Sim Shalom, and the value of peace

The translation of the "Sim Shalom" prayer in Gates of Prayer begins: "Grant us peace, Your most precious gift...". It's a poetic translation, I gather; I don't see anything in the Hebrew that supports "precious". And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I don't like this interpretation.

Peace isn't -- or rather, wouldn't be, if we had it -- God's most precious gift to us. Self-awareness, sentience, soul, free will, and life itself (with health) are ahead of peace. These are the most precious gifts we've received, and the most precious gifts we could receive.

God could give us universal peace easily enough if He were so inclined. All it would cost would be those things that make humans different from the animals. But God didn't create puppets; He created people. And so the best we can pray for in the peace department is that all people will see the value in choosing peace, and thus all work toward it. But that's different from being granted peace outright.

veal "stew"

I'm pleased with the way the lunch I improvised for today came out.

I had thawed out the last chunk of that veal roast I bought for "vam" experiments. (We have since abandoned those experiments, at least for now.) Thursday night's D&D game went later than I'd expected, so I didn't do anything with it that night. Friday morning I put it, a can of chicken broth, half a can of water, some (frozen) carrots, spinach, barley, dried onions, one cut-up potato, salt, pepper, and oregano into the crock pot, set it on low, and went to work. (This was more liquid than I thought it would need, but I also wouldn't be home to monitor it.) I figured I'd cut up the meat into smaller bits when I got home; my eventual goal was stew, not a roast in liquid.

When I got home the meat was very tender and practically fell apart for me while I was cutting it up. (Result: smaller-than-planned pieces.) I put all of this back into the pot, along with one cut-up leek (I'd forgotten the leeks in the morning), more salt and pepper, and more spinach. This went into the fridge until the timed reheat this morning.

The meat was tender; sometimes my crock-pot stew is too tough, though I've never used veal before. The flavors mingled nicely. And it wasn't too much liquid, as it turned out. Next time I'll leave out the potato, and I might try rice instead of barley.