20 Oct Painting Peace in a Chaotic Season
I just landed back in the UK from Israel, and in a few days, I’ll be off again, first to Tenerife, then to a few more countries, before heading to the United States for a speaking tour across four or five cities. It’s a lot of movement. This isn’t my normal rhythm, but every so often, life picks up this kind of momentum where everything happens at once. It’s exciting, fulfilling, and deeply purposeful, but it can also feel like I’m living on borrowed stillness.
Over the years, I’ve learned that when everything outside starts to move fast, I have to guard what’s happening inside. The chaos doesn’t have to get in. That’s become one of my quiet principles: no matter how unpredictable the schedule, peace has to stay non-negotiable.
For me, that looks like a few small but steady practices that help me stay centred even when I’m darting from plane to plane, meeting to meeting, and country to country.
The first is starting every single day in stillness and alone. No screens, no phone calls, no emails. Just quiet. Sometimes I sit in prayer, sometimes I read, sometimes I just breathe and think. It’s less about what I do and more about who I become before the day begins. When I start grounded, I carry that tone into everything else.
At the end of each day, I try to return to that same stillness. I unplug from phones and computers and spend time alone again, even if it’s just ten or fifteen minutes. It’s like closing a mental door before I rest. It helps me remember that I’m not just moving through my schedule; I’m moving through life.
When things get really intense, I focus on my breathing. Intentional, slow breaths nothing fancy, just a pause. It sounds simple, but in those moments when I feel stretched, breathing becomes my reset button. It tells my mind and body that I’m safe, that I can slow down even if everything else can’t.
Stillness for me also looks like creating little windows of focus during the day. Reading does that. So does playing PS5. They both force my brain to slow down and concentrate on one thing. It might not sound spiritual, but it works. For that time, my mind isn’t performing, producing, or planning it’s resting.
And then there are walks. Especially when things are hectic, I try to walk without music or calls. Just me, my thoughts, and the rhythm of my steps. Walks have this strange way of slowing my body and my mind at the same time. They remind me that pace is something I can choose.
These habits don’t remove the pressure, but they help me carry it better. The world doesn’t stop spinning, but I don’t have to spin with it. In every loud, fast, unpredictable stretch, peace is still something I can paint slowly, deliberately, from the inside out.
Season 5 Is Coming Soon
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2. Debate Night: Has Trump Brought Peace to the Middle East?
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3. Dreams and Discipline: Men’s Conference
This one-day gathering is designed to help men think bigger about their lives and futures while grounding those dreams in the discipline required to make them real.
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