Sharing Peace

...within ourselves, each other, and the world

Dec 26, 2021

Hello again friends, and Happy Christmas!

I hope your Advent and Christmas have been full of grace and peace, especially if you have not had the season you anticipated. That has been true for me, and I'll share about that in this month's essay.

Thank you all for your comments, texts, and words of support about last month's newsletter. I enjoyed putting it together and thinking about how this space will take shape in the coming year. I wonder what you need it to be? As ever, my email and comments are open so if you think of something, I'd love to hear it. One thing I can say for sure is that I will continue the basic threefold format of an essay, resources, and a reflection/blessing on a topic relevant to the seasons, the church calendar, and/or my own ponderings as they relate to spiritual growth.

As for this month's newsletter, I've got an essay, a few resources ideas and recommendations, and a blessing for you. I've also written a year's worth of seasonal blessings and will share more about that toward the end.

Thank you for reading, engaging, and sharing here!

Share Viriditas

Last month I wrote about how I want to be like Jesus’s mother Mary, and follow her lead for how to bear Christ in my own body and life.

This month, I've been under quarantine for 25 days with my young children while my husband is abroad. After two back to back exposures, they did test positive for Covid two days before Christmas and so our isolation continues well until Jonathan gets back. I'm thankful they seem asymptomatic, however I can also admit that I am weary in body and soul.

That whole idea of bearing Christ in my body and living into my vocation as a mother? Well, it's certainly been tested and my kids can tell you that after 5pm I seem to bear the Hulk in my body instead of Christ. Each day I start over and over again. I’m trying to see each new day as a new opportunity to bear Christ, walk in love, and share peace in my home. And some days we cash in early, watch a double feature, and eat cold pizza for dinner.

In this experience I’ve been thinking about the historical and theological purpose of passing the peace in worship services. Perhaps you are familiar with this liturgy which, in most churches, takes place after the sermon and just before the altar is prepared for Communion. The congregation participates in the following exchange:

Leader: Peace be with you.

All: And also with you.

The congregation then moves about the sanctuary a bit to offer and receive peace with each other, repeating these same words. In many evangelical churches, this has evolved into a "greeting time," in which the people are invited by the pastor to greet one another in love.

This practice has Biblical precedence. It comes from the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus instructs us to reconcile with one another before we present our gifts at the altar (Matthew 5). And then Jesus models this when he says, "Peace I leave with you" in John 14 at the Last Supper. Passing the peace is something we do with each other because it's what Jesus did with us. When we say, "Peace be with you," we are saying, "I am sorry, and I forgive you." This prepares us body and soul to participate in and receive the body of Christ.

I remember a time at our first church in Cambridge where I was employed as the Children's Minister. I was in conflict with another member of the congregation, and on the day our argument escalated we ended up kneeling next to one another at the altar, hands held open, receiving the bread and wine side by side. Take and eat. This is the body of Christ, broken for you - to forgive and to preserve you blameless for all eternity. I had to wonder... Was I sorry? Was he? Did I forgive him? Had he forgiven me?

I was reminded of this anew a couple of weeks ago when attending church with my children. We had had our share of rough moments that week in which I was not at my best. I regretted my posture with them, and I felt weary knowing how many weeks were left until Jonathan came home and we had some reprieve from one another. And then in the service, my heart shifted as we passed the peace.

My kids know this part of the liturgy well. After the congregational passing of the peace, our family turns to one another to share. Jonathan and I lower our masks for a momentary “peace” and a kiss. We then bend down to share peace with each of the children and kiss them too. They then exchange their own kisses of peace. Julian even used to be in the habit of passing the peace to all the cars we walked past on our way home from church, too (albeit, without the kiss).

It is much easier to pursue and support peaceful measures in theology and policy than it is to be peaceful in our day to day lives. I'm a peacemaker in the public sphere. I don't support war or the death penalty or mass gun ownership. We don't tend to kill flies in our home. I pride myself on being an aspiring pacifist. But I fail massively at being a pacifist at home. I get angry quickly. I assign blame. I react. I pushed my own four year old when he yelled in my face. Honestly. What kind of pacifist does that?

When I bent down to pass the peace to my children that Sunday I felt a deep need for reconciliation and peace with them. I felt sorry, and I wanted not only to keep peace with them but to make peace in that moment and in the week to come. I put my forehead to my son's and said, Peace be with you. I'm sorry, and I forgive you." He said the same, and we exchanged a holy kiss. I became freshly aware that making peace isn't passive, quiet, and avoidant. It is active, requires admitting that I’m wrong and still learning, and often disrupts my own comfort for the sake of making it right with another. In this case, this was all true for my relationship with my own children in my own home.

