The promise and peril of peace

“Unfortunately, peace is boring.”
Having both read the book Three Cups of Tea while we were on vacation (which I highly recommend!!), my partner and I were debating why America would agree to spend millions to bomb Afghanistan, but not the $12,000 per school it would cost to bring balanced education to the children or Afghanistan.
I kept pondering the concept that peace is boring as I witnessed how I subtly resisted dropping into a state of non-doing bliss while on vacation—was I avoiding sinking into peace because I thought I would be bored?
In my questioning, what I realized is not that peace is boring, but that peace is terrifying. Peace is powerful. Peace is revolutionary. We avoid peace not because it is boring, but because if we really felt it, if we knew it in our bones, we wouldn’t accept the way things have been, both in our personal lives and globally. We would have to change. Everything.
And yet, that’s what’s happening. The consciousness toward change and choosing peace is rising. (I heard that there were no arrests in Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day!) But if we understand that it isn’t simply that change inspires peace, but that peace inspires change, how do we find the courage to choose peace, knowing that inherent in peace is a continuous process of change, a dying away of what has been?
Rites of passage and personal ceremony have taught me so much about the cycle of death and rebirth, and about celebrating in community the way we die a little all of the time in order to fully live and offer our gifts. And with all the hopefulness of this year, we all know that there is a lot of dying away happening—people are losing their jobs, their homes, and an entire way of life. Whereas this is all ultimately for the greater good of the rebirth of a sustainable and peaceful way of being, it can be painful.

In addition to having a practice like yoga or meditation where we can access a place of essential peace, in order to be a citizen in the daily world, we must also be willing to be hospice workers. What I mean by this is that we must become comfortable with death and versed in grief. Not just about the death of a loved one or the unspeakable violence that is going on in the world, but also all the little things that we must let go of on a daily basis.

Admittedly I do not have the answers, and as I’m writing this I’m realizing I’m very much in the thick of a peace-inspired death cycle right now. But what I do know is that aparigraha (non-attachment, especially in relation to self-identity)and ishvara pranidhana (devotion to God or surrender to the Mystery) are a huge part of transforming the exquisiteness of pain or grief into peace.

It is my hope that we find the courage to celebrate the tide of peace rising and to grieve all that is washed away as it does.