If you’re anything like me, finding peace (as the Advent candle for last Sunday, and Pastor Randall, encourage us to do) feels impossible in these days. Gaza. Ukraine. At least 22 shot, 5 killed this past weekend in Chicago. The way I grew up, peace was understood as tranquility or serenity. Freedom from disturbance. Calm, untroubled, everything in order. But truthfully that’s been hard for me to find this Christmas season-- a fleeting, flickering candle that’s just a breath away from blowing out.
One of the challenges of working for a church is that Sunday is never more than a week away. There’s always more to do: details that need to be ironed out, materials to prepare, music to practice, volunteers to schedule, emails to answer, plans to make. And being the Enneagram 1 perfectionist, organizationally- and systems-minded person that I am, I struggle with the reality that things will never be fully in order. Nothing will ever be perfectly free from disturbance or trouble. And so I’m constantly on the run, from one plan to the next to-do list to the next meeting.
It’s hard to feel peaceful when I’m constantly aware that there are more deadlines coming up, always sensitive to the hopes and hurts and expectations of the community that I’m trying to serve. And that’s all before I wrestle with the feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, that comes up when I think about the violence and oppression inescapable in our city, and the larger world. How can I be at peace, be still and calm, when there’s so much disorder, disturbance, not to mention outright destruction in the world?
The answer, if I’m being honest is that I can’t.
Or at least—not in the way I grew up understanding peace. Because I’ve been finding peace in other ways. I’ve found it in the running lines of melody and harmony, the ebb and flow of music as I rehearse and perform with my band (and last Sunday’s guest artists) The Many. In the interplay of harmony and dissonance and resolution of chords. In the back-and-forth of ideas in rehearsal and, yes, the occasional disagreement about how the music should go. In knowing that even as we come together with differences of opinion, we still choose to be in community and collaboration with each other.
I find peace in realizing that music isn’t about avoiding the dissonance all the time – in fact, the beauty of harmony is that it runs in rhythms of tension and release. And this year especially, I’m finding it in another kind of music: feet drumming on the pavement around me, the sound of hard breathing and a chorus of voices encouraging and urging each other across the finish line.
Earlier this year I joined a running club where I live on the west side of Chicago – a running club called PeaceRunners. It’s a movement that launched with the goal of closing the greater than 15-year gap in life expectancy between residents of West Garfield Park (69 years) vs. the Near North side (85 years), where LaSalle is located. The PeaceRunners community gathers around physical well-being, mental health, and the reduction of violence by creating safe spaces and access to health resources. To me, it’s the music and rhythm of a community healing itself and refusing to accept the limits to its flourishing that have been imposed via long-term disinvestment and systemic inequity in education and healthcare access.
I’ve experienced the effects of that resilience firsthand. If you told me a year ago that I would be running upwards of 13 miles, or running outside in below-freezing weather, I’d have laughed out loud! Yet some of the places where I’ve felt the most at peace over the past year have been out on a run with friends around me, drawing on their strength when mine falters, offering my own encouragement when they get tired. It’s not always tranquil or painless. It’s often uncomfortable and disorganized. Some days the last thing I want to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. And yet I have no other word to describe it with than “peace”, because I know that one sore step, one aching mile at a time, we’re healing each other, our neighborhoods, and our little part of the world.
So maybe this Christmas season we can look for the flickering candle of that other kind of peace. The kind that doesn’t require stillness but is found in movement and community. The kind of peace that grounds itself in rhythms of belonging, making space for sometimes-dissonant voices and remembering it’s that diversity that creates the most beautiful music. Maybe, instead of seeking a community that’s free of disturbance or trouble, LaSalle could move in the kind of peace that puts one foot in front of the other, knowing it’s headed in the direction of flourishing for everyone and community where everyone belongs – even if that means sometimes sitting with some tension or discomfort.
Maybe together we can find peace on the run.
Credit: J. Oliver Photography