Advent: Peace

"Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work, it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart."

When life gets too busy, too complicated, too frustrating, too uninspired and I find myself in a slump, my habit always has been to retreat into nature, to places where peace flutters on every branch, flows through water, blooms up from the ground, stretches across the vast sky, rustles in the landscapes. In med school, my friend and I would evade piles of text to memorize for the solace of the ample public parks in Kansas City, laying in the grass and listening to the breeze whistling through the trees. In residency, I found myself escaping up the mountain at every free chance I got to hike, camp along a mountain stream, breath in the fresh scent of pine and let the quietness of the wilderness sink in. In Haiti, Patrick and I retreat to the beach to let the surf wash over us, and the cool blue horizon absorb all the tension we've carried on our shoulders through the week.
For rest supreme, I can always find it home, on my parent's farm where the nearest neighbor is a retired dairy farmer and his dog living 2 miles away. There I walk long stretches of road and never happen across another vehicle or person, can talk out loud to God when I need to work some things out, can listen to meadowlarks whistling on a prairie fence, to cows calling to their babies across rolling fields, or to the squabble of wild turkeys I've disturbed along my walk. On the farm, no lights from a city pollute the darkness, and with the setting of the sun in wild splashes of color, the night gives way to a velvety landscape of stars, the milky way spreads out like a silvery ribbon across the sky, Mars glows red and Venus bright. Only the moon can dim the skypscape of stars, and when it does, we rarely complain. The moon itself has a majestic presence on the prairie, sometimes shedding enough silvery light to illuminate the shadowy corners of nightfall.

In these places I can always find peace, breathing in fresh air, reveling in the tranquility away from masses of humanity, on open roads or curvy paths, great stretches of the world that allow the soul to expand and breath. Usually my worries, concerns and preoccupations are exposed as trivial and the greater questions of my life grow quiet as I stand in a state of simply being.

Yet I always struggle with how to take the tranquility I find in such places into my existence every day, allowing it to soak into the hustle and bustle of life, seasoning the moments of stress and struggle, coloring the routine and maintaining balance.

Because peace should be experienced no matter how many millions of people fill a city, how loud the cars honk and trucks rattle. Peace can exist in a morning with room full of patients waiting with their aches and pains and needs. Peace should take over when I have to figure out how to say no once again to an outstretched hand looking for a handout that I cannot give. Peace can exist in the pollution, in the confusion, in the suffering and celebration. Peace can exist in laughter, in tears, in the living, breathing and dying of every day.

This Sunday, we celebrated the second Sunday of Advent, and lit a candle for peace.

In our time of community gathering, we meditated on that which blocks peace from entering into our hearts. Anger, ambition, control, mourning, struggle, impatience, redefining self, frustration, disappointment, loneliness. We allow such intrusions into our presence in the moment; they disturb our homeostasis and irritate our happiness.

The world itself hurts for peace, in all its definitions. The heart of the world is tainted with struggles for power and money, misunderstandings and unbalance. As a result wars are waged, environments are stripped, poverty and starvation pollute populations, disparities perpetuate, illness overtakes, racism, nationalism, religion-ism get in the way of a peaceful global operations. Yet how can we expect the world to fall into Utopian peace if we, as individuals, still struggle with maintaining simple peace in our own hearts?

So in this year’s advent, I recognize the real challenge of peace. It starts with me. It begins with the individual. Advent reminds us God brings peace, faith and belief in that which connects, makes whole, unifies and heals. If we trust in that, then we start the process of pulling down the walls of unrest, agitation, fear and injustice.

I have a long way to go, to harbor that peace that passes all understanding. But I’m thankful for the moments in life that I’m able to grasp it with both hands, breath it in deeply, catch its scent on a breeze, hear its whisper in the wind. This advent I focus on the barriers to peace so I may hurdle them, may discard them, may put them in their place and let the peace of God in.