CELIA McBRIDE

Dearest Readers,

This blog entry is actually a keynote speech I gave recently called “Peace as an Everyday Practice” for the YMCA Peace Medal Awards.

It’s long so if you’d rather watch me deliver it, click here for the YouTube version. (20 minutes)

If you have a bit of time, read on.

The YMCA Peace Medal Award is an honour given to non-professional peacemakers who are creating change in their communities through selfless action.

In a world where we are posting on social media what we made for dinner and pictures of our cats playing with tinfoil, selfless action is currently a pretty radical act.

And selfless action toward making Peace is even more exceptional because we are living in a time of war.

Not just the wars in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine but the climate wars, the media wars, the culture wars, the political wars, the race wars, the gender wars … there is so much division and strife in our world.

And it boggles the mind because it’s 2023! We know stuff. We’ve learned a lot of stuff. We’re supposed to be evolved.

We possess the scientific understanding that despite our differences on the outside, humans are 99.9% genetically similar to one another.

Yet we continue to focus on the 0.1% that is different and we kill each other over it.

Most of us know John Lennon sang “Give Peace a Chance” and asked us to, “Imagine all the people living life in peace,” but did you know that he also challenged world leaders to: Declare Peace?

“Just the same way we declare war,” he said. “That is how we will have peace … we just need to declare it.”

It’s so simple. Isn’t it? Declare Peace.

Imagine all the leaders just saying “We Declare Peace”. How different our world would be?

Peace has many angles. It’s complex. It’s not one thing.

I read a quote that said “Peace holds many truths” and that sounded right to me.

In order to talk about Peace as an Everyday Practice, I went looking for examples of peace, where the word or the concept has shown up in my life.

And I thought of the concept of the passing of the peace in Christian churches. This is when everyone either shakes hands or makes a sign of peace to others.

Whenever I attended a service I would look forward to this lovely way of connecting, passing peace to each other.

I wish we could do that on the street. You know? Instead of casting down our eyes or ignoring the fact that we’re all in a grocery store together, we could pass the peace to each other.

And I thought about the chant I offer when I teach yoga, OM Shanti OM Peace, which we do to generate peace in the body and peace in the world.

I wish we could all take the time to chant peace in the office, or at the bank, when we’re waiting in line for the teller.

Om Peace Peace Peace. That’d get me to the front of the line. I think. Maybe not.

I thought about my Indigenous friend who told me after her partner and a number of her family members had died that she realized that she doesn’t own all her dead loved ones and that she wasn’t afraid to die herself.

That struck me as perhaps the greatest peace there is. Detachment from loss and not being afraid to die.

I thought about my wise and humble friend who once said that when it comes to making peace, there was not a lot he could do up here, and he kind of swirled his hands around up by his head, indicating where systems live.

“But,” he said, bringing his hands toward his belly, “there’s a lot I can do down here,” and he swirled his hands around in front of him, to indicate the grassroots level, where he works.

And this is where Peace as an Everyday Practice comes in for me.

Because with the world the way it is, I find myself wanting to force the people in power to Declare Peace. And I can’t. I don’t have any power “up here.”

But I can practice Peace “down here” and I can practice peace in my own life.

And calling it a Practice is very deliberate because, despite being the keynote speaker at the YMCA Peace Medal Awards I have not, in fact, achieved peace in my own life.

Surprise!

It’s true though, because like so many humans on the planet right now, I live with a core of not-good-enoughness, the foundation of which comes, and I know I’m not alone here, from a complex web of developmental and sexual trauma, intergenerational alcoholism and addiction and mental health issues.

And I live with anxiety and depression. And I wrestle with the burden of colonial shame and feel acutely the pressing accountability and responsibility of white privilege, and I have been affected, as we all have, by the oppressive legacy of patriarchal systems, which continue to encourage all of us to look outside of ourselves for approval and seek satisfaction in material gains.

