A molten thought bubbled up from the man’s angry brain and blistered his lips as it exited. He was in his car, and once again, he was the embodiment of “rage in a cage.” He was the perfect driver and all around him were people whose skills were deficient, and he castigated them when their paths crossed. He was demonstrating the essence of mean-spiritedness, a miserable, foul-mouthed human being. Suddenly, I had an errant thought: “Peace, be still.”
I’ve written before of my “car-sonality,” the nasty person that emerges from me when I get behind the wheel of an automobile. And for the last couple of weeks, I have been especially grumpy. There has been a change in the tenor of our political conversations, a change that has been embedded with the change in political regimes. Our new normal would seem to be an angry one, replete with a petulant nastiness. And when I get in my car and turn on my NPR station and hear discussions of the direction that the country may soon be taking, the monster in my car is fed the raw meat of rage and vomits hatred. And I play back my mental recording and am ashamed, and when I hear myself, I say, softly, “Peace, be still.”
Despite all of my sainted mother’s efforts, I managed to slip the bonds of religiosity. I have attended many churches, visited mosques and synagogues and answered the knocks of Witnesses, Adventists, and Mormons. And despite my lack of affiliation with any religious group, I believe that I can generally be characterized as a decent human being. Except when behind the wheel of a car. At some point during those driving moments, I have to remind myself that my behavior is abhorrent. I have found a self-correction mantra in, “Peace, be still.”
In Mark 4:39 (New King James version), Jesus rebukes the storm and bids the raging seas, “Peace, be still.” I looked this up because I did not know the source of the phrase that had popped into my head. When I managed a crew of artists and photographers in a retail advertising department, I settled small squalls by saying, “achieve the peace,” but that was more a rephrasing of Rodney King’s “can’t we all just get along?” Squabbles and sniping and snarling — oh my — were damaging to the fabric of cooperation necessary to build the advertising we were responsible for. I was “the boss,” the person who had to insure that diverse personalities could come together in the peaceful pursuit of an advertising objective. I learned, long ago, that loud, angry voices are better handled by gentle response. I will not try to “out-bark” anyone; I have a more peaceful approach to conflict resolution.
I told a friend who was fearful about the direction the country was taking that I had lived through bad times before. She is younger than I am and always joked about it and quipped, “I know: you lived through the Great Depression.” (For the record: I did not.) My point was, “this too, shall pass” (though the excretion may be exceedingly painful). Anger and outrage were the common themes of our recent times and I have to remind myself that those emotions are not the ones I want my children and grandchildren to internalize. It is wise to be cautious, even a little afraid, but hatred is damaging to resolve.
Be angry, be concerned, be afraid, bemoan, bewail, be hopeful, be resolved to find peace, and to remind yourself, as I do, to find a way to, “peace, be still.”