By Gonny When I look at young people today, I see them running, chasing, experimenting, almost as if life is a buffet that must be tasted in one wild evening. And I smile, because I recognize myself in that energy. I too was once busy, busy, busy….eager to experience, to try, to prove. It has its charm, like a firework display in the sky: bright, dazzling, and gone in a second.
Now, being older, I discover another rhythm. A quieter one. A peace that doesn’t need to run anywhere, because it is already here. It feels like I am finally ‘te-vrede-n (tevreden=satisfied) and notice how that Dutch word itself contains ‘vrede’…. ‘peace.’….No accident 
Could Love be anything else than this peace? Maybe that’s why older people seem calmer: not because they lost the fire, but because they are returning to the eternal flame that never burns out…..the Peace of God.
These last days I wrote about the four obstacles to peace. Today’s lesson feels like a hidden fifth step: the discovery that Peace is not earned, achieved, or defended. It is already given. Wherever I go, God’s peace goes with me. Whoever I meet, I carry this treasure to them. The busy, the lonely, the fearful, the ones who believe they lost hope…they are all included. And the gift multiplies as it is shared.
What a strange and beautiful economy: the more I give away this peace, the more I know I have it. And when I share Love, I recognize Love in myself.
So maybe youth is about chasing, and age is about resting. But beyond both, there is a deeper timelessness: a state where nothing is lost and nothing needs to be added. It is the safety of knowing: “Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe.”
And with a little smile, we carry that peace into the world…not with solemn faces, but with lightness, like children who have found a secret they cannot wait to share.
With love and light,
G.