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.