Tish Harrison Warren writes about the daily practice of passing the peace in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary.

“The passing of the peace finds its way into our day mostly in small, unseen moments as we live together, seeking to love those people who are constants, the furniture in our lives – parents, spouses, kids, friends, enemies, the barista we chat with each week as we wait for coffee, the people in the pew behind us with the noisy toddler, the old man next door who doesn’t get out much… Ordinary love, anonymous and unnoticed as it is, is the substance of peace on earth, the currency of God’s grace in our daily life.”

Unfortunately for those of us who like to check completed things from our to-do lists, sharing peace is not a one-and-done thing, is it? The work of peacekeeping is ongoing. Predictably I needed to make peace with my children again the following week, but this time instead of waiting for Sunday to roll around so we could pass the peace in the formality of the liturgy, I knelt down to Julian in the moment of our dispute. I said, "I'm sorry, and I forgive you. Peace be with you." He said the same back to me, and initiated our kiss. Then my toddler insisted on her own participation. Kisses all around!

Singer songwriter Audrey Assad wrote and recorded a new version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic called "Your Peace Will Make Us One". She sings,

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
You are speaking truth to power, you are laying down our swords
Replanting every vineyard 'til a brand new wine is poured
Your peace will make us one
Glory, glory hallelujah...
Your peace will make us one
I've seen you in our home fires burning with a quiet light
You are mothering and feeding in the wee hours of the night
Your gentle love is patient, you will never fade or tire
Your peace will make us one
Glory, glory, Hallelujah...
Your peace will make us one
In the beauty of the lilies, you were born across the sea
With a glory in your bosom that is still transfiguring
Dismantling our empires 'til each one of us is free
Your peace will make us one

This is the sort of peace in my home I aspire to participate in and create. I want to have a gentle love, keeping things burning, and bringing my family together in peace and love. As a human mother I will indeed fade and tire, but I ask God to help me dismantle the empire of my own making so that we each experience the freedom and peace of Christ who is present in our bodies and in our hearts.

I don't always get it right, but I want to be in the habit of always trying to make it right. Peace won't be achieved anywhere by anyone if it doesn’t begin within. And peace passed between strangers, while important, is preceded by making peace within the specific relationships and spaces God has given us to steward.

We laugh when we remember Julian passing peace to all the cars as a wee two year old, but this is again an example of how children lead us. We practice the liturgy of the faith in worship so that we may live it more fully in our daily lives. Julian embraced this easily, and I'd like to do the same. So I keep practicing.

Ideas to help you practice peace

A lot of current, gentle parenting advice suggests not forcing children to apologize but instead inviting them to see the impact of their actions on others and consider ways they can make things right, whether with an apology or something else. I wonder if incorporating peacemaking & sharing into your home might be another way to pursue this together (children or adults). How would it feel to you to verbally, physically, or otherwise share peace in your home when reconciliation is needed? Maybe you say the liturgy as I wrote about here, or maybe you write a family prayer for peace, create a gratitude practice, or an act of service for each other that is simple but effective.

I can’t recommend Liturgy Of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren enough. She goes through the daily rhythms of her day like waking up, making the bed, preparing leftovers, checking email, etc. and shows how these are “sacred practices in everyday life.”

Another Tsh I admire is Tsh Oxenreider. Her podcast with Seth Haines, A Drink with a Friend, explores living sacramentally and recently explored topics like screen fasts, Autumn art, and Advent. It may be for you if you want to engage more with the idea of seeing God in all things.

Audrey Assad’s album Peace includes the song referenced above and beautiful covers of Mumford and Sons’ Sigh no More and a favorite Christmas hymn of mine, Midwinter. 100% recommend.

Reflection Questions:
- Where do you find it most difficult to practice peace?
- What relationships has God given you specifically, and what does peace between you look like, at your best?
- What is one simple practice or prayer you can adopt to help you seek peace in daily moments of tension?

You are invited to respond to these ideas in the comments or work through them on your own. I’d be very happy to talk together!

A Year of Blessings

For a homemade gift exchange I participated in this year, I wrote a year’s worth of blessings (undated) according to the seasons and put them on card with photos I’ve taken in the month for which they are written. I’ve been encouraged to make these available here (thank you for your support!), so if you would like to receive copies of these blessings, reply by email and I can make note of your order. I hope to have them in the post by mid-January once I’ve had more printed. Payment accepted through PayPal or Venmo. If there is sufficient interest in reprinting these I will also try to include some spiritual formation ideas/prayers on the backs of each card!

Printed 4x6 cards with miniature easel - $20 plus shipping
Printed 4x6 cards without easel - $18 plus shipping
Digital images only - $15