He stood, leaning on a shovel, taking a break from digging out tree roots in my neighbor’s yard. He was on one side of the split-rail fence. I was on the other. He looked past my shoulder, watching the chickens scratch and peck.

He said, “I like your chickens. Your home. It is like my country. It is like my home in Mexico.”

*

He’d been in our home for days. He and his team. Drilling holes. Snaking pipes behind plaster walls. Jonathan told me later what he said as they stood, talking, out in the yard.

He said, “Your home is so peaceful. It reminds me of my country. It reminds me of Vietnam.”

*

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I doubt that a red-brick farmhouse in Pennsylvania looks like Mexico. It seems unlikely to me that it looks anything like Vietnam. But there is something about this house on a hilltop. This old house with its gardens and chickens and songbirds. Something about it whispers Peace. Something about it sings Home.

Most miraculous of all, to me at least, is that the whispers are louder than the noise of my four children (or my own responses to those children). Louder than brothers fighting or toddlers tantrum-ing.

Whispers so loud, so insistent, they make grown men pause. And remember.

And dream of home.

*

As long as Jonathan and I have been making homes together (whether a tiny apartment, a city high rise, a suburban split-level, or a century-old farmhouse) visitors have said the same thing:

Your home is so peaceful.

I have heard those words with gratitude but also with detachment. Because surely that peace had nothing to do with me?  It wasn’t something I created or controlled.

It was a gift. Always and only a gift.

*

Thad

*

Peace is not merely the absence of conflict or violence. It is a presence. It is a place.

It has a prince.

It is a gift. But like so many good gifts, it can also be cultivated. Like soil.

We can slap down some concrete and rid ourselves of all that bothersome dust. Or we can grow tomatoes. Or flowers. We can sow peace. We can water it. We can watch it flourish.

Like gardening, it is hard work. It is a daily discipline.

*

How do we cultivate peace? In our hearts, our homes, our communities?

I think we begin by making room for it.

So many of us, myself included, live with too much. Too much in our closets and too much in our day planners. We see an empty shelf, and we fill it. We stumble on an empty moment, and we pounce on our to-do list. We feel some hunger and we rush … to the pantry, to the television, to the computer.

And then we wonder why our lives, why our world, is saturated with conflict and worry. Loneliness and hurry.

*

Peace begins with simplicity. Is simplicity the soil, the water, the sun? I don’t know. My understanding is limited, my metaphor possibly faulty. I don’t yet fully grasp the relationship between the two, but they are related.

I think they may be more deeply related than I have ever known.

I used to think that simplicity was a lifestyle choice. I am beginning to think it is the only way to follow Jesus.

Simplicity is the way of the child. The way of a rich young ruler who says yes and gives everything away. Simplicity just may be the door to the kingdom of God.

*

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I have in mind a series of posts. Not because I have learned “Ten Lessons” or “Five Secrets.” It is only that I am noticing patterns in my past.  Patterns that suggest it is possible to practice simplicity and cultivate peace with more deliberateness and passion.

And I want to talk about that here. With you.

I am more than a little bit afraid. Afraid of the price I must pay to walk this way. Afraid of sounding preachy if I talk about it.

But I am also hopeful. Excited, even. Simplicity is as heavy as a cross on my shoulder. But the kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of the prince of peace, is an upside-down kingdom. And that heavy burden?

It is the light yoke, the easy burden of freedom.

*

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