On Finding Peace

I’ve tried to rationalize lots of things in my life; not studying enough in college, not moving to London in 2007, taking a job I didn’t really like. But as I switched over to CNN on Sunday, I was met with a whole different category.

Violence.

My fathers generation remembers where they were when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. I remember sitting in my living room alone as the second plane struck the Twin Towers. Zach, Sarah and I were driving back from The Cheesecake Factory as a stunned reporter kept fumbling to tell everyone that Osama bin Laden had been killed. I sat in my little yellow truck outside a pool supply store as they announced the first bombs were being dropped on Iraq. I was in a theater in Houston when 12 people were killed in Aurora, CO.

There’s something about violence that stays with us, quickens us to the core and makes us take note of life. So as I heard the news of the people that died while worshipping in a Sikh temple, my heart broke. Just about every Sunday I show up to a house of worship in a similar fashion and to think that someone would bring violence into such a place of peace is beyond rationalization.

While I was in London I had the chance to visit the Gurdwara Sri Guri Sing Sahba, Southall, the leading Sikh Gurdwara outside of India. A truly magnificent building with a massive, open hall for worship throughout the day, I found great peace sitting and listening to a language that I had no hope of understanding. Even though Sikhism is vastly different than my own Christian religion, I found something compelling about the ethics and motivations behind it. The people were all welcoming of the curious Westerners that observed there worship service. I sat on a padded floor with a crude bandana wrapped acting as a turban as I tried to grasp at what I was witnessing.

The thing that impressed me the most on my visit was the Langar, a community kitchen that serves vegetarian meals to anyone who comes. It was in the Langar that my religious education was turned upside down. Just like in Christianity, the Sikh worshipers understood the importance of meeting peoples needs, physical and spiritual. Compassion and love aren’t virtues that live in isolation inside a religious institution, but in people.

I felt peace in that Gurdwara, just like I’ve felt in various churches in the Midwest, a Bob Dylan concert, a home for the elderly and sitting along the Thames.

I think this is why violence leaves such a mark on us. We are people built for peace but bent on corruption. Different religions explain it many ways, but I recognize it through a Christian lens as the fall and depravity of man.

After the tragic spike in shootings that have plagued our country, and our world, its inevitable that people will blame guns, mental illness and political systems. In some ways they may even be right. I think the problem is more personal. For starters, I’m the problem. I believe in peace, non-violence, harmony and finding a better way. Yet so many times I find myself just going along with the current climate and rationalizing violence like it was my choice to not move overseas. It was Thomas Merton that said “If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.”

I need to learn to be at peace with myself before I can truly understand what peace in the world can look like.