Hey Peace

Advent Letters to Light (the hardest one to write)

Hey Peace,

I’m not sure where to send this letter. Where are you? Where do you go when the world is ablaze with violence?

Remember that summer I tried so hard to find you at church camp? How I sent letters from camp that I wrote before I got there? Telling everyone how much fun I was having, friends I was making, weird food I was eating, and all that I was learning about God?

Writing the letters ahead of time, there was a lot that was never told. Maybe that’s why I did it? Because I didn’t think I could share the whole story. Early in life, I learned to censor myself, to edit the parts of me and my experiences I’d internalized as bad or sinful.

The first time I remember being terrified by you was around the bonfire. The ever growing and intensifying flames magnifying the wooden cross behind the fire pit. I was just a kid, who never had a chance to just be a kid. I wasn’t sure I was queer, but knew I was different.

Around the fire, after soft music to loosen our heart strings, a camper testified that her father came out as gay. There were audible gasps, giggles, and visible shifts in body posture. The camper was in tears and wearing a shirt that said No Jesus, No Peace. Know Jesus, Know Peace.  A counselor used her testimony to warn about the dangers of hell. An eternal blazing lake of fire, where you burn forever, but never combust. That without Jesus there is no peace. That being gay means not being with Jesus.

I didn’t sleep that night. Seeds of doubt were blooming into total panic. What if the chaos and dysfunction in my life are because I’m different? Because I want to wear basketball shorts and high-tops not dresses and tights? Because I care more about basketball than Barbie? What if it’s all my own fault? What if I never know peace or Jesus? What if I’m going to hell?

The next day peace was the theme of craft time. We were making peace necklaces from those plastic beads you arrange in a pattern and then iron together. I was excited to make you and put you on. I wanted so bad to feel you in a tangible way. I couldn’t wait to put you around my neck. Imagining you calming the raging fires and fears within.

Struggling to get my beads lined up just right, I leaned over to examine the seemingly perfect peace symbol next to me. It’s a blur, but in the process of figuring out how they did it, I broke someone else’s peace. I felt horrible. Crushed. Ashamed. Even worse when I realized the peace belonged to the wife of one of the head counselors. When she realized what I had done, she yelled at me. And now all the peace was broken. I tearfully apologized. She wasn’t ready to receive it.

It’s Advent. Peace, it’s your Sunday to shine. Are we ready to receive you? I’m not sure we even understand who you are. You are more than a plastic charm on a chain, or a cheesy phrase on a shirt, or the tattoo on my forearm. Yes, that small red and black symbol is you. When I was young I started harming myself on the outside to dull the pain on the inside. In my 20s I wanted to stop. It was a constant fight. I thought getting a tattoo would deter me from making any new wounds. It didn’t work quite like I imagined. It was a superficial fix. Without addressing the underlying emotions that fueled my depression and self-harming behaviors, a pretty little tattoo had little impact.  

I learned a lot of scripture at camp, like these words from Jeremiah,

they have treated my people’s brokenness superficially, saying ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace.

The fact that I think you disappear in times of war shows just how superficial my thinking and my living has been.

Peace, I apologize for limiting you; for understanding you as simply the absence of war; for passing you down the pew on Sunday and walking away from you the rest of the week; for believing you exist in the middle, in seeing both sides, in maintaining respectable politics.

Peace, I lament focusing so intently on our personal relationship that I missed your communal spirit. You are not only mine or theirs. You are ours. And we fail to live as though we are yours.

Peace, I’m still making sense of your connection to Jesus, especially in this season of preparing for his birth. Wondering how a baby born in heavenly peace is used to justify such earthly violence and promote eternal torment.

Peace, I want to be (and I admit I’m not exactly sure how to be) for today’s children what I was seeking as a child. I latched on to the pursuit of you. For me peace was safety, calm, comfort, nurture, nourishment, a hot meal, an ice cream cone, joy, love, and space to play on a clean playground, learn, and just be.

Peace, I pray for the children of the world, especially for the children of Gaza, held hostage by the bombings, the rubble and ruin around them, grieving the killing of their families, and destruction of their homes. Traumatized. On the move from danger without needed food or water.

I pray for LGBTQIA+ children, especially trans children, whose lives are used as fuel for church fires; who are sent to camps and classes where they are taught to hate themselves and to believe in a God who rejects and condemns them; who learn to write letters in advance hoping to hide the truth of their experiences.

Peace, I look down at my left forearm, that superficial symbol fading much like the old scars it was meant to cover and the old behaviors it was intended to stop. It’s been a long time since I hurt myself in that way. And a much shorter time that I have been able to live out and proud as my full queer self. Not in the way I imagined, but you have guided me this far, and guide me now as I share my stories to encourage others.

Peace, I light a candle for you. For a creation to know you at the most intimate level. For a people to grow tired of the superficial symbols and songs of peace and begin to live into the hard work of peace making. For a world where children living in hellish conditions are no longer pacified by craft time and broken more deeply when adults fail to get it right. For a church to prepare for the birth of peace, resisting the urge to name and baptize this baby exclusively Christian.

I know where you are now. In the midst of violence and death you are there. Lifting your voice, raising your hands, calling not for a pause or a cease, but holy for an end, inviting us to join you.

Peace, Rebecca & 10 Camels

Above is your invitation to consider peace. This year with all the violence happening in our world, I find the entire existence of peace daunting and even a bit haunting. Maybe I’m not alone in this? If you’d like to share your thoughts or reflections on peace, comment here. Or email me directly at 10camels@substack.com. I will write back.