The truth is, it would be dishonest of me to preach the Gospel of Peace without telling you that my reality consists of practicing achieving peace on a daily basis because I live with a perpetually unpeaceful mind.

Maybe that’s why I got asked to speak about peace. Because I work so darn hard at practicing it.

I mean, I gotta. Because if I’m not meditating and engaging in spiritual practices and eating right and doing yoga and walking and going to recovery groups and therapy and reaching out to like-minded others and engaging in social justice activities, this brain will have no peace.

This brain will try and kill me.

It will say (and it does), “You are not good enough.”

And it will say (and it does), “What’s the point in doing anything?”

That’s the internal war.

That’s the war of self-loathing and apathy.

And I think that’s what is radiating outward from so many humans to generate the wider wars.

Do you think if we all actually loved and appreciated and valued ourselves as individuals we’d be fighting over anything?

I don’t think so.

So Peace as an Everyday Practice means checking in with ourselves and each other. Not checking our numbers, our socials, our followers, our likes.

Because we are not these things. But when we identify ourselves with our numbers, our socials, our followers and our likes, well, we feel bad.

Because it’s never enough. There’s never enough in the bank account and there are never enough likes.

So practicing peace every day becomes the practice of noticing what makes me feel bad about myself and stopping doing it.

It becomes the practice of cultivating inner enoughness, which is to say, inner acceptance and, therefore, inner peace.

Last year, I published a book. It’s a memoir called “O My God: An Un-Becoming Journey” and it’s about how I felt called to become a monk but realized that everything I thought I had to become I Already Am.

And I would like to sell this book to a lot of people. I would really like it to become a bestseller.

But when I focus on the pressure of selling lots of copies, and when I am obsessing about the number of books I haven’t sold yet and how many people didn’t “heart” my last Insta post, I have no peace.

I am at war with myself.

When I focus on the fact a Gentle Reader sent me an email to tell me that she had lost her spiritual connection years ago and the book helped her to get it back, or that another Gentle Reader told me that the book made her feel human because it validated her own fears and doubts, I find myself feeling something that can only be described as peace.

Because this change in focus begets gratitude for what I already have. And humility for who I already am.

This is a feeling that can’t be measured by numbers. It’s the feeling of being enough.

It’s pretty easy to have peace when everything goes my way. But what about when things don’t go my way? Peace goes out the window. Along with the laptop when the spinning ball of death appears.

No, I’ve never chucked an expensive piece of computer equipment out the window but I’ve felt like it!

Having a sense of humour when mistakes happen or chaos reigns or even just when the weather isn’t doing what I want it to do … these are all great opportunities to practice peace.

Find the humour. Not easy. Practice!

I recently had to wear an air cast for 6 weeks after falling and fracturing a bone in my foot. After processing the depression and the anger that came through grieving (aka bawling my eyes out), I was able to find the laughter. “What happened?” people asked me. “I guess needed a break,” I told them.

But finding things funny when we’re not in control takes courage.

And most human beings want to be in control. Learning to be peaceful when things are out of control or uncertain or not working for us can be very difficult. It’s a lot easier to get annoyed and take it out on the driver in front of us. Or the cashier.

But this is where the practice of letting go and trusting comes in.

Okay, what do I trust when the ship hits the sand? Do I trust God? Do I trust the Universe? Do I trust that everything is going to be okay?

We can do ALL that. But the ship is still going to hit the sand.

It’s much more practical to trust that the ship is going to hit the sand AND I’m going to be okay.

So that’s what I do. I practice trusting that I’m okay even if things aren’t okay.

But I’m human so I still try to maintain the illusion of control. And one of the ways I do that is by judging others.

It’s an ugly thing to admit at a Peace award ceremony but after years of trauma work, I understand that judging others is the trauma-brain trying to keep me safe.

But it’s really toxic. “He’s not getting this right, she’s not getting that right, he’s not doing this enough, she’s doing that too much.”

No one is following the script I’ve written for them! And I’m very unhappy about it. I’m quite miserable.

And I definitely don’t have peace.

