Apparently, the only available time to write with a newborn in the house is rarely, if ever. Thus far, my learning curve has been a steep one. Current time is 11:07pm, Danielle went to bed to try and get a couple of hours of sleep before the next feeding, and Ellis lies swaddled tight in his bed while making various and odd sounds as he settles in. At least I hope he’s settling in for the sake of his parents. There are no longer nights and days to occupy my life; they all blend into one big blur of endurance. Diapers, 3am feedings, more diapers, trying to scrounge up food for our tired selves, quick jaunts to the grocery or pharmacy, and all of it propelled by newfound love and the hope of humility. I don’t see how single mothers do this alone.

For good reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about peace over the past few days and, though none of this is fully formulated in my brain – I doubt if it ever will be concrete enough to make any sense – I’ve come to the minimal conclusion that peace on earth is not necessarily the absence of chaos; the two can and shall co-exist side by side and yet live in harmony as if one were dependent upon the other. Like night and day, pain and joy, cold and hot, the one endures the other. I am at peace for the first time in many years. Not my body, mind you, but the workings of my soul. I suspect it has everything to do with Ellis, seeing his precious body taken from the womb of a grace-filled woman one distant week ago, feeling his luxurious skin (don’t we all wish someone would say our skin felt “luxurious”?) upon my pursed lips, hearing and watching him squeak and squirm, cleaning his body when he fouls himself, and serving my recuperating wife to the best of my ability. It has broken me to see her in pain. And yet there is peace. Fearing my own weak-bellied imminent collapse upon the operating room floor, there was peace. With the weak knowledge that death and grief was visiting a nearby birthing room that very same night, there was peace. Easy for me to say.

Peace – the way we typically employ the word – is not an answer to the world’s problems, as those are discouragingly numerous. World peace implies the temporary truce of a war, a physical act. War will always exist here; it always has and always will. The peace to which I’m referring, and which has swaddled me these last 7 days, is the treasure of finding new life inside of old death; the realization that compassion is far more powerful than power itself. My former life is dead and gone. I played concerts for myself, wrote songs for myself, worked around the house, ate meals, all with the focus smack dab on yours truly. My son has made everything matter. And that is not a feat prompted by Ellis; it is a gift of El, Christ the Author of all. Yea, I am fully aware that to utter “Christ” as “Author”, complete with those audacious capital letters, is to wade into water that changes from smoothly agreeable to choppy and divisive in an instant, for not everyone reading this feels comfortable with such wording or the capitalization of the “G” in God and “C” in Christ. But this I can say with absolute certainty: it will forever boggle my mind to consider the fact that an adult human being, male or female, believing or unbelieving, can experience the long and mortal 9-month process from fertilization to birth and yet walk away from the entire experience having not drawn closer to the existence of an immortal God. There is far more than just a blood and water miracle in it; there is the indwelling of good on this earth, already so filled with mayhem. It is peace I’m getting at, can’t you see? Think on these things, for they shall be an altar to you.

“What can he possibly know?”, you may be asking yourself. As a parent of one week, surely not a whole lot. But I can say unequivocally that these things which my eyes have seen and my arms have held have collectively broken and healed my heart. Before, there was the hurt of aimlessness, the bouts with loneliness, the gnawing sense that something was missing in our lives. That’s not to say that my wife and I didn’t enjoy one another’s company; that’s not it at all. She and I are made even more whole, at-one-ment as Madeleine L’Engle writes, by this frail creature’s interruption.

Peace has endured on earth throughout plague, famine, prosperity, murder, hatred, discrimination, discord and the proud carryings on of humanity. Peace does not require war in order to exist. It requires a broken heart, for from inside the seed of such contrition it seeps into the living soul and begins to plant its lifelong garden, full of beauty, hope, grace and endurance. These first few weeks will be physical endurance enough. We sleep when we can, admiring these newborn moments while they are present. If it is possible to kiss the very face of peace – peace that transcends understanding – those moments surely exist right here and now. These are the moments that change the world, not the comings and goings of politicians, bankers or power-mongers. The world is made better by the smallest, most feeble and helpless ones on earth. We are made hopeful by such frailty. So be it.