Peace

It eludes many; and many there are who set themselves to its seeking with earnest hand and unquiet heart. They labour long upon the steeper paths, pressing onward as though by greater striving it might at last be seized—yet for all their effort it abides concealed, withdrawn as something not unwilling, but not to be taken.

I myself was once taken in its talons, as the small and heedless creature that forages the open ground, intent upon its morsel, is in a breath overtaken by the great eagle that wheels in silence above. No cry announces its descent. No shadow gives warning in time. So too was I held—caught unawares, my thought set wholly upon the daily bread, upon the gathering of what must be gathered, the satisfying of that unyielding hunger that drives the body onward without rest. And in such pressing, the eye grows dim to what abides beyond the next step, and the ear is deafened to what does not call aloud.

For it is not found by such means, nor yielded to the hand that grasps. It does not come through the straight road of understanding, nor by the careful assembling of thought. Rather it draws near in a manner unlooked for, and only when the striving has fallen quiet—when the body is laid into stillness, and the weight of obligation loosens its hold, if only for a moment’s breath.

There, within that unguarded quiet, it is not pursued, but present. Not as a path set before the feet, nor as a thing to be reached, but as that which already is, and in its fullness abides. One does not arrive at it; one finds oneself already within its keeping.

The dangers do not depart, nor is the world made suddenly plain. No new dominion is seized, nor secret knowledge granted in the fashion of sudden light. Yet something has altered—not in the world, but in the bearing of the spirit within it. For we have ceased from our taking, and have instead been taken; we have set aside our reaching, and have been gathered into its quiet intention.

And though there may yet be labour in its seeking, and cost in the yielding thereto, peace does not stand at the end of such striving as a prize to be won. It is lived rather in the stillness that receives, in the quiet of the spirit that no longer contends, but rests—held, though it cannot say how, within that which was never absent.