WINTER 2003
ear Friends,
We are approaching that time of year when there is much talk of peace. Many Friends speak of peace and work for peace throughout the year, but during December many millions of people all over the world exchange messages of peace and sing carols of “peace on earth and goodwill.” Images of white doves are ubiquitous. We see the word “Peace” written a thousand different ways on greeting cards, shop windows, coffee mugs, and doormats. Millions of dollars are spent, much to the delight of credit card companies, in trying to create at least the illusion of peace. Even the hard cynic can get caught up in the spirit of generosity and goodwill, and the Scrooges of this world may be softened and made loveable and loving. It happens again and again, year after year.
But what is this peace? And what does peace, real peace, mean to us as Friends? We know it is more than the absence of conflict and war. We know what it is not. It is hard to define, hard to pin down, but I believe it is worth an attempt. Please allow me to share with you some of my thoughts on peace today.
Peace is relinquishing my heavy burdens of past, present, and future, letting them fall into Christ’s strong hands so that I am then free to clasp those of my brothers and sisters. Peace is my deepest longing planted in heaven’s soil, budding bright. It is my rough and thorny indifference worn smooth, patted down, and rolled out into pathways to reconciliation and healing. It is a hard need kneaded by loving hands into bread for the world. It is passion rattling earth’s dry desires, stirring up hell into sweet lullaby. Or it’s blind fear swirling like desert sand into the fiery furnace of God, where, transformed, it shimmers as exquisite glass—clear, magical, refracting and reflecting God’s love.
Peace is a discord melded by grace into sweet melody. It is my inadequacy touched by God and made into blessing, for when I am most weak, then am I strong. Peace is seeking Christ in all people, especially in the wounded and oppressed, even in myself, and ministering with, loving with, working with, healing with. Peace is loving myself with appropriate humility and grace. Peace is prayer, communion, relationship with God: I have peace to the extent that I have God. Peace is living with my dis-ease, knowing that nothing can ever separate me from the love of God—not injustice, not evil, not abuse, not failed relationships, not violence, nothing!—and keeping this knowledge deep within me and lightly on my fingertips as I seek to be faithful in an unfaithful world
This, then, is peace: to know the power of emptiness; to enter into a need; to give beyond myself in service to others, loving with Christ’s love; and to sing, sing, sing, beyond the cacophony of comfort.
Blessings, Friends. May something I have written here speak to your conditions. I pray for each one of us, deep, deep peace.
Blessings
—Michael Gibson, clerkRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Thursday, March 11, 2004 at 09:43 PM
