In product development, a minimum viable product is the simplest version of something that still functions. I’ve been thinking about what a minimum viable practice of peace actually looks like right now — the smallest set of actions that still holds together when everything in life is pulling at you.

When I open my eyes, I thank God for the previous sober day. When my feet hit the floor, I ask Jesus to love me through the day to come, keeping me sober and connected. It’s worked all this time, so I do it every morning.

Since the first AA meeting I ever attended, I rock back and forth gently as I say the first four phrases of the Lord’s Prayer. The first time I did it, it was because I was hungover and not steady. And now I do it to thank God for my sobriety 17 years in. I don’t revisit that moment to admire it, but to remember where I began and who brought me here. My body understands something my mind often overcomplicates. As I rock back and forth and then settle just as we say “…your will be done,” my peace surrounds me.

When I walk my dog, I find myself helplessly falling into happiness just matching her pace. I follow that pup all over my neighborhood, grinning like a fool and spotting squirrels. We’ve carved several routes over the years, each one tuned to alleviate different levels of angst.

I keep returning to the line from Micah: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. It strikes me that this might be the minimum viable practice of Christianity. It doesn’t require explanation or expansion. It asks for something that can be lived even in a difficult and interrupted day.

Life doesn’t cooperate with our best intentions. It interrupts, it crowds, it exhausts. Because of that, peace is not something I arrive at. It’s something I tend.

This understanding came slowly, through years of being sober. I think of my sobriety as an elliptical orbit — literally the length of my arm, and at the end of it, the next possible drink. If I live with love, that drink stays far away. If I live in fear, it moves closer. Addiction is a practice of isolation — from community, from family, from self, from God. What sobriety asks of me is the opposite: to stay in relationship with all of Creation, to keep the orbit wide, to notice every day what I am letting draw near. To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God — this is what keeping the orbit wide looks like in practice.

To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is not a large or abstract instruction. It’s small enough to attempt in a real and lived day. Now that we’re living through such constant tumult, I find that when I tend my own peace, I’m better able to see where and when justice asks something of me. That brings me incredible comfort.

This is what I’m considering a minimum viable practice of peace for me right now. And it is easy enough and enough of enough to begin again tomorrow.

What are some ways that help you find that instant reset and grounding throughout your day? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you so much for listening, and God bless you and keep you. Be well.

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