Peace at heart

Circumstances can seem to run the show in our lives. This happens so that happens. That happens so I do this. Circumstances can also supply the gift of boundaries to us.

My thesis project in college involved directing a play. As a senior, I had first dibs on whatever space I wanted to use. I was offered a black box theater that I could arrange any way I wanted. It could have been proscenium, three-quarter, in the round. I was paralyzed by the choices.

Instead, I opted for a wildly erratic rehearsal schedule and the college's chapel space. Why? Because the doors couldn't be moved. Because there were immovable pews. Because the space itself gave me boundaries within which I could do creative work safely. Boundaries became a gift. The freedom of the black box space was too great for me at the time. (For what it's worth, I'd make the same choice today, almost thirty years later.)

I like what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says about this:

If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the Universe, and so winning peace at heart whatever obstacles we meet.

Through the years, I've come to realize that inner freedom is far more important to me than external freedoms. In the work I have undertaken with my innermost self, I have found peace at heart despite the gifts of the boundaries (or, obstacles) I'€™ve encountered in the life of the world.

Unsure of the moral order of the Universe, I have discarded most of what might be considered morality for a simpler creed based, perhaps, on the order of the Universe instead. Every time I make a choice, I ask myself a series of questions I've accumulated over the years. Consider these:

Is this choice . . .

peaceful in my heart?

kind?

simple?

elegant?

something I'€™d be proud to talk about?

Obstacles don'€™t have to curtail our freedoms as long as we develop an inner plumb line for our choices. Instead, they create boundaries for our safe passage and peace at heart.

Visit Susan Corso's spiritual blog or subscribe to Seeds at www.seedsforsanctuary.com.