The word the Essenes would have used is shalom, and it does not mean the absence of conflict. It means wholeness, completeness, the state of a thing that lacks nothing it needs. A wall is at shalom when every stone is in place. A body is at shalom when it is healthy. A people is at shalom when every household has what it requires and no one is at war with his neighbor. To greet someone with peace is to wish them wholeness.
The fellowship's fourth teaching is that this wholeness has seven parts, and that a person whole in six and broken in one is not whole. We call it the Sevenfold Peace. Like the Tree of Life, the sevenfold scheme comes to us through later tradition rather than directly from the scrolls, though the scrolls are saturated with the longing for peace and the number seven. We teach it because we have found that it names, exactly, the seven places where a life can go wrong and the seven places where it must be set right.
The Seven Peaces
Peace with the Body
The body is the outer court of the temple, and the Essenes treated it so: washed daily, fed simply, clothed in clean linen, rested on the seventh day. Peace with the body means neither indulging it nor despising it, but giving it what it needs and no more, and listening to it when it speaks. Most students begin here, because the body is the easiest place to start and the hardest place to lie.
Peace with the Mind
The mind at war with itself, torn by fear, regret, craving, and the endless commentary on everything, is the most common sickness of our age and was not unknown in theirs. The scrolls prescribe study, the regular hours, and the discipline of speech. The fellowship adds the Still Lamp. Peace with the mind is not an empty mind but a mind that can be still when stillness is wanted and clear when thought is wanted.
Peace with the Family
The desert community made the Unity its family and governed it with exact rules of speech and rank. The marrying Essenes of the towns kept households under the Damascus rule. Both knew that the nearest people are the hardest to be at peace with, and that a spiritual life which does not reach the supper table is a performance. Peace with the family means truth spoken gently, forgiveness asked and given, and the common meal kept as a holy thing.
Peace with Humanity
The Essenes were accused, with some justice, of hating outsiders. Their oath included hatred of the sons of darkness. The fellowship does not keep that part of the oath. We hold with the wider stream of the Way that the children of light are called to love even those who walk in darkness, because they too have a portion in the light. Peace with humanity means justice in one's dealings, generosity to the stranger, and the refusal to make any class of people the enemy.
Peace with One's Heritage
The scrolls are the work of a people who knew exactly who they were: Israel, the children of the covenant, the heirs of Moses and the prophets. They did not reject their heritage; they claimed to be its true keepers. Peace with one's heritage means receiving what one's ancestors handed down, the good and the wounded alike, with gratitude and discernment, neither worshiping it nor throwing it away. Most students have some wound here. The fellowship has found that the Essene way, which honored the old while longing for the new, is a good place to heal it.
Peace with the Earth
The ancient Essenes lived so lightly on the land that their settlement has left almost nothing behind but cisterns and graves. They knew the properties of plants. They would not, the tradition says, eat the flesh of animals. Peace with the earth means living as a guest in creation rather than as its owner, taking what is needed, returning what can be returned, and giving thanks.
Peace with the Eternal
And beneath all six, holding them up, the seventh: peace with God, with the Light, with the Eternal. This is not a feeling of comfort. The Essenes knew God as a consuming fire and a searcher of hearts. It is rather the end of the quarrel, the laying down of the demand that God be otherwise, the acceptance of the One Law and one's place in it. The one who has made this peace can lose the other six and still stand. The one who has not made it can have the other six and still fall.
Making Peace
The fellowship's practice for this teaching is the Noon Peace: a pause at midday, one peace for each day of the week, in which the student asks where that peace is broken in his life and takes one small step toward mending it. It takes five minutes. Done for a year it changes a life, not because the steps are large but because the attention is constant.
The Essenes greeted one another with peace. The fellowship does the same, and means by it: may you be whole in all seven.