As we come nearer to Christmas, we hear the music and the many greetings offering Peace and Goodwill to all. And we all need to hear this many times over the coming weeks. However, this is a greeting that is most welcome at this time of year, but it is also needed any time of the year.
The coming of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is what we long for during these remaining Advent days, and it is a longing that lives in us every day of the year. But we can’t make Christmas with our backs to the troubles of our world. When we look around the world, we see war and hunger, natural disaster destroying crops and livelihoods, economic warnings and homelessness and sickness and death both far away and close to home.
Image: Unsplash/Tamara Menzi
David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, invites us to take our place as peacemakers in today’s world. This longing that we all have hidden within our hearts begins when we can turn this longing into a movement for peace. How you ask? To quote Brother David, this peace will be…
More than a truce: it is love and forgiveness and recognizes that the price of every gun is a theft from the poor.
Saying yes to reverence, dialogue, and sensitivity, and saying yes to economic and educational security and affordable housing security.
Saying no to violence, competition, and war, and saying no to the terrorism of poverty, ignorance, homelessness, racism, and ecological devastation.
Saying yes to mercy, kindness, forgiveness, cooperation, and a convergence of the heart, whereby we summon the courage to stand up for freedom.
We can begin to make this path homeward to peace, when, as the poet Rumi suggest:
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Take a few moments to consider how to see beauty around you and metaphorically kneel and kiss the ground.
If we can try living this way, each day we can grow the Peace wherever we are.
-Sister Joan Atkinson, CSJ