PEACE be with YOU

”PEACE be with you!” boomed our visiting priest from Africa, deviating from his softer tones.

It was a jolting, rallying cry, waking people up and putting smiles on faces. For the non-Catholics out there, the Sign of Peace is a staple of our mass, a point where we turn and shake hands with friends, family, and those around us. I’ve had times where I was bickering with my parents before a mass, and by the time we were shaking hands and offering “peace” those petty disagreements were dissolving.

I had a book of cartoons when I was a child, one of which depicted a couple getting married. “Just think,” whispered one of the people in the congregation to the man next to her, “It all started with a handshake.” I think I was about 7 or 8 when I read that, and for a while I was afraid to shake hands with girls for fear of making a commitment I was way too young to make. Now I wish there WERE some single girls my age in church.

”PEACE be with you!” It’s a simple phrase, one that can have as much or as little meaning as you put behind it. Shaking hands with someone then nearly running them down with your car racing to get home fifteen minutes later probably means you missed the point. Peace needs to be more than an empty gesture, and extend beyond three minutes or so in church each week.

There are many ways to attain peace. Ironically, sometimes you have to fight for it. Other times, all it takes is for one party to concede. It’d be great if more problems could be solved with handshake. Peace is more than our relationship with those around us though. Many of us seem peaceful but struggle with anxiety and inner turmoil. We worry about problems that are real and others made worse by our excessive concern. In these instances, we need to fight or concede to ourselves.

Even before a booming voice shouted ”PEACE” to me at mass on Saturday afternoon, I was experiencing a peaceful day. For the first time in weeks, I had nothing urgent to do. There were no presents to wrap and no relatives to visit. It’s the time of year when there are no band obligations and weekends are free. And even though Friday ended up being a very stressful day at work do to correcting a file I’d set up the wrong way because of a process that was new to me, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was looking at pictures.

It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t carry a digital camera with me, but three or four years ago and beyond, I was still using film. I’d mail in rolls and get prints, and I’d put those in albums. Saturday I dusted some off, and scanned some in to my computer for posterity. My mom had been urging me for probably a year to scan some old photos and e-mail them to one of her cousins. I finally acquiesced since I was going through my own pictures anyway, and saw great old images of my mom and uncle as children in Brooklyn, as well as grandparents and great uncles I either knew briefly or not at all.

Looking through the shots at my own life, I didn’t see the anxiety. I didn’t see the fear of passing classes or finding a job. I didn’t see the heartbreak of my final conversation with my girlfriend. I didn’t see the late nights at the office, and I didn’t see death and divorce. I thought about some of these things, realizing with one batch of wedding photos that the groom fell along with a pair of towers in Manhattan a few years ago. I even came across a shot of a college classmate who’s no longer with us. But I didn’t see any of the bad things in the actual pictures. I saw happy times. I saw friends and family smiling and laughing. Even my candid shots had people joyously and completely living.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in this little room, that I’ve always been in this little room and I always will be. I found peace in looking at all the things I’ve done outside this room, and all the people that I’ve been blessed to know. Whatever I was worrying about at any given point in my life didn’t matter, because I didn’t take a picture of the problems, and the problems are behind me. Only good stuff remains, only peace.

”Peace be with YOU.”