The paradoxical position and power of peace

What if everything we ever learned about peace was wrong?  What if being at peace with ourselves meant being at peace with others?  

That my peace wasn’t about me,
but how I relate with others around me? 
“As much as it depends on me,”
as Romans 12:18 puts it.

If only we could genuinely enter into others’ stories of experience and being — doing this as if it were our most intrinsic desire — then we would experience the peace we’ve always wanted.  

Yes, if only our most intrinsic desire is that we are at peace with others, that we give others no cause to be ongoingly upset with us, that we reconcile such matters quickly, again, as much as it depends on us, then we live in relative unity — and from such unity we can build something worthwhile together.  

Such a peace is an ancient law,
it’s interwoven in the fabric of life.  

My peace depends on being at peace WITH my world;
that is, with all the people IN my world…  

… as much as it depends on me;
then, I let go.

This peace is paradoxical because it’s in precisely the place we don’t look or expect it to be!  This is because it’s the most unnatural thing to be other-centred.  

Our task in this life is to enter the stories of others — be curious about their lived experience in life — as the only source needed to be convinced that they are who they are for perfectly logical and reliable and rational reasons.  

To accept they are worthy persons
as we ought to accept our own worthiness.

Anytime we have a hard time forgiving a person we would do well to enter their story and discover who they really are.  There the answer awaits to indwell our understanding.  

Empathy is driven by understanding.  Empathy is peace, whilst understanding no amount of empathy will provide us peace if we’re assaulted.  But upon the assault, we can choose our response — peace.  

Assault for assault augers assault. 
We are to be the peace
of an aggression circuit breaker.  

If a person is capable of cruelty, how is that possible?  How has their conscience been so seared?  How do they live with themselves?  How do they think they’ll get away with what they’ve done?  (Nobody does.)  Not thinking these thoughts judgementally, but thinking these thoughts curiously as if it were ourselves living their life.  

Empathising with someone being cruel to us has its limits, of course.  

Peace is IN the place we least expect to find it.  It’s in losing ourselves.  Jesus said, words to the effect, and in various ways, “If you lose yourself, you find yourself.”  

What a wonderful thing it is to lose ourselves in another’s narrative in the receipt of understanding.  Understanding is facing a truth we otherwise did not previously know.  Understanding brings US peace.  And such peace brings a paradoxical power for good.  

I’m not perfect at this by any means, and all I can say is when I practice entering IN the other person’s story, my heart softens, and because understanding ensues, I experience peace for the situation’s wisdom I have gleaned.  Forgiveness is easier, and achievable, from there.  

Hundreds of times now, as an emergency services chaplain, I have said, “If you cannot forgive, you cannot live.”  But forgive and then you have life in all its abundance.  

Let us seek peace in all its forms.