Always a fan off etymology ( Law, have mercy, don't I sound the literate one though) it occurred to me this holiday season that some things are truly lost in translation.
Dona...to donate....to give...to be a donor.... in essence that we (or they or He) give something without which there would be lack. So in the plea, Dona Nobis Pacem, Give Us Peace we are asking to be given, to have donated to us something we cannot have, cannot obtain on our own.....Peace.
We strive for peace (inner, worldwide, etc) through various and very personal means. Or we run from it, run from the need for it by keeping very busy, getting more stuff, filling our heads with anything and everything to escape the empty places within us that yearned to be filled.
I grew up in the South (Lord love it) and call to mind a hymn we sang in church on hot Sunday nights in the summertime:
' Peace, be Still ' (wasn't until recently that I realized that WE needed to be still, not the peace itself).
Anyhoo...
It is a peace rarely felt (at least by me). I have known it at times, when holding one of my newborn sons, when sitting on the beach alone at night or lying by a soft mountain stream. I was still in those times, I was quiet (rare for me, just ask anyone who knows me) and I was in nature, in a natural state.
So why not more often? Why don't I 'go' to that place, that natural place everyday? Honestly I have no idea except that perhaps life does get too busy, there is stuff to be done, I mean we aren't all gurus or yogis who can sit and just 'be' all day.
It is a place where the veil between this world and the next is very thin. The Irish of course have a name for a place like that, a place in nature, a beautiful pool surrounded by green and shade for example, that calls to our souls to come and sit and rest for a while. It is called 'A Thin Place'.
These places are sometimes come upon unexpectedly, and are sometimes obvious: a church, a Cathedral, a small candlelit chapel. I find it hard to be in my 'thin place' just on my own, in my room, in my ordinary life. I wish that weren't so. Some people seem to always carry their place with them, to 'be' in that thin place most of the time. How they do it I have no idea. But it is a worthy goal, to find that peaceful place inside oneself. Most of these people don't seem to be bubbly and highly excitable, like me. They appear to glide through life seamlessly, mysteriously and I would like to be seen as one of them. But I'm not. I'm 'pert' as Southerners call it. And pert people don't gaze through peaceful eyes.
And so.....I think I need to find rituals, on my own, that will take me to my thin place from time to time, perhaps every day and ask for the donation of His Peace. For I am always more insightful, more grounded, more in touch with the 'something' perhaps know as intuition when I have been there. I feel the glow from within and have a deeper understanding of the rhythm, the nuances of life. I tend not to flit as much.
Dona Nobis Pacem. All of us.
Dona...to donate....to give...to be a donor.... in essence that we (or they or He) give something without which there would be lack. So in the plea, Dona Nobis Pacem, Give Us Peace we are asking to be given, to have donated to us something we cannot have, cannot obtain on our own.....Peace.
We strive for peace (inner, worldwide, etc) through various and very personal means. Or we run from it, run from the need for it by keeping very busy, getting more stuff, filling our heads with anything and everything to escape the empty places within us that yearned to be filled.
I grew up in the South (Lord love it) and call to mind a hymn we sang in church on hot Sunday nights in the summertime:
' Peace, be Still ' (wasn't until recently that I realized that WE needed to be still, not the peace itself).
Anyhoo...
It is a peace rarely felt (at least by me). I have known it at times, when holding one of my newborn sons, when sitting on the beach alone at night or lying by a soft mountain stream. I was still in those times, I was quiet (rare for me, just ask anyone who knows me) and I was in nature, in a natural state.
So why not more often? Why don't I 'go' to that place, that natural place everyday? Honestly I have no idea except that perhaps life does get too busy, there is stuff to be done, I mean we aren't all gurus or yogis who can sit and just 'be' all day.
It is a place where the veil between this world and the next is very thin. The Irish of course have a name for a place like that, a place in nature, a beautiful pool surrounded by green and shade for example, that calls to our souls to come and sit and rest for a while. It is called 'A Thin Place'.
These places are sometimes come upon unexpectedly, and are sometimes obvious: a church, a Cathedral, a small candlelit chapel. I find it hard to be in my 'thin place' just on my own, in my room, in my ordinary life. I wish that weren't so. Some people seem to always carry their place with them, to 'be' in that thin place most of the time. How they do it I have no idea. But it is a worthy goal, to find that peaceful place inside oneself. Most of these people don't seem to be bubbly and highly excitable, like me. They appear to glide through life seamlessly, mysteriously and I would like to be seen as one of them. But I'm not. I'm 'pert' as Southerners call it. And pert people don't gaze through peaceful eyes.
And so.....I think I need to find rituals, on my own, that will take me to my thin place from time to time, perhaps every day and ask for the donation of His Peace. For I am always more insightful, more grounded, more in touch with the 'something' perhaps know as intuition when I have been there. I feel the glow from within and have a deeper understanding of the rhythm, the nuances of life. I tend not to flit as much.
Dona Nobis Pacem. All of us.
Lovely! I found that meditation takes me there. But I quit going to the free guided meditation when life got in the way. I need to reverse that trend. Anytime I'm alone in nature I get there.
ReplyDeleteI'm a "pert" midwesterner which is even MORE rare so I get you.