Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me

I am downright obsessed with my annual holiday card.  I spend as much time choosing the message as I do the photographs and design.   When I look at the messages I’ve chosen over the last several years, a distinct theme emerges:

2005 – Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me
2006 – Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime
2007 – Dona Nobis Pacem (grant us peace)
2008 – Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me
2009 – Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine
2010 – May the wind be always at your back

Imagine my delight when, this week at Grace’s school holiday assembly, they sang both Dona Nobis Pacem and Let There be Peace On Earth.  I was thrilled, and my heart soared with the high-pitched voices of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders.  I’ve been singing Dona Nobis Pacem under my breath all week and Grace excitedly told me a few days ago that she recognized it as a song that was going to be in the concert (it was not the one her class sang).

This has been a season of quiet, house-bound afternoons and evenings for us.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with Grace and Whit, not going out hardly at all, doing my work in the hours that they are in school. One morning this week Grace’s advent calendar said “sit by the tree and watch the lights while drinking hot chocolate.”  And so we did.  After dinner she, Whit and I curled up on the yellow couch with mugs of hot chocolate and admired the tree.  Grace dashed upstairs to get a small comforter to pull over the three of us, and then we read several Christmas books (and the defiantly non-Christmas pop-up book about dinosaurs that Whit chose).  It was pretty divine.

The night of Grace’s concert we made pizza.   As they were eating, the children decided they wanted to hear “Let There Be Peace On Earth.”  So I youtubed a version of it, and then another, and pretty soon it was on repeat in the kitchen and Grace and Whit were spellbound by the music and the images that accompanied each rendition.  Whit said to me, “This song reminds me of What a Wonderful World, Mummy.”

And how.  What a wonderful world it would be if everybody chose peace.  Wouldn’t it?

It’s impossible for me not to think of Saint Francis’s iconic prayer.  And of last year’s haunting video of Sarah McLachlan singing it.  I urge you to listen to it: it’s gorgeous, calming and inspiring at the same time.  It makes me want to work harder to be worthy of this blessed, brutal, beautiful life, and of my children’s instinctive orientation towards goodness and peace.  So, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

And let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.