Seek Peace

and pursue it. But where is the path?

On the wall of our back porch

About twenty years ago I joined a small group of wives in a marriage-focused, doctrinal study group (I mentioned it previously in this blog post). In one of our first meetings our leader asked each of us to define, in three words or less, our personal concept of eternal heavenly joy.

My answer came instantly: Life without anger.

Part of me has always been searching for peace in the sense that the pursuit of it—inward, outward, familial, societal—has been a continuous thread in my life. A conscious longing, beginning in my early years. I’m sure I’m hardly alone in that, but I also wonder if being a middle child sensitized me to friction, wired me for the role of peace seeker, peace yearner. All I know is, a life without anger has been a personal (and at times desperate) quest on my spiritual journey.

Which is not to say I’ve learned the art of peaceful living.

There are, however, two brief periods in my life that stand out as exquisitely peace filled.

The first happened about a decade ago as a direct result of immersing myself in Buddhist philosophy and beginning a daily sitting practice. Shockingly, (and anyone who knows me sees this is a jaw-dropper) I lost my inclination to have opinions.

I’m not kidding.

Me—who is quite well known in my circles not only for having opinions but sharing them earnestly and often (my kids could tell you)—I actually found myself in a bubble of . . . silence. Absolute mental quiet. It was as glorious as it was unexpected. And even as I enjoyed the heck out of it, I knew it wouldn’t last. I intuited that it was a kind of honeymoon phase—the bliss of discovering the path of Non-attachment. Being human, I knew I’d wander off it eventually, bump back into my self with all its ego clamor. But I can tell you, I soaked in the quietude while I could.

And then indeed I did drift off-course and found myself back in the noise of my everyday opinions. Sigh.

My second peace of mind blessing happened last year.

My faith tradition does not practice Lent, yet last February our pastor made an appeal from the pulpit that we try it as a spiritual exercise—give up something for forty days that we know hooks us and take note of what happens. What we learn about ourselves.

Sitting in the pew listening to him make the case for voluntary deprivation, I knew immediately that I was going to participate, and exactly what I was going to give up. Current events.

Being something of an information junky, at that point I was following approximately a bajillion interesting, compelling Substacks and losing hours of most days to reading, and most of my un-dedicated mental space to the subsequent ruminating on the problems of our society, culture, world.

It was not helping my peace of mind. Or much of anything.

So that very Sunday I leapt into the void that is cold-turkey abstinence from all media related to What Is Going On Out There. I got home from church and figured out how to reconfigure my email inbox so that my multitudinous Substack subscriptions would land in a separate, buried folder. The headlines would be gone, the temptation out of sight to support out of mind.

And in that vacant space, let me tell you, I found enlivening peace. There was no boring Now what is there to think about? emptiness. Rather, it was like golden sunlight had pierced the iron sky of my mind, illuminating the darkened landscape and bringing comforting warmth, new hope. Within a few days the whole threatening cloud mass had dissipated and I was living in a bright new world under a wide open sky. The contrast was startling. Awe-inspiring. Instructive.

Through those forty days of Lent, I felt settled: I would never go back. I mean, why would I? The depth of inner quiet, the breadth of lightness and energy—of spaciousness in my heart and mind to live peacefully in the moment, unencumbered by the cares of the world—was profoundly uplifting. Soul-restoring. I felt like I’d finally found home, entered into the life I want to live. My new way of being.

And then Easter arrived. Which meant Lent was over, and with it my formal commitment. Rule Follower Leah was officially released back into the seductive world of options.

Which is not to say I ran downhill like a herd of swine to leap over a cliff and drown myself in the ocean of World News and Knowledge.

It was more of a meandering down to the shoreline, dipping my toes back in with this Substack or that one. Wading up to my knees on any given day, or maybe my waist. But yes, the plot is predictable. I presumed I could dabble in the shallows and accordingly pared down my Substack reading to the Truly Worthwhile and the Particularly Notable, yet over time I ended up re-immersed in the turbulent waters of current events and commentary.

And so now I come to you, not drowning, but waving with a question: What is the path of peace, and how do you find it?

Because I've been grappling with a damned dilemma. (For real. It feels like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of quandary.)

Here’s the situation metaphorically speaking: The water is too cold, the waves are too choppy, and it’s requiring too much energy to avoid the undertow that will sweep me away from the peace and safety of the shore. I want solid ground. I want to exit the water, dry off, and walk away. Never look back. Indulge Lent 2.0 in perpetuity.

Photo by Vincent Guth on Unsplash

BUT. . . but I also wonder if just checking out again, leaving the challenges of this world for others to sort out while I go off to live my quiet life in lovely ignorance is. . . kind of lazy? Privileged? Greedy? Negligent? Something about it feels dishonorable and self-indulgent when it appears our society is approaching a precipice partly because too many people have been tuned out, whether by choice or circumstance. Isn’t staying informed a critical component of civic duty? A moral imperative? How can a free society possibly survive if its majority fails to pay attention? I’ve written two essays, in fact, discussing the “rhyme of history” and how crucial it is for people to stay attuned to the present strains of our past mistakes so we might avoid reiterating their horrors, their suffering.

And then there are the aphorisms. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” Or Albert Einstein: “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Or good ol’ Edmund B:

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/41735?ref=good-and-evil

You get the picture. Do I really want to be the one sitting on a rock watching the sunset while honorable, selfless others do the work of confronting evil? And don’t you need information to do that?

