Peace Making

Being Peace Makers

“We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety, a hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. Try to be at peace with yourself and help others share that peace...”

The Dali Lama

What if you knew for certain that your 'job' in life is to spread peace? How would you go about it? We were talking in Sunday school yesterday about war and protesting war. We remembered the throngs of protestors during the Vietnam war; they were mostly college students and other young people who clotted the streets and stopped traffic. I remember the iconic photo of the young 'hippie' woman placing a flower in the gun barrel of an National Guardsman.

I walked a picket line in downtown Birmingham when the first Gulf War was being debated—I even had my embarrassed sons walking and chanting slogans of peace. We Sunday schoolers wondered together where those voices are today—we have the Occupy movement, but very few voices against war. We are afraid of being considered 'unpatriotic', as if supporting war is the only way to show loyalty to country. We spoke about having a President who is not inclined to wage another war in Syria, no matter what. Who prefers to use other, non-violent methods of coercion to bring about change and how he is being raked over the coals for not standing up to terrorists and tyrants. We wondered how long, how many lifetimes, it will be until humans realize that settling differences by killing each other is only a prescription for more violence. In the immortal words of Gandhi, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Making peace is the job of every single one of us, not just our leaders and our President. Being peace, carrying peace, speaking peace, that's how it starts. Not getting into the rhetoric of war, of revenge and hatred is one way of entering into peace. Supporting leaders who espouse peace is another. Challenging one's own prejudices and simplistic solutions to highly complex and difficult problems is another. Working for peace in your own community, in your own state, in your own heart, begins the process of spreading and sharing peace. Refusing to be part of the blindness is my job and yours.

In the spirit,

Jane