Loved

“Peace without love is a steady calm.”

G. K. Chesterton’s description of peace took me a while to understand. I’m embarrassed to admit he stretched my definition of both.

A sailboat crew dreads a steady calm. There is no wind. Nothing is happening. The journey has not ended. No one is closer to home. It is a time of waiting with no certainty when wind will fill the sails.

The pithy statements of Chesterton give me pause. There is good reason he is called the Apostle of Common Sense.

Love is the bedrock of peace. One cannot exist without the other. I mention this because I am at a point in my manuscript where the central character seeks peace but cannot find it because she doesn’t understand the relationship between peace and love. How can one love an antagonist, especially one who seeks your good will through best intentions while keeping you dependent?

I often considered peace the goal; the end of an ordeal. I learned a little of the virtue we know as love. The Latin word caritas embodies the virtue we call peace that originates in the heart not in the mind.

Are you searching for peace? It doesn’t begin with justice. It begins in the heart when we love the antagonist of our story.

And I thought I knew what peace and love meant. I’m only learning the truth now.