Minilogue - February 2006

Peace is a Paradox

By the Rev. Bruce Johnson

Peace is a paradox: on the one hand, it must be actively created; on the other hand, it can only be received. Our activist heritage tells us that peace must be intentionally and energetically constructed. We cannot simply wait for peace to happen, but must go out and accomplish it. In this sense, peace is something we must make and do and preserve. We are to “seek peace and pursue it,” according to the ancient psalmist.

At the same time, religious traditions as well as our own deepest intuition tell us that peace comes about only as the result of some kind of surrender. Now, the notion of “surrender” goes against the grain of something very deep and resistant within us. Anything but that! What is surrender, in this religious sense? The great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, called it, “consent to being.” Surrender is the deeply felt recognition of our absolute dependence on sources and forces far beyond our control for our very existence. Surrender as consent to being simply means facing reality - it is the most realistic stance we can possibly adopt. In the language of our UU Principles, it is a radical “openness to the forces that uphold and sustain life”. Only by a kind of profound self-acceptance can this peace be realized. Surrender, then, is not simply resignation, capitulation, a kind of “oh, well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude. Instead, it is a joyous affirmation. It is the spirit that led Margaret Fuller to exclaim “I accept the universe!” (to which Thomas Carlyle reportedly replied with sharp and practiced cynicism, “Gad, she’d better!”).

So there are two sides to the story of peace. Surrender without effort results in what the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace.” Cheap grace is a merely passive acceptance of the gift of life, with neither responsiveness nor responsibility. To the extent that we accept cheap grace, we are buying a false peace. Peace is more than being nice to one another. Peace is more than an individual person’s serenity, accomplished through careful self-management. Peace is not withdrawal from the messy realities of life, a purely “spiritual” retreat that does not engage the world. Certainly Margaret Fuller’s ecstatic surrender to the Universe did not prevent her from being a social activist!

Peace is more than the absence of conflict, more than a stalemate or a series of cease-fires. Peace is not the exhausted collapse at the end of a day (or a lifetime) of frantic activity. Peace is a deep current of joyful identification with the vital energies of life, both a goal and a gift, a destination and a path.