Can we "find" peace?

Can we "find" peace?

Finding Peace. We hear that expression as if it is something just hanging out around us and all we need to do is look in the right spot. Or perhaps we see ourselves as a Sherlock Holmes style of looker, deducing where peace is by noticing all the places where it is not. I guess one of the big questions is, do I have to leave the world in order to find peace? The monastic movement has an interesting relationship with this concept -- the monasteries developed as places of refuge from the world, but not simply as an escape. Rather, as it says on the sign to St. Benedicts, "Silence and solitude are the environment in which the monks seek to respond to God's call to love God and all peoples and creatures. Far from being an escape or an avoidance of people and the world, the monks see their solitude and silence as a response to the deep needs of the world and its people."

So how do we find peace?

The grounds up at St. Benedict's in Snowmass imbue a sense of silence that feels both foreign and inviting, especially to the city folk. As you drive down the road you come to a fork where you can go right to the monastery or left to the retreat houses, but either way you've reached the end of the road and are surrounded by mountains. The silence is palpable there. I am so used the background noises of cars, trucks and boys that my first thought was that the silence was actually loud!

Each morning we woke to a crystal blue sky, but within the first few hours one cloud would appear, and then others would follow. First they were playful white whisps of clouds, but by afternoon they were large, looming and dark. As we walked to the monastery for evening vespers the clouds were thick, but when we came back out just before 8:00pm, the sky had once again cleared and the sun began to set. This cycle from clarity to mess and back to clarity reminds me of the state of our mind and heart. Some mornings we rise with a bit of clarity, only to be bombarded by the clouds of the day. Sometimes this happens in the course of an hour, a week, perhaps a whole month! Regardless of the timing, the cycle is relevant. The clouds eventually move in, sometimes they cast a much needed shadow and cool us off, sometimes they bring light to something we need to see, sometimes they are highly annoying and mess up our plans.  We can't escape this process, the clouds fill the sky and clear, but I had a realization last weekend that I can choose to resist it or not. 

Perhaps peace is found in surrendering to the cycle. I feel least at peace when I am resisting the process. But getting to have time to just watch the clouds I was reminded that they do in fact move. It seems silly that I could forget that, but the reality is that if we don't take time to actually notice what is around us it feels like life happens to us, maybe even that it dumps upon us. Finding peace is about participating in the world with perspective. The monks seek to do this in a particular way, and I think we're each invited to find the way in which we participate. 

I took my four sons to their favorite hockey stores to just look around yesterday after their last day of school. They were so happy to look around, try on pads, shoot a few pucks with new sticks and touch everything they could get their hands on. I was taken aback at one moment. I felt like time stood still and I just watched my children. A local hockey store is the last place I think of when I envision "peace", and yet I was overcome with contentment for a moment. Seeing my boys engage in something they love that I don't even understand made me feel small. I got to be an observer rather than the one in charge. I chose to participate rather than to resist. 
So there is your invitation for the week -- where can you seek out peace through participation rather than resistance?  

Peace,
Catherine