Peace Essay #4

This week's peace essay comes from my friend Elizabeth Walmsley. She runs the Middle School Friends Program of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

Peace: Collected Musing in Journal Form:
by Elizabeth Walmsley

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

My father once gave a message in Meeting for Worship while we were at Australia Yearly Meeting. He stood and said something along the lines of:

“Friends, peace is possible. I know this because I have experienced it. At the talent show last night I was caught up in the crowd’s whooping and cheering in a way that I am not accustomed to, and realized that there was peace, in that moment.”

When I think of my father’s message, I wonder in which moments I have experienced peace. Certainly while sleeping, and snuggles are a close second. But in large groups of people there have also been moments of peace, like watching middle school youth work together to achieve a team building task on an obstacle course, participating in a large fashion show fund raiser for women’s health, and dancing with lots of people on a dance floor, to name a few. When I think of peace, I think of:

Although she doesn’t pray the way humans do, she is clearly well acquainted with peace and does her best to remind me of it as often as possible - my beautiful, fluffy and loving cat Cally

• Having an inner, personal peace. To be calm and settled within yourself.
• The absence of greed and paranoia.
• The presence of generosity, confidence, and calm wisdom.
• Valuing every human being equally as all being worthy of love, care, and good attention.
• Fairness and honesty in business practices.
• Functional families.
• LISTENING!!

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

I see peace as a process, and not just a state of being. It requires a lot of work to “do” peace, to maintain (ie - do maintenance on) peaceful relations. It is not merely the absence of violence, but requires forgiveness. It is almost beyond comprehension to me to think of how a Hutu and a Tutsi, ex-neighbors, could possibly get together and talk to each other in the same room, face to face, when one of them has killed the entire immediate family of the other. How can the other find it within themselves to forgive this person? And after all the wrongs have been forgiven and there is no more violence occurring, is that peace?

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

As I sit on a morning commuter train surrounded by other middle class western world folks like myself, I find that I am challenged to write about the meaning of peace. I am wearing nice clothes, sipping fresh coffee, and next to me sits a plump wallet displaying my card for the train that shows that all of my passages have been paid for. I glance over and see people contentedly absorbed in their books, gazing out the window at the pleasant shrubbery, or having quiet conversations on their cell phones. No wonder I am feeling so challenged to write about the meaning of peace – my experience is totally disconnected from the raw and cutting edge side of peace that makes itself so obvious because it is not violence.

Colossians 3:12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

My favorite prayer activity is the “Five Fingers of Prayer”. I experience strong elements of peace in the process. As you work your way through your fingers, you focus on, and pray about, the following areas:

Thumb: Thanksgiving
First finger: Confession (That no one is perfect)
Middle finger: Intercession (Holding people in the Light)
Fourth finger: Listening (to God)
Pinky: Praise (God!)

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.



All peace essays on this blog are the work and opinion of their authors, even those written by AFSC staff. The authors (including staff) are free to disagree with AFSC's positions; these essays should not be seen as statements by AFSC. We share them in the hope of sparking conversation about the true meanings of peace.