It’s just past 7 a.m. on a Saturday. The house holds its breath, silent but for the rhythmic thump of my cat’s paws—soft percussion against the wooden floor of the sunporch. She darts and weaves, stalking shadows, her world briefly enlivened by a dance of imagined prey. Outside the screen, birds flit in and out of view, unbothered, as the fragile barrier between them makes hunters and hunted unlikely companions in this fleeting morning theater.
Beyond them, the river stretches out before me, ancient and unyielding, a witness to every shade of existence. Violence, stillness, heat, frost—its currents have carried them all. Today, winter relents under the sway of a warming breeze. Snow and ice recede, giving way to the river’s endless task: to flow. From rush to crawl, from clarity to murk, it accepts its charge with grace, unshaken by what the seasons demand.
I used to believe peace was something soft, a dreamscape made real—a place where fear dissolves and ease is effortless. I thought it would look like the perfect alignment of my hopes, every wish fulfilled exactly as I had imagined. I was certain peace would be an arrival, a destination where I could finally rest.
But I’ve never known that peace. Perhaps I’ve seen glimpses of it, those fleeting moments that tease with the promise of something lasting. Yet even those moments, I see now, are not still points. They are part of the flow, and the flow is everything.
As I sit here, another year dissolving into memory, I begin to understand. Peace is not the absence of uncertainty, nor is it the promise of permanence. It is the river’s way: yielding to what comes, trusting the rhythm, allowing itself to be carried.
For nearly 55 years, my life has been shaped by uncertainty. Has anyone, I wonder, truly known what certainty feels like? We tell ourselves the sun will rise, the seasons will turn, but even these are stories—anchors we cling to in a sea of unpredictability. No one knows what the next moment will bring.
The world outside this quiet morning is a storm of chaos. Fear and noise rise from every corner. And yet, here I am, coffee in hand, listening to the river as it moves forward—steady, unhurried, full of grace.
This is peace.
Soon, the house will wake, the rhythm will shift, and the stillness will give way to new energy. But even that is peace, in its own way—a reminder that to live is to flow, and to flow is to trust.