Choosing Peace

I’ve been reading David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, where he contrasts two fundamental ways of understanding reality. The first, drawn from Nietzsche, sees the world as an ontology of power—at its core, life is a contest of wills. Order and beauty are thin veneers over chaos. To survive, you fight for position, influence, and control.

Hart offers another vision: an ontology of peace. In this view, reality is grounded not in struggle but in love and beauty. Violence and disorder are distortions, not the foundation. We can trust that a deeper order—the Logos—holds and guides all things toward wholeness.

I recently saw this contrast illustrated in an unexpected way. An article compared Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. The former vividly embodies the ontology of power: betrayal, maneuvering, and clawing for the throne. The latter reflects the ontology of peace: characters act faithfully and sacrificially, often relinquishing control, trusting that a benevolent order is at work even when they can’t see it.

Lately, this distinction has felt personal. At work, I wasn’t chosen for a working group I thought I should be part of. My first reaction was almost visceral—fear, anger, a sense of being diminished. That gut impulse was the will to power: scramble to prove myself, reassert my place, protect my standing.

But as I sat with it, I realized this was my own Game of Thrones moment. I could fight for influence, or I could choose the Lord of the Rings path. Not passive resignation, but the calm, deliberate trust that my identity and worth are not determined by being “in the room.” There are a hundred possible reasons I wasn’t chosen—most of them not personal. And even if it was, my value isn’t up for negotiation.

Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return came to mind, particularly his “five truths” of mature masculinity: Life is hard. You are not important. Life is not about you. You are not in control. You are going to die. These truths cut directly against the ego’s demand to be chosen, to be central. They echo Hart’s ontology of peace—an identity secured in something deeper than recognition or control.

The more I think about it, the more I see this as spiritual practice. Every workplace slight, every closed door, every missed opportunity is a chance to decide which ontology I inhabit. If I live in the world of power, every exclusion is a threat to be countered. If I live in the world of peace, every exclusion is simply part of a larger story—one where the plot is not mine alone to write.

I want to live in that second world. To work hard, contribute well, and still be at rest when I am not chosen. To trust that there is an order beyond my field of vision. To remember that I am neither the center nor the measure of reality.

This is not giving up—it is opting out of the scramble. Choosing the ontology of peace means refusing to define myself by scarcity or competition. It means walking the long road like Frodo, not scrambling for the Iron Throne.