peace

It’s one of those rare moments of quiet.

Noah went down for his nap a half hour earlier than normal, Peter is at church getting ready for service, and I am sitting with a cup of warmed up oolong tea, leftover from a Saturday hangout with a dear friend.

After a month of travelling and having friends visit, July finally feels like how summer should be – slow and lazy.

I went back to work at the beginning of the month, and so, we’ve been figuring out new routines, what it looks like to trade off biking Noah to and fro from coop, who’s cooking dinner that night.

I had been dreading the going back to work transition; after a year of being on leave, I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than motherhood.

But, thankfully, the transition has been gradual. Apparently, chemicals can get inactive after a year of disuse and electron microscopes get installed with new cameras that I need to learn to use again.

So, I’ve been learning to be patient with the process.

Not everything needs to get done today, I tell myself, just the portion that has been given to me.

Give us this day our daily bread, and tomorrow there will be enough bread for that day too.

I’ve been mulling over peace lately – what it is, how we all long for it, how we struggle to attain it.

Now that my moments are filled with a crawling baby trying to pull things down from every shelf within his reach (he seems to have an acute sense of where the most breakable things are located), I feel the longing for peace even more.

I sense myself straining towards the next nap (how many more minutes until 9a.m.??), or rushing to wipe up all the food scraps flung from the high chair onto the floor or busying myself with putting all his toys back in their proper place on his play shelf (an activity I repeat about 3 – 5 times a day).

Maybe once the high chair is all wiped up, the toys arranged the way they should be on the shelf, the load of cloth diapers all folded up and stored away, maybe then I will achieve the peace I crave.

I admit, when those things are done, there is a certain sense of relief that washes over me.

More relief than peace, though.

Then, I sit on the couch with my cup of tea, looking at the row of perfectly stacked silicone rings, his toy guitar sitting perfectly upright, and wonder what I should do with my time, with my next hour of freedom.

I think about how freedom is not just “negative freedom”, as in the freedom “from”, whether that be poverty, violence or in my case, a baby’s constant needs, but a “positive freedom”, or a freedom “to”.

Now that you are free from constraints, what do you do with that freedom?

If I think about all the reasons I follow Jesus, of which include how I am compelled by the historicity of the resurrection, continue to be moved by Scripture and the testimonies of believers and have personally witnessed and experienced His Spirit, one of the most convincing to me is how the story of the gospel provides a solid philosophical basis for freedom and peace.

If there is no God, you are responsible for defining your own identity and existence.

Well, if you actually really think about it, there is no absolute meaning behind your existence.

You will one day die and cannot enjoy all that you have worked for, so you had better enjoy the life you have now (YOLO).

It is on you to live all the experiences (go scuba diving more and travel the world!), to do the most meaningful work possible (cure cancer with your own startup!) and be the best human you can be (it is on you to save the world from climate change and why aren’t you donating more money?)

The only way to peace is through meditating on some vague concept of love and self-compassion (well, that’s at least what seems to work for everyone else), and when it doesn’t seem to work, you really should be going on a silent yoga retreat.

But what if you can’t find the answer within yourself? What if you still come up empty? What if, in the silence, you realize you still aren’t enough?

Christopher Watkin in his excellent book, “Biblical Critical Theory” (highly recommended read!) says it this way,

If I have the incontestable and final authority to define my own law, then there is none greater than me to render objective any dignity I should choose or not choose to ascribe to myself, or that another should choose or not choose to ascribe to me.

My dignity is utterly dependent on my desire to think of myself as possessing it, and similarly contingent, for all practical purposes, on others autonomously agreeing with me that I do indeed possess it.

If the heart of liberty is indeed “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” then it must include the right to define my own existence as being without dignity, or the existence of others as, for me, possessing less dignity than my own.

This is a recipe for social fracture, for hanging the weak out to dry, and for giving a blank check to those suffering from a range of depressive illnesses to define themselves out of existence with impunity…

If however, there is a God, then as God’s creature in God’s world I do not have the right to define the rules or the value of my life or of anyone else’s – in other words, to “know good and evil” – any more than, as a citizen of my country, I have the right to define my own speed limits.”

I don’t think peace is something we can work or manipulate our way to; on the contrary, the more we insist on defining the terms of our existence, I believe the farther we will be from coming to any semblance of rest.

There will be no amount of toy-arranging or high chair cleaning that will grant me the peace I desire.

Rather, it will be through the laying down of my desires and coming into submission under a good and right authority – the only One who has authority to define my life – that I will find peace.

Peace is knowing who you are instead of constantly striving to make a name for yourself.

Peace is acknowledging your place in the world; you are created, not Creator. This we call worship.

Peace is being small yet wholly beloved, both at the same time.

I hear stirrings from within the nursery I must now attend to, but these are my thoughts on a sleepy July Sunday morning.

What do you do with your rest? Do you struggle with the concept of positive freedom? I’d love to hear from you, dear reader.