Monday Manna
The cushion of the sea...
Good morning, friends, and deep peace to you this week…
We are in a time when the storms around us are absolutely raging. There is a lot of talk right now about a longing for “peace,” but what kind of “peace” do we mean?
We may think of peace as an absence of violence, praying for peace in Gaza or Venezuela or Ukraine or the streets of Minnesota.
We can talk about peace in our relational contexts—good and harmonious relationships with our families, neighbors, and community.
We talk of peace in our organizations. I’m guessing many of you serve on boards or work with agencies where you are facilitating agreements, or you work in HR, in a law firm, or as a school counselor where you search for a peaceable, fair outcome.
Peace is something for which we hope in making decisions. “I feel a peace about it,” we might say when we are assured of our direction.
We speak peace as a blessing. “Rest in peace,” one says when a loved one dies.
Or I think of every Sunday morning at church when we wish one another the “peace of Christ.”
Peace can also be a kind of disposition. We all know people who have this calm, resolute steadiness about them, who never seem to get cranked about much of anything.
But then, there is the peace that I’ve been searching for right now, and maybe you are too. The peace that is a state of soul.
I know I’m not the only one who’s been wracked by grief and loss, worry and anger, who’s wondered if there is peace for my heart. It’s been months of terrible violence in our world, and yet it’s also been a stretch of time when many I personally know and love have experienced the floor completely dropping out from beneath them.
There was a friend’s brother who completed suicide. A loved one in prison. Countless friends who have had a family member diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Families newly cracked by divorce or the agreement finalized. I had multiple friends who had a parent die this year, and others who passed that pivotal one-year-anniversary. I’ve known people who had to leave the house they loved because their job relocated or the money wasn’t there anymore. There was the uncovering of shocking revelations with many wondering what to do or who to trust. And just in this last week, a dear friend whose mom was in a horrific car accident and another friend whose brother-in-law unexpectedly died.
It’s been a time where our greatest fears have actualized before our very eyes. Groans and tears have become a new language. And the landscape of life is forever changed. When a tidal wave of loss comes, we’re never ready. I think of when my dad was sick years ago, and though he moved between relapse and remission with his cancer for eleven years, the reality of death before us that whole time, we were left gasping by how quickly it came when it actually did.
And so the peace for which I long, and maybe you do too, is the peace the holds us in wholeness when we’re in grief, or heartache, or chaos. When what’s most precious to us was swept away in one, swift wave, or the world’s teeming with so much noise and busy-ness we can’t hear ourselves think. We are longing for the peace that passes understanding—that stands defiantly stronger than the pain or confusion.
A magnet I love describes this peace…Peace does not mean, it says, to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. This is how I understand the peace of God. It is a peace that settles into your bones, into the bedrock of your soul.
Many years ago, during a time of much upheaval and pain in my own life, I first read Arthur Tappan Pierson’s description of a remarkable scientific reality. There is within the ocean a layer known as the “cushion of the sea.”
This layer lies so far beneath the ocean’s surface that, no matter how agitated or churned the surface is by storms and wind, the “cushion” is never stirred. In fact, Pierson writes, “when parts of these deep places from the ocean floor are dredged of remaining plant or animal life, that layer reveals evidence of having remained completely undisturbed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”
He goes on, “the peace of God is an eternal calm like the cushion of the sea. It lies so deeply within the human heart that no external difficulty or disturbance can reach it.”*
I’ve returned to this image time and time again throughout the years, but I will say, it feels like there could be no time it’s felt more crucial than right now. Now is the time we must sink down…not as an act of escape, but as one of deepest grounding. There is a place of deep, undisturbed stillness within you — the shalom and wholeness of God, whose Spirit makes a home in your heart.
And that cushion is always within you. We need to pause (frequently!) to remember it is. But it is there to sustain you, and nothing, nothing, nothing will be able to separate you from that bedrock of love.
*Arthur Tappan Pierson as quoted in Streams in the Desert, p. 395-396.
A Prayer
We just began the journey toward spring last week in passing Feb. 2…spring is coming and is happening, even as all around us still looks like winter….even when it feels like our lives themselves are very much in winter. Here is a prayer for the winters of our lives, and finding God’s solace within them. From my book, Ash and Starlight: Prayers for the Chaos and Grace of Daily Life, Second Edition.
When I’m in life’s winter
Enveloping God,
You gather me in when
the wind of anxiety and fear whips,
when I feel my face, my heart,
tighten against the cold’s force.
With wide, warm arms,
you bring me into your heart
where my angst melts by
the fire of your love.
And, it is there, as I rest and thaw,
that you remind me…
Remind me of the
unbelievable power in perseverance,
the choice to open my eyes
each morning and say,
Yes, I will keep going.
I will find grace here.
I will live from courage
instead of fear.
I will dwell in the One
Who dwells in me.
As my fears melt, dripping to my feet,
you let my real self come through…
A self you love so much…
My path toward reclamation
comes through acceptance,
through affirming I will be
gentle and forgiving toward myself
because that’s how you are with me.
I will lean with all my weight
into your warmth…
My solace and strength
in life’s winter.
Amen.
Psalm 91:1–2 * Isaiah 25:4 * 1 Peter 5:7
“For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from
the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm…”
—Isaiah 25:4
Something that nourished me recently…
*Continuing with this theme of water, here is a glimpse of the magical Lake Michigan, shouldered by enormous ice mounds and churning with water beneath the heaviness of snow blocks. Watching the water soothed my soul this week, as did seeing my middle guy climb the mounds like an explorer. Winter is beautiful.
*When my five-year-old sees a prohibition sign out in public, he calls them a “no thank-you.” I don’t know where or how he learned that title for them, but the gentleness of it (coming from a boy who isn’t always very gentle!) always makes me smile. When his sibling kicked him the other day, Noah went to draw a “no thank you” sign for kicking in our house (this, mind you, wasn’t the first response after the kicking happened). But it was a tender thing for my heart to see. Maybe we can all make some no-thank-you-signs in creating the kind of way we will treat each other.
Ash and Starlight, plus other good things…
* MY ETSY SHOP ~ Clothes, prints, cards, pillows, blankets, all in here…I send a portion of each sale to World Central Kitchen which provides hunger relief. You can view the shop here.
*A REMINDER — Two beautiful children’s books by two women I love come out tomorrow! Jennifer Grant’s Consider the Lilies and Kathleen Bostrom’s “See What God Made!” Find them here and here.
*SECOND EDITION OF ASH AND STARLIGHT ~ Find the updated edition of my book here at Chalice or at the Bookshop link.
*MONDAY MANNA ARCHIVES ~ Monday Manna each week is free! Paid supporters of Monday Manna can view previous Monday Manna reflections here, or for the really old stuff, go to my website.
*WHAT DOES MANNA MEAN? ~ Check out an earlier post to learn how this little bit of “daily bread” got its name…
Praying for the “peace that passes understanding” for you, friends, in these coming days, and that when the storms rage, you sink down…find that cushion.
Love and Light,
Arianne
I love hearing from you! You are manna. Reply to this note to send a message directly to my inbox.