Words to Live Into

Have you been introduced to the life and work of Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine from Erie, PA? I can't adequately express how much I love her work. She has written, what, 40 or 50 books? What follows is an excerpt from her latest, Uncommon Gratitude. I had to share it, as it is lays out such an awesome destination for our pursuit. (I've had the opportunity to hear her speak twice; she is even more mighty in person than on the page!)

Peace Be With You
A commitment to peace, to being peaceful, to peacefulness draws from a very deep well. It is a source beyond the corruptions of either ambition or pride. It transcends addiction to either power or personality cults.

Once peace comes to a person, the need for power simply disappears and goes to dust inside ourselves. We are enough for us. There is no reason to suppress the other, no need to make sure that no head in the room is higher than our own.

All the need for wars, either public or personal, evaporates. There is nothing valuable enough to gain from them to risk either the loss of the peace or the death of the other.

So we say an alleluia for the coming of peace, for the death of ambition, for the passing of pride that enables us to be happy with who we are and what we have.

And how does peace come? Simple. By accepting who we are and what we have as enough for us. By recognizing and respecting who the other is and what they have as theirs. By finding within ourselves “the pearl of great price,” the richest thing there is in life, the sense of the presence of the God who loves and companions us through all the pressures of life. “In moderating, not in satisfying, desires,” Reginald Heber wrote, “lies peace.”

Then we find that we have changed. We have become peaceful. We have come to realize now that we have all we need. We begin to see that our own role in life is only to spread the peace we have.

Then we begin to dedicate ourselves to that highest possible level of humanity that not only does good but, most of all, does no harm. We come to understand that simply doing good can be such a political ploy. Election periods abound in promises to do good that are no more than some kind of social bribe. To do no harm, on the other hand, requires real care, genuine compassion, true realization that the glow of the other diminishes no glow of my own. Then my own life begins to shine even more.

–from Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia for All That Is by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams (Liturgical Press)