And Let It Begin With Me...

What is peace to someone with so little power.

There is a thing that happens when you work with people all day, people you know and people you are just meeting. You start to notice a pattern in things, patterns that they could not have planned because they do not know each other. You will spend two months not pressing the button in the computer for the chicken wrap, or the sweet vodka drink, only to bring six of them to six different tables. If one person acts out of the ordinary at 6:30 place yourself, it is likely to be an out of the ordinary night. They likely won’t be the only ones.

A week ago I watched as an entire dining room of people decided (mostly independently) to hang out, have one more, nurse their beer, and sit cozily for about three times longer than they usually do. Then at about 11:30 everyone left. It felt conducted by something bigger than all of us. It felt like the air we shared was somehow communicating with each of us how to act together.

I have read about mushrooms and aspens, about how the same types of organisms in the same forest are able to communicate with each other so they act more like one large organism and less like the individual things we categorize them as. I have watched videos of this in the forests, and watched the reality of it play out in churches, and classrooms, and now in my bar. We are more connected then we realize, but only because we aren’t paying attention.

This week I have struggled with Peace. What does it mean, when I feel so helpless against governments and systems that are so big? I can’t get my kids to stop fighting, how am I supposed to bring peace to the world? What does peace even mean in a world that is unjust and often unkind?

In the Bible peace isn’t linked with quiet. It is linked with Justice. Peace makers are often not those who go and get everyone to quiet down, but rather are those yelling about the things that are not right. If hope must first come from noticing that things could be different; peace is the practice of setting a thing right, even if it is tiny. Even when you are tired. Peace is an ultimate destination, one we pray for and hope for and also work toward.

I have been holding the idea of practicing peace in one hand, as I hold the tension of us all being connected in the other. If we are all connected, like mushrooms and aspens, then surely me choosing to practice peace must matter. My tiny practices of peace, of using kind words, of attempting to be equitable, of saying out loud that something that might even benefit me isn’t right, those things matter. Interruption, even on the microcosmic level means injustice goes a little bit less far than it would have otherwise. Peace is a practice, which means I don’t always get it right. It doesn’t always feel the way I want it to, and it matters more than I could ever realize.

All of the Christmas story is like that. Mary said yes, Elizabeth believed her, Joseph honored her, the wisemen followed a star and the shepherds were simply doing their job the way they had always done it. The innkeeper found what space he had. Individual and communal work, decisions coming together for something bigger even when they didn’t know it at the time. Peace doesn’t look like what they sell at the spa, it looks like coming together and interrupting the injustice of the world, like practice and spidey senses, and agreeing we all breathe the same air, and believing in a God who orchestrates all toward goodness.