As this Sunday approaches, I'm reflecting on peace as a concept.  Shalom in the Hebrew.  Eirene in the Greek.  They mean more than lack of violence.  They suggest wholeness, completeness, prosperous relationships.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote about peace as a metaphysical concept, the "Harmony of Harmonies," in his book The Adventure of Ideas.  Here's some of what he had to say:

"The Peace that is here meant is not the negative conception of anaesthesia.  It is a positive feeling which crowns the 'life and motion' of the soul.  It is hard to define and difficult to speak of.  It is not a hope for the future, nor is it an interest in present details.  It is a broadening of feeling due to the emergence of some deep metaphysical insight, unverbalized and yet momentous in its coordination of values.  Its first effect is the removal of the stress of acquisitive feelins arising from the soul's preoccupation with itself.  Thus Peace carries with it a surpassing of personality.  There is an inversion of relative values.  It is primarily a trust in the efficacy of Beauty.  It is a sense that fineness of achievement is as it were a key unlocking treasures that the narrow nature of things would keep remote.  There is thus involved a grasp of infinitude, an appeal beyond boundaries.  Its emotional effect is the subsidence of turbulence which inhibits.  More accurately, it preserves the springs of energy, and at the same time masters them for the avoidance of paralyzing distractions.  The trust in the self-justification of Beauty introduces faith, where reason fails to reveal the details.

"The experience of Peace is largely beyond the control of purpose.  It comes as a gift . . . Thus Peace is self-control at its widest,--at the width where the 'self' has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality."