Now That’s Peace

On my first trip to northern Ohio, the last visit was with a man I had not seen in person since he had been moved from one facility to another.

He had been moved months earlier, and I was glad to finally sit across from him again. We had stayed connected, but it is different in person. You hear more than the words. You notice the eyes, the pauses, the way a person carries himself. You can feel what has changed.

Almost as soon as we sat down, things started unfolding around us. He wanted me to meet his art teacher, someone who had meant a lot to him. As it happened, he was getting a visit at the very next table, close enough for an introduction neither of us could have arranged.

Then, on the other side of us, sat the man who helps run one of the groups he attends. He introduced me to him too. That man invited me to speak to the group by video sometime. Then moments later he turned to us again and said they had been talking about the man I was visiting that very morning. He asked him to become a mentor in the program.

I just sat there watching it all happen.

There are moments when life feels arranged in a way I cannot explain. It all felt given.

What moved me most was watching him be recognized beyond the past, for what was present in him now. 

At this new place, we did not have as much time as usual, and the visit seemed to move faster. We talked about his art, the group, the chance to mentor, and a desire to start a meditation group for other men inside.

I loved hearing that. I know what it can mean in a place like that.

Silence in prison can be a challenge at times. There is the silence we seek, the silence that feels forced upon us, the silence heard after a sentence is handed down, and the silence at the end of a phone call. But a choice for silence is different. Shared silence is different. It can become a refuge, a way of saying together, where we are more than all the noise.

As we kept talking, the time started slipping away. 

He looked up and saw we were almost out of time. Then he said, “Man, we gotta meditate.”

Without hesitating, we both closed our eyes.

Right there.

For the last five minutes of the visit, we sat together in stillness.

I can still feel it. It would have been easy to say we did not have enough time. It would have been easy to skip it. It would have been easy to decide the room was too loud, too public, too busy, too much like a prison visitation room.

And somehow, in the middle of all that noise, the room went quiet.

Not on the outside. Inside.

That is the kind of peace I keep learning about in this work. It is not always the peace of better circumstances. It is not the peace that waits until the room is calm, the relationship is easy, or that life finally makes sense.

Sometimes peace comes in the middle of what has not changed.

The prison was still the prison. The visit was still ending. The clock was still moving. The situation still seemed real.

And yet, for a few minutes, something deeper was much more real.

We opened our eyes at the same time.

He looked at me and said, “Now that’s peace.”

I smiled, because there was nothing to add. He had said it.

That was peace.

I have thought about that moment many times since. How often I look for peace somewhere else, after things are resolved, after people understand me, after life feels secure. But sometimes it comes in a much smaller way. For a few breaths, nothing needs to be different.

A man asked to mentor. A shared silence. A sentence spoken with a smile.

Now that’s peace.