“Little children, yet a little while I am with you.  You will seek me, and, as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come’, so to you also I say it now.  A new commandment I give you, that you love one another:    that as I have loved you, you also love one another.    By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

After my first trip to El Salvador in February 2004, I had a sense of peace about me that I had never before in my life experienced.  I loved the feeling and I searched my heart to find when and where it came from.  After much prayer and discernment I came to believe that this  peaceful feeling was related to the overwhelming amount of love that was shown to me by the people of El Salvador…stragers who had never met me before.  Then, much like the saying “which came first, the chicken or the egg”, I began to search for which came first, “the love or the peace?”.   I  believe the sense of peace was a by product of feeling so loved.  After a few weeks of being home, that sense of peace began slipping away from me, even though I was trying desperately to hold on to it.  Before long, it was gone.  Six years later, I now realize that  mountain top experiences are not meant for us to hold on to in order to remain in a moment of bliss.  They are meant for us to take back and do something with, grow from, become better human beings.   I was then and in many ways still am very juvanile in my faith.  But I am learning, growing and maturing all the time, especially as I practice loving as Jesus loved and strive to be a vessel of that love/peace relationship.  In my case, I don’t think practice will ever make perfect but I practice in spite of myself.