’s a struggle and that’s ok. I just have to remind myself that God’s grace is enough.

Love your enemies because Love conquers all

I hate hate.  It outrages me.  Prejudice jokes. Lumping a group of people together and making an overall judgement.  The remarks and disrespect towards Latino people.  I hate it.  Nothing infuriates me more than ignorance about another person or people that turns into hate and disrespect for one another.  There has been so much anger and hate towards people who are different from each other in my line of sight lately.  It’s really been overwhelming and somewhat stressful to be honest.  By nature I am a peacemaker.  I make it my job to see to it that everyone is happy.  It’s quite a burden seeing how it’s pretty rare that everyone is always happy.  And if they are it’s because peacemakers like me are bending themselves in half trying to soften the blow for each party.

Tonight during my meditation, I thought about all the hate in the world. All the anger and ill will towards others that there is.  (Really uplifting, right?)  I was looking at a replica of the Pieta. I thought about how ingrained this conflict is – so ingrained in our world that even my cats’ natural inclination is to fight one another.  But upon looking at the Pieta while thinking about these things I thought about the One who loved.  I looked at Him lying in his mother’s arms.  The love He had for this hateful world and the love that she had for her son.  I thought about all the hate and all the pain and suffering it had caused… but if you think about the power of love… Hate really isn’t stronger.  Sure we see it more often, maybe.  A lot of times we’re more drawn to it. Why else would newspapers have the saying “If it bleeds, it leads”?  But what act of hate has been remembered for 2,000 years?
Lord, heal me of the hate that I hold in my own heart towards those who have hurt me.  Help me to love.