Seeking Peace - Notes and Conversations along the Way - Plough

SimplicityThe object of life is not to be on the side ofthe majority, but to escape finding oneself inthe ranks of the insane…Remember that thereis a god who desires neither praise nor gloryfrom men created in his image, but rather thatthey, guided by the understanding given them,should in their actions become like unto him.The fig tree is true to its purposes, so is the dog,so also are bees. Is it possible, then, that manshall not fulfill his vocation? But alas, thesegreat and sacred truths vanish from memory.The bustle of daily life, war, unthinking fear,spiritual lameness, and habitual servitude stiflethem.Marcus AureliusFor most of us the desire for peace does not come from somenoble search to be one with God, though this yearning maygrow along the way. Usually it is set into motion by somethingmuch simpler: dissatisfaction with the daily stressand strain in our lives, and the fear that – as Aurelius putsit – we are going insane.Our culture is not only marked by frenzy, but driven byit. We are obsessed (to quote Thomas Merton) with ourlack of time and space, with saving time, with conqueringspace, with making conjectures about the future, and “worryingabout size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price,power, and acceleration.” We live, he continues, in “thetime of no room, which is the time of the end.”66