Recalculate

Photo: Susan Sink

Architects may—and do—build structures of peace.  We recognize such places when we enter them and subsequently experience quiet peace. We also recognize places of tension, busy-ness, agitation and bad energy when we are disturbed emotionally upon entering such places.

We, too, can create beautiful places of peace within and around us . . . places that can integrate all the sensory in-take that we absorb each day.

Sometime ago I wrote a blog on noise, unwanted "musak" in every building we enter, machinery and pneumatic drills outside our apartment complexes, violent words and even bullets within earshot in many areas, locally or abroad.

I suggest that we need an internal GPS to guide us on our way to healthy living, meaningful relationships, and ultimately to God.  How can you and I and our beloved community change so that we, indeed, create the peace we long for but which—for days and endless years—we do not experience?

My internal GPS tells me: “Recalculate”, a one- word directive capable of either frustrating me or freeing me for new opportunities in creating peace in the midst of what I call noise.  I need to ponder the piece of grass or flower coming up in the crack of a sidewalk, or the unlikely bed-fellows we occasionally see on YouTube missives: the rabbit and a fawn, the lion and a lamb, a child with its hand over the hole of an asp or adder (Is. 11:6-8).  It’s positive psychology; it’s mindfulness of the other; it’s well-being in the midst of chaos; it’s being able to create PEACE unobtrusively.

Renee Domeier, OSB