Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

A week of reflecting on peace

I didn't really know where this project was going to go when I started it last week. It just seemed fitting that in a week bookended by a tragedy and an anniversary of a tragedy that I really think about what causes hate and destruction and death, and whether there is a damn thing I can do about it.

I wrote and deleted more in preparing these posts than I have in my entire year-plus of blogging. I thought more about what I believe, and why, and how to articulate it...and I suspect I still came up short in trying to explain. I even lost some sleep over the fear that people I respect and like weren't going to like me anymore because I came off like a crackpot, but in the end...Victor still likes me, and he's the one who really matters.

Anyway...personally, for me, this week was valuable. It is making me redouble my efforts to choose positive reactions over negative ones, no matter how horrific the situation. Late in the week it occurred to me that I've been grasping for faith, a reason for my existence, a guide for how I ought to be living. I've been wanting the clouds to part with a beam of light and a booming voice to say "Nic, it's God. Here are your answers." Instead, I'm thinking...whoa, maybe this is it. I get it.

What I don't have, of course, are the specific answers for how to fix specific situations. I don't think that swords will be beaten into plowshares in a day. A generation is a miniscule part of eternity, and maybe to have hope I need to think in terms of a longer time frame. In this generation there are a few who get it and work for peace...maybe a few more in the next generation, and a few more after that.

Another thing that I believe, and that I need to remember every day, is that we are all human. There is no "those people" and "that kind;" I can be one of those people. The same zygote becomes the same baby but is born into different circumstances and taught different things. One sits here typing about peace, another is ready to blow herself up to kill a bus full of people. If what makes us different is the circumstances of our lives and what we have been taught, these external factors can change. Right up to the moment she detonates the bomb, something could change that terrorist's heart and mind. I think that is the same idea Miroslav Volf had in saying "We can never close the door to reconciliation and all our actions must be directed toward the goal of reconciliation."

I am not going to shave my head and hand out pamphlets in the airport; I'm not going to quit my job and move to [pick a violence-torn locale] and try to enlighten extremists. I'm not going to prostletize...converting someone else to my views was never my intention here, and besides, I'm just forming these views myself. My main reason for blogging is to write things down as I work them out for myself. If something I write leads someone to follow a link, to read and think things out and reach a conclusion, that's a wonderful thing, but it wasn't my objective.

And while I think I'm on the way to faith, I'm not on the way to identifying as a member of a specific religion. Quoting the Dalai Lama doesn't imply an intention to become Buddhist (Mom...not that you'd mind, I guess). So from the Dalai Lama again:

External peace is impossible without inner peace. It is noble to work at external solutions, but they cannot be successfully implemented so long as people have hatred and anger in their minds. This is where profound change has to begin.

Posted by Nic at September 11, 2004 10:47 AM