When we grow radishes in a small container in a city apartment, we participate in creation. We sustain the globe. When we sweep the street in front of a house in the dirtiest city in the country, we bring new order to the universe. We tidy the Garden of Eden. We make God's world new again. When we repair what has been broken or paint what is old or give away what we have earned that is above and beyond our own sustenance, we stoop down and scoop up the earth and breathe into it new life again, as God did one morning in time only to watch it unfold, unfold, and unfold through the ages.
If we learn anything from the peace that is in us, it is that it represents the highest good to which no only persons but whole people can be called, and we cannot be content with our own serenity and, at the same time, indifferent to the swirls of anger that threaten to rend the fabric of society all around us. To do so would be to make of ourselves hypocrites, content to save ourselves and lose the world.