International Peace Garden

“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in God’s word I put my hope.” Psalm 130:5

Heartaches and sorrow fill our news. We grieve lives lost in hurricanes and wars.   Election stories fill our airways, where we are peppered with horror stories, should the “other side” win.  Family and work issues, trouble our spirits.     We pray for peace, and search for calm assurance. 

In the midst of many stressors in our lives, Howard Thurmans’s meditation,”How Good To Center Down,”  speaks to our need for quiet and reflection.

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still
moment and the resting lull.   With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living  . . .

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—
what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?…

For what end do we make sacrifices?
Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.

As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes
of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart
makes clear.

It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed,
and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.

How Good it is to center down.

How good it is to center down! [1] [1] Howard Thurman, “How Good to Center Down!,” in Meditations of the Heart (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953, 1981, 2022), 12–13.