Verbs

Verbs

I really got away with something over the Christmas holidays.  At some point, I decided to share this pithy remark on social media: “Remember, peace and love are verbs, too.”  This post got a remarkable number of likes, and did not draw the ire of any of the myriad grammarphiles kind enough to share their networks with me. Talk about a Christmas gift.

Most people are familiar with the argument that love is a verb.  It’s usually thrust upon young couples as part of any required counseling they have to go through before getting married, a pastor’s earnest hope that the young, energetic twosome in front of them will get to the altar with at least some recognition there’s more to marriage than the delight in knowing someone says they’ll care about you forever and the, um, fire that comes with that feeling. 

Peace being a noun is an altogether different story, and it’s really the one I thought the English majors would jump on—or is that, upon which they’d jump?  You can conjugate love as a verb, but peace? If you can’t run it solo through the I-you-he-she-it-we-they-plural-you tunnel, you don’t really have a verb, right?

And yet, in our heart of hearts, we know better.  Two children feuding over the same toy find common ground, and fling their arms around each other.  Two politicians on opposite sides of an issue shake hands at the end of the debate and ask about each other’s kids.  A pedestrian who is inches from a car’s hood puts up one hand and nods in gratitude to its almost imperceptible driver.  Ask anyone what’s going on here, and they will say that’s peace in action, the doing of peace—peace as a verb.

The world needs us to peace, and not just for ourselves.  There is wisdom in the sayings that go something like “Anger is a punishment we give ourselves for someone else’s mistake” .  They are an important first step for building our own sense of peace, and it can be argued that at least some sense of inner peace is needed before going out there and fixing the world.  But there’s a point where too much emphasis on inner tranquility makes the good the world needs the victim of the perfect we’d all like within.  It isn’t a question of one or the other.  Like the urban farmer who plants tomatoes and marigolds, it’s possible to tend to both at once, and even more possible that one supports the growth of the other.

I realized this in a small way this year.  The days after Christmas have always been a blur, a time when the sun rises and sets several times, but I have no clue what day it is, or what I did.  This year, each day had focus and value, as I started each one looking for peace, both within and without.  Challenges arose, and they weren’t always handled with tranquility.  But I knew where I was, what I was doing, and what I was after—not bad for a guy who used to think December 28^th was just an abstract concept.

The holidays and the New Year often bring hope, commitment, and resolution that our return to the routine will be anything but a return—that it will be better, different, and new.  Those hopes are often attached to goals about weight, work, or thoughts—all nouns.  Perhaps this year is the year to focus on a verb instead.  Perhaps it’s time for us to peace.

Restless Storms

For we’ve been given each good thing
The children and the church bells sing
We find much stronger reasons to believe
In peace on earth and dusks with hues
In quiet times to search for truth
And most of all in that which we’ve received
From time
And thought
And in having learned and taught
A long life full of friends who’ve kept us warm
And comforted our hearts in restless storms.

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