Haven’t you had times when it seems that nothing could bother you, nothing could possibly erode a deep feeling of well being? Quietly, joy seemed to overtake all the acts of your day so that even the least important had a value all its own. I like to call this soul peace, almost an attitude that is dependent on no one and nothing to appear.
The greatest of our connections...
I think that soul peace is one of the greatest of all our connections. I have said many times that I am a believer, and I think those among us seem to know that the Infinite in us is always lurking around the corners of our lives, just waiting for the chance to spill over into our urbaneness. There is no rhyme or reason to soul peace, nothing we can do to hasten it along or inhibit its appearance. It is the holy part of us that supports us every chance it gets.
The connections that lay in readiness...
Viktor Frankl, 20th Century Viennese existential psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, wrote of some of the people he knew in the concentration camps. There were those, he wrote, who endured great physical suffering and yet somehow rested on an inner calm…belief, perhaps… that gave meaning to their lives, even the anguish. It surfaced in them when others did not manifest it, although I do not believe it is a question that some possessed this inner place and some did not. I would call this soul peace, the connections to the larger part of themselves that lay in readiness for them.
We can make the invitation...
Although we can’t legislate its appearance, I think we can make the invitation for our peace to appear by risking an openness to good, no matter what is before us…and it comes, it comes…sometimes for a moment or two, sometimes longer…until the call of our mundane lives overtakes us.
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