A Post Election Devotion
“I SEEK the enlargement of my heart that there may be room for Peace. Already there is room enough for chaos. There is in every day’s experience much that makes for confusion and bewilderment….But the need of my heart is for room for Peace: Peace of mind that inspires singleness of purpose; Peace of heart that quiets all fears and uproots all panic; Peace of spirit that filters through all confusions and robs them of their power. These I see NOW. I know that here in this quietness my life can be infused with Peace. Therefore, before God, I seek the enlargement of my heart at this moment, that there may be room enough for Peace.”
Howard Thurman published this particular meditation in 1953, just before the watershed moment of Brown v. Board of Education while he was serving as Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Although we sometimes feel as if the chaos we experience is unknown to those who have gone before us, it is usually not.
It is said that peace is not the absence of conflict or strife, but the ability to cultivate calm in the midst of chaos. As a leader in the American civil rights movement, Thurman surely felt the chaos of his time, as we so acutely feel ours now. From that discomfort and distress of his day arose this plea for peace. Not a peace that pacifies cries for justice, nor leads to complacency or resignation, but a peace that quiets the fear and panic that hold us back. It is an inner peace that stills our doubts and hesitations and steels our souls for the difficult days ahead. Just a few years later, Thurman’s student at Boston University would go on to preach about this peace as he led the Montgomery bus boycott.
I find this meditation helpful in these days when the tightness in my chest squeezes out any chance peace might have to take root. I read it. I breathe. Big belly breaths that force my diaphragm open and my chest to loosen, if only a tiny measure. And, I focus on this enlarging of heart, muscle by muscle, breath by breath.
In the days to come, may you make space in your own hearts for peace…
“Peace of mind that inspires singleness of purpose;
Peace of heart that quiets all fears and uproots all panic;
Peace of spirit that filters through all confusions and robs them of their power.”
Peace that carries you through the chaos to a future with hope.
By The Rev. Dr. Tiffany Steinwert,
Stanford University, Dean for Religious & Spiritual Life