Recently I was emailing with a Substack friend about this damned dilemma and I put my quandary like this:

It's always a question to me about what [the obligation to stay attuned] means in action...how far out should my attention extend? If I can only be aware but not DO anything, other than fret and shout into the void, so to speak, am I helping myself, my loved ones, or the situation? It feels wrong to totally check out and not bother being attuned to the trends and the breakdown. . . Yet the whole thing is operating at a scale I am utterly powerless to truly influence, given how relatively few people are in my circle of influence. So where do I draw the line? How much attention is too much? How little is too little?

Do you see it? The choice seems either sacrifice your peace of mind to stay properly informed—so you can be a good neighbor and participate responsibly—or gain your private peace by abandoning that due diligence. It’s a lose-lose situation because whether you sacrifice your peace to preserve your conscience or sacrifice your conscience to preserve your peace, either way, your peace gets screwed.

And so ‘round and ‘round I go . . . and have gone.

But I’m pondering a third option. Maybe it’s just desperate motivated reasoning, but I see a morally coherent argument in this perspective:

World events on their time scale involve too large a dynamic for meaningful individual impact; the sweeps of movement and change are both inevitable and complex beyond any of us—even aggregated into communities—to manage or steer. The path of optimal impact for each individual, then, is to be present with as much positivity—love, light and peace—as possible. Because the antidote to the energy of Darkness is the energy of Light. The more we open ourselves to Light, become a conduit for it into this world, the less room there is for Darkness to expand.

This view is grounded in recognition of our fundamental spiritual nature, and in it I see a good case for denying attention to the endless news cycle with its ocean of tragedy, villainy, and injustice, and all the negativity and upset that swirls ever in their wake. As Corrie Ten Boom famously noted: “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”

And, in fact, the argument is Biblically grounded in that very admonition:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. 6:34).

I notice that even though I know this truth—have learned it, felt inspired by it, even practiced living it, yet somehow I dither about committing to it because I lean into fears that it is Not Enough. That responsibility to the world requires knowledge of its tribulations.

Perhaps, though, the continual pull on me of this call to let go, its inspirational power, is actually a Divine tap on the shoulder that I should be paying attention to?

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

I’m inclining to think so. Because some of the most profound and comforting words in this vein are found in the spiritual Writings that inform my faith, that carry for me the authority of Divine revelation. In a work called Arcana Coelestia (Latin for “Heavenly Secrets”) it states [emphasis mine]:

Those who trust in the Divine . . . [t]hough concerned about the morrow, yet are they unconcerned, in that they are not anxious, let alone worried, when they give thought to the morrow. They remain even-tempered whether or not they realize desires, and they do not grieve over loss; they are content with their lot. If they become wealthy they do not become infatuated with wealth; if they are promoted to important positions they do not consider themselves worthier than others. If they become poor they are not made miserable either; if lowly in status they do not feel downcast. They know that for those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and that no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state.

It should be recognized that Divine providence is overall, that is, it is present within the smallest details of all, and that people in the stream of providence are being carried along constantly towards happier things, whatever appearance the means may present. Those in the stream of providence are people who trust in the Divine and ascribe everything to Him. But those not in the stream of providence are people who trust in themselves alone and attribute everything to themselves; theirs is a contrary outlook, for they take providence away from the Divine and claim it as their own. It should be recognized also that to the extent that anyone is in the stream of providence he is in a state of peace . . .. (Arcana Coelestia #8478)

And then there’s this from the Arcana #2493:

I have spoken to angels about the memory of things of the past and about consequent anxiety concerning things of the future, and I have been informed that the more interior and perfect [ie. closer to God — LR] angels are the less do they care about things of the past or think about those of the future, and that this is also the origin of their happiness. They have said that the Lord provides them every moment with what to think, accompanied by blessing and happiness, and that this being so they have no cares and no worries. This also is what is meant in the internal sense by the manna being received 'day by day' from heaven, and by the 'daily [provision] of bread' in the Lord's Prayer, as well as by the statement that they must not worry about what they are to eat and drink, or what clothes they are to put on.

This last passage absolutely resonates with my experience of peace: the more I center myself in the present moment, which is to say, the less I dwell in the past or future, the more peace-filled and happy I become. My practice of Lent is a case in point. When my mental space was decluttered of the endless, daily upheavals of the world, the Lord’s daily bread—His divine Light and Love—filled that space to nourish my soul, to bring me into connection with Him. Clearly this points us to the “power of now,” to the value of cultivating attention on the moment rather than training our sights on what is beyond our reach.

And the first passage gives us the path to where peace is found:

Those in the stream of providence are people who trust in the Divine and ascribe everything to Him. . . . It should be recognized also that to the extent that anyone is in the stream of providence he is in a state of peace.

So to get into the flow, trust in the Divine and ascribe everything to Him. Final answer. Because the stream of providence is the only current I want carrying me.

Of course, making this choice is not a one-and-done effort.

Trusting in the Lord that deeply, that wholly, is a process of spiritual rebirth that requires us to live like we are dying—dying to our self. It means daily waking up to our ego with all its Answers, and accepting His Word into our hearts rather than just knowing it in our heads or bending it to match our priors. Actually living His truth rather than pondering it, arguing it. It means handing over the wheel and realizing that while we might be able to read and understand His map, our Driver knows the territory and the route far better than we do. He is the One who will bring us safely home.

Can you imagine what your life would be like if you could live like there was no tomorrow? Really think about that. How would your focus change? Where would you put your energy? Where would your attention go?

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

Do you feel a tap on your shoulder?