Is It Possible to Find Peace in Chaos?

I spent the last several weeks watching Netflix. When I use the word watching, I actually mean binge watching and bonding with characters to the point you dream about them, vicariously live through them, and have to see “just one more” episode before heading off to a meeting or bed. Netflix has become my favorite escape from reality. Please hear me say, watching Netflix is not the problem. Watching Netflix for weeks is not the problem. Selecting Netflix as my favorite escape from reality is not the problem. Bonding with characters and engaging in their lives vicariously is not the problem. The problem with escaping reality (and having such a good experience doing it), to the point it becomes the primary narrative in one’s life, is the temptation to not live in reality. 

Not living in reality means ignoring the chaos of reality. It means ignoring the pain and suffering of others. It means being complacent as photos of an invasion become the number one news story. It means reducing pandemic deaths to collateral damage. It means making sure a certain group has economic status and others are stripped of power, privilege, and property. It means food insecurity is not my problem because I have access to food. It means thinking everything “out there” does not apply to me. It means caring for and loving our neighbor has exceptions. It means peace is an illusion.

Can binge watching shows and living in reality coexist? Absolutely. Frolicking in our favorite escapes from reality can be rejuvenating and refreshing. There is something about fantasy and fiction genres that stimulate creativity and invite consideration of the unknown. Escapes from reality provide rest and relaxation, but they are only escapes, spaces separate from reality.

As hard as reality is right now, I invite you to live in its chaos. To consider the pain and suffering and the cost of war and death. To recognize the economic impact of food and housing insecurity and wrestle with what it means to have power, privilege, and prosperity. I invite you to remove exceptions from your vocabulary and dream of peace… the type of peace that exists not removed or isolated from chaos, but the type of peace that is understood best in chaos. In her prayer, Blessing in the Chaos, Jan Richardson offers these words:

To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence.
Let there be a calming of the clamoring,
a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you,
that go with you even to the holy places,
but will not let you rest,
will not let you hear your life with wholeness
or feel the grace that fashioned you.
Let what distracts you cease.
Let what divides you cease.
Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans,
and let depart all that keeps you in its cage.
Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos,
where you find the peace you did not think possible
and see what shimmers within the storm.

Finding Peace in Chaos,
Katrina