The path to peace is found in subtraction, not addition

​This past weekend, I enjoyed morning coffee with two different friends on consecutive days. In each of those mornings, there was laughter, there were tears, there was frustration and celebration - there was peace.

In each of those mornings, I re-disovered what I've been figuring out a lot lately. Peace doesn't get added to your life. It gets uncovered with subraction.

We live our lives on the edge of addition - always anticipating that next add. We are waiting to add that new iPhone or car or house or job or relationship. We live our lives with unbreakable gazes out into the world, gazes guided by this belief that I'm about to add this next thing - THE thing - that will bring me peace and contentment.

Then you find yourself sitting at a table with nothing but a couple of cups of coffee - (okay, and maybe a little Cracker Barrel). But outside of that, all you have in that moment is human interaction. There is human story and human life and human emotions. In that moment, so much of what we've come to believe is the happy in life is noticeably missing - and all that remains - is living.

Living that is both beautiful and complicated, happy and sad, easy and hard - yet, it's all so real. It has nothing to do at all with what is next - and everything to do with what is there.

Right. There.

More and more, I wonder about the Garden of Eden. Paradise, it's called. I wonder if the paradise in that paradise was found more in what was missing from the garden and not all that was there. In that garden, it was just two people, sharing conversation and sharing God, and that was it.

I do wonder how peaceful that felt. How peaceful was life when it was a couple of people and God and just plain old talking.

Peaceful, that is, until along came a serpent - and sold them on this idea of what they could add to their lives. Come along, he said, let me show you a tree. It will make all the difference in your lives.

From that visit to the tree on, humans have been focused on next. What can we add to our lives? What is this next thing that will finally make me happy, will finally deliver on the peace that life and serpents love to sell us on?

I wonder if that is all backwards. I wonder if we aren't supposed to be making our way back to the garden. Peeling away every single thing until it's just you and me and God, chatting about life, the struggles and the celebrations. Living life and not having our peace subtracted by it.

I wonder, sitting enjoying a cup of coffee, experiencing peace, if that peace was a voice declaring that I and maybe we have been doing the math all wrong.

Maybe peace is found in subtraction (-) and not addition (+).

Maybe this week, when you get to feeling like you need to add something to your life, maybe take that as a cue to think about a thing or two that might need to go. Maybe this is the week to take a step back toward the garden - not away from it.