But life is radically uncertain and judging creates the illusion of certainty. Judging is me feeling unsafe but trying to make life predictable so I can get through the day.

We are so vulnerable.

Control is safe. And underneath all that control and all that judgment is just a scared little kid who wants to be loved. Who wants to belong.

So practicing peace is really about cultivating this kind of conscious self-awareness of the mind.

When I get to know my mind, when I question my thinking, I start to SEE the judgment rather than buying into what it’s telling me.

And when I can see it, I can practice letting go of it. I can practice looking at what people are doing right and that they, like me, are already enough. Just as they are.

And the peace comes.

So, yeah, I’m sorry to break it to you but Peace is work. And Peace is a choice.

Peace in the world requires that we make a decision to participate in protests and petitions and speeches and marches and organization. It requires that we declare it and then choose to take action and more action.

And Peace in ourselves also requires work. And it’s also a choice.

It requires that we become willing to change our minds, to surrender our fixed ideas, to let go of the need to be right. To let go of the illusion of control.

These are all choices.

Peace happens when I have the courage to say, “I’m wrong”, “I don’t know”, or “I made a mistake” or “I’m sorry, that was coming from a fear place in me.”

Or, hey, keep it simple, and just say what the kids are saying these days, “My bad.”

Another way to practice peace in our daily lives is to engage in creativity. A good friend recently said to me, “Peace is not the opposite of war, creation is.”

Creation.

So, I’m a creative person. I write, I paint, I draw, I dance. I was a theatre artist and filmmaker. I’ve been given lots of creative gifts.

But when I avoid being creative because the negativity is in the driver’s seat saying, “You suck, don’t bother,” I’m not at peace.

Or when I do manage to muster the courage to do something creative and the fear jumps in and says, “It’s not good enough,” then no peace.

This is when I need to choose to become my own best advocate.

So I put my hand on my heart and say to myself, “Sweetie. Aww. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You’re trying. Good for you. Creating is fun! Just have fun, that’s all that matters.”

And I immediately start to feel okay. I start to feel like I’m enough. I start to feel peace.

This kind of self-encouragement is a foreign concept to most of us. But I’ve found it to be a vital practice for building self-esteem and healing those domineering negative voices.

Becoming my own best friend is peace-building because when I’m on my side I’m way more likely to be on your side.

When I’ve said, “It’s no longer okay to be my own worst enemy,” chances are, you are going to look less and less like my own worst enemy, too.

And we can all create! We ALL have this Creative Life Force Energy flowing through us, animating our bodies, fuelling our imaginations.

With this dynamic energetic part of us, we can create community, art, technology.

We can create friendships, healing circles, and reconciliation practices.

We can create more inclusive attitudes, more open minds, and more open hearts.

Creation is our Essence. It’s the stuff we’re made of. And when we tap into that Creative Life Force Energy, we are making Peace.

We’re making the peace we all long for. The peace we’re waiting for others to declare.

Let’s declare it for ourselves by practicing it ourselves.

Let’s root out the self-hatred so we don’t project it on each other.

Let’s root out the judgment so that instead of pointing that finger at someone else we can see OH! there are three fingers pointing back me!

Let’s root out this deep down inside of us core of unworthiness so we don’t impose our not-enoughness on other people.

Peace starts here. We know this.

But what we may not know is that every single day we can practice choosing to like ourselves a little bit more, and to affirm our own basic goodness no matter what our mistakes and transgressions might be.

We can create anything from this power living inside of us, this Dynamic Force of Energetic Awesomeness that is the Source and Generator of justice, love, forgiveness, mercy, humility, and gratitude. All the good stuff.

We can do this. The Peace Medal recipients are evidence of our human capacity for selfless action.

So let’s all Declare Peace in the world by declaring peace in our own lives.

Every day, try saying it: I declare Peace with myself.

I declare Peace with myself.

Say it now, out loud, as you read it:

I declare Peace with myself.

From the fires of love,

Celia