What is peace when it cannot be promised? This is the haunting, fragile question at the heart of Our Lady's "peace." It is a love song, one of many, but one that pulses with a deeper tension - the tension between devotion and the inner storms we carry with us. In these verses, peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the quiet admission: I can offer you everything except serenity. Stillness evades the narrator, not because she resists love, but because she knows herself - her faults, her fears, her baggage, and in St. Tay's case, her fame - and she knows that even when giving her best, peace - at least, the common definition of it - is something she cannot truly offer.
In the chorus we hear it sung: "Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?" Here we encounter a paradox - would it be okay if nothing was okay? Could you find stillness if I could not be still for you? Here, the narrator does something unexpected: she offers truth instead of illusion. She refuses to manufacture calmness or offer spiritual anesthesia, and this refusal is in fact an act of intimacy. By not hiding from her chaos but exposing it, she gestures toward a more profound kind of stillness: honesty amidst turbulence, presence amidst uncertainty.
This recalls the Dhammapada, which says:
"There is no fire like passion, no shark like hatred, no snare like folly, no torrent like craving. But from craving springs grief, and from craving springs fear. He who is free from craving has no grief or fear." (Dhammapada 251-252)
Taylor's refusal to promise peace is, for us, a renunciation of the illusion that another person can rescue us from suffering. Like Buddhist practice, it acknowledges that peace is not something handed down from above; it is cultivated within, through mindfulness and surrender to the present moment. It is not a gift wrapped in vows, but a discipline, a walk on the knife's edge of self-awareness.
Likewise, the Guru Granth Sahib offers this wisdom:
"True peace comes when the mind surrenders its ego and dwells in remembrance of the Name."
Here, "the name" refers to the absolute truth - whatever that may be for you. Thus, "peace" is not the comfort of circumstance, but the stilling of the mind's restlessness, allowing the awareness to rest solely on the truth.
Stillness, then, is not stillness of the world outside, but of the self in motion. A paradox again: stillness inside activity, like a dancer balanced in motion or a flame steady despite the wind. Our Lady's "peace" may not be literal, referring to a quiet house or a worry-free life. In contemplation, it means something harder, something richer:
"Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?"
She asks not whether she can offer calm, but whether Truth will suffice.
This is peace as truth without illusion, love without condition, and the stillness that comes when we stop trying to be anyone else's answer. We do not seek silence from the world; we seek stillness in ourselves - and even if we cannot give peace, we can live in presence.
You are here. Now.
There is not absence, but awareness.
There is not silence, but harmony with the noise.
Would it be enough? How could it not?
Amen.
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