He and his family watch this vicious storm, shrinking from its fury, huddling against its chaos. Then, almost as suddenly as the hurricane hits, Hallie finds himself under a pale blue sky, the birds singing, the leaves on the fallen tree no longer fluttering. The four of us kept holding each other's hands for a little while, but now there was a surprising gentleness in our feelings. Our feelings of terror had become feelings of tenderness toward one another and toward the world outside our kitchen. Then and there I realized that the peace I had found in Le Chambon was like this.
Peace sometimes stands like the eye of a hurricane in the very middle of power.
Amid the killing and the letting kill that are always happening on this planet, amid the deliberate cruelty, the hating, the eating and the dying of creatures in the air, on the land and in the waters, amid all of this there can be room for peace and warmth. In the midst of our struggle for survival that always ends in our death, we creatures on earth have made room for thoughts and deeds of love. Some creatures have made more room than others. The ethically pure Chambonais, who did not hate and did not kill in order to help life thrive,pushed back the walls of the eye of the hurricane until the murderous winds seemed so far away as to be unreal. There was one murderous Gestapo raid on Le Chambon, but for most of the four years of the war in France there were peace and safety in Le Chambon, while torture, murder and betrayal were happening all over the rest of the continent of Europe.