The Bend in the River... Perhaps There Can be 'Peace on Earth'

~ Recapturing the Art of Conversation ~

The Pacific was in one of its gentler moods that afternoon, the kind that disguises its strength. The water rolled in slow, patient breaths, and the sun lingered low enough to soften everything it touched. Puerto Vallarta has a way of doing that—inviting you to slow down, to wait, to notice. As December approached, even the air felt expectant, as if the world itself were holding something back.

We were standing near the water when he said it.

“I won’t be visiting the United States for the next four years.”

The words were delivered casually, like a travel preference or a dietary choice. No invitation followed. No question. It was not a conversation starter; it was a declaration. I nodded, the way one does when a statement is meant to land and remain.

What made the moment curious—almost tender, in retrospect—was that only minutes earlier we had been talking about travel. Not politics. Not elections. Travel.

I had been describing places I loved. Long drives where the land opens wide and quiet. The way light rests differently on stone at the end of the day. I told one woman about southern Utah—how in a single day you can move from towering red cliffs to narrow stone corridors, from vast open basins to formations so delicate they look hand-carved. Each place entirely different, as if the earth itself were practicing patience, shaping beauty slowly, without hurry.

“You’d love it,” I said simply. “The variety alone is astonishing.”

She smiled politely. Then, without pause, came the verdict.

“I won’t be visiting the United States for the next four years.”

Later that week, another voice said the same thing. Then another. By the end of our two-week stay, I counted five. One was Mexican. Four were Canadian. Each repetition carried a slightly different tone—some dismissive, some self-satisfied, two unmistakably vile. Certainty, when left unexamined, tends to harden as it waits.

None of them knew how I voted. None of them asked. And I did not volunteer the information.

Not because I was afraid. I have lived through far worse than disapproval from strangers. But I have learned something over the years about silence. Sometimes it is not retreat. Sometimes it is waiting—the disciplined kind that refuses to speak before something worth saying can be received.

There would have been no dialogue, only heat. No listening, only verdicts. And, of course, the inevitable conclusion: How could you be so stupid?

So I listened.

What struck me most was not their decision to avoid the United States. People have always come and gone from places in cycles of affection and disdain. What struck me was the vileness—how easily contempt replaced curiosity, even when moments earlier the conversation had been nothing more controversial than landscapes, light, and wonder.

Where was the civility?
Where was the dialogue?
Where was the grace?

This, I was told for years, was the party of tolerance. The broad tent. The negotiators. Yet here I stood, hearing words that left no room for waiting, for listening, or for being surprised. Tolerance, it seemed, had become conditional. Dialogue was welcome—so long as one arrived already in agreement.

At one point, someone asked me why I was in Mexico at all.

It was a fair question, asked without irony. I smiled and gave a polite answer about rest, beauty, the kindness of the people. All of it true. But another question formed quietly within me, unspoken:

And you are in Mexico, because?

Did they realize where they were? That this country—so warm, so generous, so layered—was governed in many regions not by peace but by fear? That criminal powers ruled stretches of land with an authority as brutal as any they claimed to despise elsewhere? Puerto Vallarta was a bend in the river, calm and reassuring. But upstream, where most people lived, the waters churned unseen.

Safety, I thought, is often mistaken for virtue.

That night, lying awake with the balcony doors open, the ocean moved steadily below, its rhythm almost prayer-like. Christmas was drawing near. You could sense it in small ways—lights strung loosely across doorways, music softened by distance, conversations beginning to turn toward hope and wishes.

Peace.
Joy.
Goodwill.

These words would soon be spoken freely.

As I lay there, the story of the village returned to me—the one beside the river. Whether memory or imagination, I could no longer tell.

In that village, people had once traveled freely. They asked questions. They argued, sometimes fiercely, but they waited for one another to finish speaking. Over time, something shifted. News arrived faster than neighbors. Stories replaced journeys. Opinions hardened as waiting disappeared.

Eventually, the people stopped traveling altogether. They spoke confidently of places they had not seen in years. Maps were replaced with headlines. Fear, clothed in certainty, took root.

The village sat beside a wide river. At the bend, the water was gentle—clear enough to reflect the sky, calm enough to invite rest. The villagers gathered there often, pointing across the river toward places they no longer wished to know.

Upstream, however, the river was broken. Narrow. Violent. Those who lived there navigated danger daily, unseen by those at the bend. But no one wanted to walk inland. Waiting requires humility. And humility had grown scarce.

As the ocean breathed below me, the story widened.

Because there is, after all, an older story beneath every story of rejection.

Long before declarations were made with confidence and contempt, angels once spoke into a waiting world. Not to the powerful. Not to the certain. But to shepherds—men accustomed to darkness, to vigilance, to watching through the night.

“Peace on earth,” they sang.
“Good will to men.”

The promise arrived not with force, but with fragility. Not in certainty, but in trust. The One sent to save the world came quietly, born into the lowliest of places, asking only for room.

And the world—busy, confident, convinced—did what it so often does.

It rejected Him.

Not because He was violent.
Not because He was cruel.
But because He did not match the expectations people had waited for incorrectly.

The rejection grew—measured at first, then sharpened, then vile. Until the Prince of Peace was placed upon a cross by those convinced they were defending truth.

Lying there, I felt the irony settle gently, like candlelight in a dark room.

In the coming days, many of the people I had met would wish one another peace and joy. They would speak ancient words without considering how demanding they are. Peace, after all, is not declared. It is received. And often, it arrives quietly enough to be missed.

The question was no longer about countries or politics.

It was personal.

Might I be—might I become—a vessel of peace on earth?

Not by arguing louder.
Not by correcting every falsehood.
But by waiting well. By listening deeply. By refusing to return contempt for contempt.

The ocean continued its patient rhythm.

The world had not lost its capacity for beauty. I had seen too much of it—stone shaped slowly by time, light resting where it pleased—to believe otherwise. What it was losing, in some places, was its willingness to wait for peace when it did not arrive shouting.

The next day, when someone else spoke with certainty and dismissal, I nodded again. I listened again. I spoke once more of beauty—of landscapes formed patiently, without urgency, without regard for outrage.

And I let the river remain calm.

Not because truth does not matter.

But because peace—real peace—has always entered the world the same way.

Quietly.
Humbly.
Through those willing to carry it.