Two questions from opposite sides came almost at once.
“How do we keep this going when the newness wears off?” And, “How far can we branch out? The city? The state?”
He smiled. “Excellent questions, both of them! They have the same answer.”
Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he looked at them from a lower angle. “You need to branch out, broaden the range of activities. You gained more from this past week than the entire school together. Branching out requires a deeper understand of the philosophy behind making peace.”
As he straightened up, for once he almost wished there was a chalk board. “This is not about persuasion by logic and reason. We are aware of them and use them, but they are mere accessories. Recall I said at the beginning this is about awakening Peace in people who already have it. That we cannot really know whether that happens for anyone but ourselves is not the point. We don’t have to know they get it, only that we have been true to it ourselves. That is precisely the one thing which will work, if anything is going to work at all.”
He pointed to his head with the index fingers of both hands. “The head is not where all this happens. It’s somewhere else. Not emotions either, but something much higher and deeper at the same time. It’s somewhere beyond the five senses and our reasoning capacities. Your brain does all it can to hang on and organize the response; it cannot realistically evaluate the whys. If you get this, no one has to explain it, only help you do it.”
Dropping his hands, he rose to his feet. “But we have to meet the brain half way, or it won’t let us do much of anything that matters. Peace has a thousand identities, but it always calls to us just the same. It’s the ultimate truth, if you will. Making peace means coming to terms with reality, a reality too big for words and mere rational thought. Peace is the face and name we give to this core of being; it’s the excuse we have for a club which answers all the needs of humanity. What Peace cannot do cannot be done.”
As usual, he circled the group slowly. By now they had rearranged the junk desks to facilitate their usual meetings, so he didn’t have to dodge around anything. “When Peace owns you, it becomes your focus, not your self. Peace calls you out of your little world. People who are easily bored are boring themselves, because they are so empty. People who are full of only themselves have nothing when they are alone. People of Peace are never bored, because they don’t have much room for themselves inside, at least not in that sense. You don’t just live with Peace, in a sense you are Peace. When you pursue it full bore that way, you discover just about everything your little self actually needs is already met.”
The one quiet boy finally spoke. “It clarifies your priorities.”
He spun and pointed at the boy. “Absolutely! When you have something bigger than yourself, something worth living and dying for, all the silly and inconsequential things of this world fade to obscurity.” He held his palms together, and tipped his hands back to touch his lower lip. “No, you don’t get there today or tomorrow, or ever. I don’t claim to have arrived because it’s not a goal. It’s an ongoing mission.”
He held up one finger. “That’s our starting point. Peace is our ultimate truth, the name we give whatever it is on our plane of existence which matters most.” Holding up a second finger, “It leads us to a capacity to care. We know what it means and we do it reflexively. We want this same wonderful Peace for others, because a shared peace is a much bigger peace and more powerful peace.”
Then a third finger. “We can afford to lose. Indeed, we must lose all sorts of things. We start with losing ourselves, in a manner of speaking. We will fail a thousand times in a thousand ways, because we can never quite overcome our own limitations, but we don’t turn back. Start now building up permission for yourself to screw up; get it out of the way. Then you won’t be expecting much from anyone else. We give people room to do everything wrong, and we don’t get involved until they invite us, or Peace compels us to act. Most of our actions aren’t poking into the lives of others, but holding up Peace as a beacon in the dark. We don’t pretend to know who or how others are affected, or not affected. We do what we do because Peace demands it.”
The girl with the perfect hair was weeping, and had to blow her nose. When everyone looked at her, she managed to blubber out, “I’m sorry. I’ve never had anyone give me permission to mess up. I just realized I don’t know how to give myself permission to fail … at anything.” There was more snuffing and wiping of eyes.
He stood holding his hand under one elbow, the other cupped his chin between thumb and index finger. “We have all the time in the world for you to cry. Peace was here before us, and will be here when we are all gone. We need you, and we need you at peace, so don’t be embarrassed. What you express so obviously is what we all feel now and then, regardless how we show it.”
Some of the students gathered around her, patting and hugging, offering words of encouragement. After a few minutes, he offered, “This is how we make peace in the small. Take that out into the large. You can’t touch the whole world, but you can surely bring the new dawn of Peace to your own world.” He help up his enigmatic hand sign again. “Make Peace.”
