Blessed are the Peacemakers, Part 4

Blessed are the Peacemakers, Part 4

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”[1]

What does it mean to make peace. What is the nature of the peace we attempt to make? Is peace the absence of conflict? Is peace like the calm after a thunderstorm where the atmosphere has momentarily equalized its restless energy? While it is nice to rest in the calm after a storm, we hold no illusions that storms will not return. History and experience assure us they will, whether it is the weather or warring nations. So, should we consider peace as but a temporary respite?

Some assume that recognizing peace is like recognizing pornography – we know it when we see it. Others believe recognizing and attaining peace is not so subjective or intuitive. If a state of peace is simply the trough in the natural rising and falling of emotions then peace is reduced to a phase that comes and goes instead of a stable state of being. If peace is tied to the rise and fall of our feeling states then it must include both the highs and the lows or there can be no lasting peace because emotional states vibrate – high and low emotional energy is the same energy even though we experience it differently. Surely peace is not so malleable.   

Jesus is often referred to with an Old Testament title for the Messiah as the Prince of Peace. Yet, according to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”[2] Jesus recognized the limiting aspects of loyalty to family or tribe, where folks pitted themselves against other families and tribes. He knew there could be no peace with family units insulating themselves so tightly against other family units. Those artificial boundaries needed to be eliminated in order to form larger communities that more resembled the family or kingdom of God. Attaining that sort of peace required an uncomfortable period of time where former enemies became redefined and accepted as family.

And then, there are what many would consider variations on violence that are absolutely required for sustaining life. Old cells in our bodies are destroyed every day in order for new cells to replace them. In feeding ourselves, the lives of other organisms must be cut short or significantly altered – even for vegetarians. The fact that our own bodies will eventually become food for other organisms does not negate the violence required to sustain our bodies today. Technically, we do violence every time we eat, mow the grass, trim the bushes, or drive our vehicles.

There is a mostly-invisible rhythm for everything in life where oscillation occurs between extremes. Every 24 hours we oscillate between day and night, light and dark, between sleep and wakefulness. Each year we oscillate between seasons with cold and hot temperatures, green and brown grass, bare trees and those in full leaf. Many times every minute of every day our bodies inhale and exhale, our hearts push blood out through arteries and receive it back through veins, and electrical currents are transmitted and received along the web of our nervous system. This is the nature of how life on earth was created to function – everything rises and falls, and rises and falls, again and again. Without that natural movement, that life rhythm, there is no life.

So making peace may be more about establishing an equilibrium of acceptance among the poles of life that we consider opposites. Realistically, peace must be able to exist in spite of the natural tension between those opposites; otherwise, peace cannot be a state of life, only death. Perhaps peace is actually about committing to finding respectful, non-violent ways of accepting our differences than it is about eliminating those differences. To imagine a world where neither persons nor nations seek to gain at the expense of another may be a fantasy. The best we can do is to try to remove as much violence from those incursions as possible, even as we care for those victimized by it.

Even more specifically, perhaps peace-making is first an individual endeavor before being one between communities or nations. If we are particularly self-observant, we know there is constant tension within what we consider our personal sphere of conscious awareness, exclusive of our interactions with others. As we learn to make peace with the paradoxical nature of our own being and accept that we do not, cannot, nor need not understand all of our motivations, thoughts, or behaviors, and once we learn to accept ourselves as worthy of love and respect in spite of our countless internal oscillations – once we have achieved that level of peace, no person or outside force can or will threaten either our peace or our essential being. Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…”[3] Such a peacemaker will indeed be called a child of God.

This is the 19^thin a series titled Blessedness and Woe.Life Notes are my explorations into mysteries that interest me. They are invitations for readers to explore more deeply into life’s mysteries. Engage with me or explore contemplative spiritual direction at ghildenbrand@outlook.com.

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[1] Matthew 5:9

[2] Matthew 10:34

[3] Matthew 10:28