Dona Nobis Pacem

I prefer amateur renderings of this song.

The title is a traditional Latin prayer: Grant us peace. It’s supposed to connect to the Old Testament shalom but few Westerners are aware of the connotations of the Hebrew word. While I often use the term “social stability,” that is a contextual image. The word shalom points to peace with God on His terms. So the Latin prayer is actually more like suing for terms of peace and surrender; that’s precisely the point.

We are convinced that our God made all things, and we call Him Creator to emphasize a different turn of mind than is common among Westerners. It’s not enough to acknowledge Him as the Maker of all things, but as the only one who knows what is going on. Our experience is that He generously offered as much revelation as we could possibly handle as humanity, and the rest is up to the individual to seize upon it.

I claim to have found this peace. Some of you share in that claim. It has become a driving force in all our blather about heart-led living, because that’s where the peace is found. It could not possibly be something static. The terms of surrender escalate as we grow to a greater understanding. In many ways, that sums up the whole of our religion. Paul wrote that he did not consider himself as having arrived, but that he is on the right path and climbing to the heights:

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 NKJV)

The climb is the prize. Peace is in the process; the thing itself is alive because it’s just a facet of your own individual communion with God. You can’t package that and sell it. You can’t teach it in finite descriptive language. It’s not a proposition; it’s Life.

I prefer that amateur rendering of the song because there is no professional worship outside the act of leading others to the same thing. When I served as Church Music Director, I avoided performing solos. My whole calling was to draw others into the experience, not to show off my vocal talent. At first that was mere instinct, but now I’m fully conscious of what drove me through all those years when I worked, often as a mere volunteer. It’s one of the few things about my passage through mainstream Christian religion that I really miss. I could ditch all of my recorded worship music if there was a way to gather with some of you and share in the communion of worship. I don’t care if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket; I want to commune with people who grasp the nature of my faith as a reflection of their own.

Somewhere out there in the future possibilities and probabilities, I sense that the day will come when I’ll find myself among fellow believers without all the trappings of what now passes for organized religion. Until then, you are my shalom family. I suspect you will still be that along with some as yet unseen physical congregation, that we’ll all be one big happy family. And I pray you’ll find yourself in similar meat-space communion. This dream isn’t dead; it keeps growing and morphing in ways I could never predict. But its life does not depend on me. I’m just a participant, a branch grafted onto the vine.

Creator, show us how to live in peace with You.