What Does Peace Look Like?

My two worlds collided this week.

On Thursday, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and drove 30 miles into the country. I parked my car in the dark, along a side street in a rural North Carolina town. I waited.

Forty-five minutes later, the first flashing lights of the escort vehicles appeared. A few minutes after that, the monks emerged, walking down the street at a fast clip toward me.

It was Day 89 of their 120-day, 2,300-mile Walk for Peace from Texas to Washington, DC.

By this point, the street was dotted with onlookers, and traffic had stopped in both directions.

I thought it would be kind of neat to see the monks. I didn’t expect just how moving, how palpable the experience would be. But as they passed within a couple feet of me, the rest of the world fell away; I could only feel their energy. Somehow, in the dim morning light, they seemed to be glowing in their orange robes. They were truly emanating the peace and joy they sought to share.

As I bowed my head in reverence, I brought my hands together and found myself clasping them around the necklace my mom had just given me for Christmas: a Lake Superior agate cut into the shape of my beloved Minnesota.

My legs shook, and a single phrase looped through my mind as, one by one, the monks filed past:

Peace be with you, Minnesota.


The next day, as the monks continued their journey through North Carolina, welcomed by throngs of people hungry for their peace message, tens of thousands of Minnesotans staged an “ICE Out” march in -20-degree weather. Shuttering businesses and schools, they took to the streets of Minneapolis in peaceful protest of the federal occupation. Among them, around 100 clergy were arrested at the airport, where they were asking airlines to stop providing deportation flights.

I’ve always adored my hometown, but I’ve never been prouder of it—of the way the community has come together in defense and diligent care of their neighbors, in their relentless rejection of injustice, in their steadfast demand for peace.


Just one day later, outside my young niece and nephew’s favorite donut shop, federal agents executed a peaceful observer, who was a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse at the VA hospital. (Those details don’t actually matter to me. Only this one: He was a person.)

Neither a profound encounter with the venerable Buddhist monks nor spending the last year and a half studying how my Quaker abolitionist ancestors lived their peace testimony through our country’s foundational struggles could prepare my heart for such an event.

Today, I’ll admit I’m feeling anything but peace as I grieve this death and its significance for my hometown, for our country. But I also know that *living* the value of peace is our path toward something better.

What I’ve learned from my ancestors’ legacy is this:

Peace is not just a noun; it is a verb, it is action.

Peace is not silent in the face of injustice; it is unyielding.

Peace does not involve shying away from discomfort or conflict, but walking toward it with compassion, integrity, and hope.

Peace does not excuse us from individual or collective action just because systems are broken and in desperate need of repair.

Peace requires us to speak truth to power (a Quaker phrase, no less).

What does peace look like in practice? It looks a whole lot like the monks traipsing across the country and the thoughtful, selfless acts of my family and friends in Minnesota.

Peace be with you, Minnesota, and with the rest of us, too.