In a few chapters, you will read one of the triumphs in literature, borrowed from the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament.

Tolstoy will have the fictional Andrei recognize the Vanity of our world. On the battlefield, Andrei is placed in a posture that makes him attuned to absorbing the nature of war & peace; and much more.

In preparation for this moment, I ask you to take a tiny step toward developing the ability to see behind the vanity & vexation of our existence.

If inclined, read the beginning of Ecclesiastes – as Andrei will paraphrase this material while speaking to the meaningless and futility of not seeing beyond the issues of the day.

Conceding most will never going to do that… the critical and initial part of Ecclesiastes 1 reads:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher (often identified as Solomon); All is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour, which he taketh under the sun?

Then Scripture references then unrelenting cycles of nature --

One generation passeth away, and another cometh: but the earth abideth;

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteneth to his place where it arose.

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;

it whirleth about continually, and returneth again according to his circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full;

unto the place from where the rivers come, thither they return again.

War & Peace is an everlasting work, in part, by reason of Tolstoy’s influence from Scripture. Within this vein, Tolstoy has been able to capture the artist’s ability to see beyond and touch the Transcendent!

Tolstoy was able to skillfully -- not to just look to the baseness of what is in front, or below us, in creating something entertaining -- but he is able to enter the sacred space of fulfilling the spiritual need of appreciating the infiniteness above.

So, this chapter is a reminder open yourself to this dynamic. For you ALL have Your own wars and periods of peace.

Therefore, take a moment, to recognize what is here and now is not as significant as it seems, whether it is the Battle at Austerlitz or the so-call grand historical events of Your life. All of that is microscopic compared to what is above.

If you are not interested in wrestling with the Bible, you can at least, take a look up to the sky and concentrate for a few seconds. This simple exercise gives us a sense of our size and the ineffability of what we are taking in.

Consider our quarrels and even the wars men are so-often thrown into and what really mean in the grand sense.

The exercise will build and appreciation for a pivotal moment in the book and more importantly, life in general. You will catch this moment soon, if you don’t know it already, on the fields of Austerlitz.

Moreover, most readers fail realize something rather obvious, that the title and phrase War & Peace appears in the famous poetry of Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes, where the Scripture notes that there is a Time for every purpose under Heaven, including a time for War; and a Time of Peace.