I always thought of peace in the still, the calm of the water as it sits like glass; so pure you feel like it could hold you. Maybe there’s peace there. But as I sit here listening to the babbling of the brook, the trickling as the water flows gently over rock, white tops bouncing playfully as creek meets stream, I see a peace I’ve never known.

Maybe that’s just another way your peace passes our understanding. We expect peace in the still when noise is dimmed to silence, when movement fades to freeze. Yet greater peace is found in the chaos. It’s in the way the water goes whichever way you send it, the way the speed increases as the path narrows. Yet the whole time it’s guided by the boundaries you’ve set in place. The banks were built to hold it, the boulder sent to divert it, the tree limb sprouting aimlessly out of rock like a mystic, misplaced giant. 

There’s a comfort there in the noise, the splash, the motion. There’s an alcove ahead where the water rests, if only for a minute. It pools with the other drops around it lazily descending toward the next narrow place where it will flow further down the mountain. There’s a safety in knowing that you guide the mountain. You hold the stream. You bring the melody I sing to the sway of the trees you created. You’ve given us this moment. You’re romancing me.

As I leave this place and find myself back in the clamor and commotion of life, let this moment sustain me. Let me remember that you are holding me.

Without the noise, there’d be no music. Without the movement, we’d be stagnant. Without the narrow, we’d never be sharpened and grow.

You are my peace.

Jaimie Dandridge