While I consider myself a practicing catholic, I’m not the best catholic. Aside from the obvious failures—my perpetual sinning, my paltry spirit—I miss church some Sundays, and I have a lot of skepticism and even disgust for the church and its handling of sexual abuse throughout the decades. But it’s the faith of my ancestors, and I find a lot of beauty in its traditions and rituals.
And so, like most catholics, “good” ones or not, on Easter Sunday I was at Mass when the priest began to talk about the message of the resurrection; that it means, in part, that we’re to understand that nothing—no event, no failure, no disappointment, no betrayal—can destroy us. There’s always rebirth and resurrection in the life of the spirit.
The Easter Sunday homily got me thinking about what is, for me, one of the most compelling aspects of christianity, which is Jesus’ focus on peace, between human beings, but also within ourselves. It’s a constant theme throughout the New Testament, spoken and written of repeatedly by both Christ and his disciples:
Blessed are the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9);
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you (John 14:27);
In Me you may have peace (John 16:33);
The fruit of the Spirit is peace (Galatians 5:22-23);
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin (Matthew 6:28-33);
and my personal favorite, And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding….(Philippians 4:7).
God is serious about peace. He promises that while it may feel elusive, it remains real. That, after all, is part of the message of Easter. There’s no suffering you can’t transcend.
The peace which passeth all understanding. This phrase has long struck a chord in me, because it takes us past intellectual grasping for meaning. It takes the cultivation of peace past the mind, which tries to dissect and chew up everything, and brings it right into mystery. It’s a peace you cannot understand. You can only feel it, experience it. It’s a wild idea, in fact, a crazy idea in this chaotic and cacophonous world. In our current society in particular, there seems to be no end to people demanding your peace. No justice, no peace, we hear in protest. Don’t you dare unplug your TV news or throw away your newspaper, no matter how much it robs you of peace, or you’ll be deemed callous and uncaring. In our world, suffering cries for more suffering. The darkness needs its regular feeding.
I suppose a good christian will tell you that you can only find this peace through Jesus, and I’m not saying they’d be wrong, but as I find myself under increasing demands, which tax my body and mind (no sleep with an infant will do that to you), limits my time to be creative (people needing you can do that) and in general makes taking care of myself more challenging, it seems learning to live in peace through the ceaseless drudgery of daily life, despite being tired, discouraged at times, navigating never ending piles of laundry to dishes that never seem to wash themselves, and so on, has morphed from a lofty aspiration to a necessity.
If we don’t cultivate peace in our homes, and by extension the lives of our families, who will? And what legacy will we leave behind?
There’s something very sobering in realizing the climate of your home emanates largely from you; if you can recall your own childhood, you can easily remember that your parents so often dictated whether it would be a good day or a bad day, based on their temperaments and moods. If they were silly and joyful, you probably felt silly and joyful. But if they were angry and negative, you walked on eggshells, and the day felt like a gray cloud chock full of rain had gotten stuck above the roof of your house.
The American poet Anne Sexton wrote, Live or die, but don’t poison everything. I’ve loved this line for more than two decades now. It asks us, rightly so, to make a choice: Drown in negativity or snap out of it and live. What right do we have to spew our toxicity into the days of those around us, especially those we love the most?
I’m not saying we’re not allowed to have hard days, or even bad moments, and feel our feelings, but I am saying that sometimes we allow ourselves indulgence in our negative feelings simply because, like children ourselves, we want to. We want to wallow in our frustration. We want to stomp and kick about our exhaustion. But we have the choice, even when we’re tired and worn down, to remain at peace, to let the chaos float on the surface of our otherwise deep and serene waters. I don’t have a magic bullet suggestion on how to do this; it takes willingness and practice and a whole box of tools you can use when in the thick of it.
To begin, it takes reaching the point where you’re tired of suffering. To continue, it takes surrender. When we resist what is, whether that be the fact that we have a long day ahead of us on little sleep, or that our jobs are wearing us down, we cause more pain for ourselves. Surrender, like forgiveness, doesn’t have to condone anything. It isn’t saying, I like this, please give me more. It says—Here’s what I’m facing, I won’t struggle against it and make things even harder.
We’re all bearing the responsibility of our lives. Can we carry them with grace? Can we wake up each day and, even in our exhaustion and overwhelm, keep our peace, letting very little ruffle us, surrendering to the moment. At some point, whether we’re christians or not, we have to decide: Are we going to add to the world’s darkness, or be crazy and wild enough to shine peace into its murky encroachment.
“The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm,” Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth. “You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all—from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others….
“Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.”
And the strange thing is, when we do this, when we complete our tasks with acceptance, or surrender to the fact that this is what we now have to do, and do it calmly, something shifts. What we resisted opens up a space that wasn’t there before. Life takes a breath we were otherwise choking out of it with our bitterness. It becomes imbued with, well, it becomes imbued with a peace that passes all understanding.
Thanks for being here with me, truly.
xoxo,
Dolores
Truly appreciating your words while I taking care of my sick 10 month old.