I open my soul to peace.

A good hour turns up in the middle of a bad month — a proper laugh at something stupid, an afternoon where nothing hurts — and the first reaction is often suspicion. As though enjoying it were a lapse in concentration, and something would take advantage.

That is a reasonable instinct in a mind that has learned to keep watch. It is also the mechanism by which peace, which does arrive, keeps getting turned away at the door.

Opening to it is less about arranging the right conditions than about not sealing the house against it when it comes at an inconvenient time.