PEACE ON EARTH DECEMBER 22, 2002 Copyright 12/22/02 Kenneth W. Phifer Peace on earth is an ancient yearning and an ancient hope. Hebrew texts more than 2500 years old tell of a time when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together the sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy..." (from Isaiah 11:6-9) "...(but) shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (from Micah 4:3) Peace on earth is an ancient yearning and an ancient hope. The Christian story begins with angels in the heavens singing of peace on earth. The central figure of this religion taught that peacemakers are blessed and should be known as the children of God. (Luke 2:14 and Matthew 5:9) Peace on earth is an ancient yearning and an ancient hope. Taoism in its founding document wrote of "those in ancient times who believed that the 'art of the Way' lay in- (seeking) to put an end to strife among people, to outlaw aggression, to abolish the use of arms, and to rescue the world from warfare." (Chuang Tzu, 33) Peace on earth is an ancient yearning and an ancient hope. In Buddhism, nirvana is often translated peace. The most frequently used woird in Arabic and the word used with another commonly as a greeting among Islamic peoples is the word for peace, salaam. In many religions east and west, God and peace are often used interchangeably. Peace on earth is an ancient yearning and an ancient hope. It is not an ancient nor a modern reality. Will Durant, in his monumental HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, calculated that in all of recorded history there were only 29 years in which there was no warfare somewhere on the globe. That number has not changed in the 80 or so years since he did his historical study. In the past dozen years there have been wars on all five major continents. They have involved almost every nation on earth as participant, supporter, weapons supplier or refugee recipient. Chris Hedges, a war correspondent for more than 15 years, tells the toll of these wars in his sharply worded book WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING. "...look just at the 1990's: 2 million dead in Afghanistan; 1.5 million dead in the Sudan; some 800,000 butchered in ninety days in Rwanda; a half-million dead in Angola; a quarter of a million dead in Bosnia; 200,000 dead in Guatemala; 150,000 dead in Liberia; a quarter of a million dead in Burundi; 75,000 dead in Algeria; and untold tens of thousands lost in the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the fighting in Colombia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, southeastern Turkey, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf War (where perhaps as many as 35,000 Iraqi citizens were killed). In the wars of the twentieth century not less than 62 million civilians have perished, nearly 20 million more than the 42 million military personnel killed." (page 13). Peace on earth? Where? When? How? The answer to the first question is simple: either everywhere or nowhere. Our weapons of mass destruction...nuclear, chemical, biological...now in the possession of at least a dozen nations, led by the ten thousand nuclear weapons the United States possesses, make every corner of the earth a potential site for incalculable human destruction. We are truly bound up with one another from one corner of the world to the other. If we did not know that before September 11, 2001, surely we learned it on that fateful day. When shall peace on earth prevail? When we come to know and to act on the simple truths that history teaches over and over and over again: that war cannot bring peace, that violence only generates more violence, that merely reproducing what has been done to us only makes victims of everybody, that justice is inextricably linked with peace, that peace is the responsibility of every citizen in the world. How shall we come to the time of the peaceable community? Some will say there is no answer to this question because peace is an unattainable ideal. We can strive for it, but in our fallibility and insecurity we can never reach a level of trust that will enable us genuinely to live peacefully with everyone. That may perhaps be true, but my faith is otherwise. My faith is grounded in human goodness and human intelligence. My faith is that peace is our natural state. That is why it is such a deep yearning and a deep hope in the human story, found in every culture and in every religion, found somewhere in even the most war-like and angry soul. But even if I am wrong, and peace never can be fully achieved, every peaceful gesture, every act of justice, every decent and kind and loving thing we can do might just spare someone pain, might save one life, might prevent some act of destruction. Like violence, peace inspires imitation. That is why peace is always worth pursuing. To do that we need some vision of what peace might look like. If what we mean by peace is power over others, wealth that leaves others poor, indifference to suffering as long as we are not hurting, then we shall never know peace. The slaveholders of the ante-bellum South sought this kind of peace. They generated fear and hatred in others and felt fear in themselves. Thousands of black people died and millions had their lives distorted and damaged to preserve this phony peace. The war that ended this dreadful practice cost more lives than all our other wars combined. The toll of slavery and its successor Jim Crow goes on. Trent Lott is just the latest to pay the price for the moral depravity of that system. If our vision of peace is to be meaningful, it must be a vision of justice. There will be no peace in the Middle East until both Israelis and Palestinians feel safe, feel respected, have some measure of economic viability, have a compassionate understanding of the suffering of the other, and arrive at some sense of a fair arrangement by which these peoples can live side by side. Killing each other will not bring this about. The Iraqi people need justice and it is unlikely that Saddam Hussein is going to move in that direction. The Kurds must be honored in their quest for ethnic liberation. The young people in Iran are now insisting on a more just life. The oil-rich kingdoms in the Gulf area must convert themselves from sheikdoms to communities in which all people have a full stake in the society. Without justice, there will be no peace...not in Asia, not in Africa, not in Europe, not in the Americas, not anywhere. A vision of peace needs not only the grand concept of justice but also the simple delights of daily life free of strife and fear. The Unitarian poet, John Holmes, wrote of "the people's peace." He talked of "the main street in a country town; our children named; our parents' lives redeemed." He wrote about "careless noon, the houses lighted late, harvest and holiday." He pointed to "the soft white tablecloth at winter supper warm between four walls." When we think of peace, part of our vision needs to be of ordinary routines, common pleasures, family and friends, music and food, work and play. How shall we come to a time of peace? We need a vision of justice and a vision of the goodness of simple daily living. Then we need to act, doing what we can when we can, trying every day to do something for peace, even if it is only to utter the prayerful words, "May peace prevail on earth." What can we do? Here are some suggestions. We can join Peaceful Tomorrows, an "organization founded by family members of September Eleventh victims who have united to turn our grief into action for peace." They want the world to know that "our grief is not a cry for war." They have lobbied against unilateral action for war by the United States. They have spoken out against new laws that challenge civil liberties. They have raised money to aid what they call "sister families" in Afghanistan who have suffered because of American actions in their country. We can take part in the Prayer Vigils for World Peace and Healing which Craig Harvey, a member of this congregation has been arranging for much of the past year, sometimes here at our church building. The next one is from 6:00 p.m. on January 24 to 6:00 p.m. on January 25 at Canterbury House, next door to our former building at State and Huron. Craig has placed on the flyer announcing these vigils the words of the Dalai Lama: "If we want to save the world, we must have a plan. But no plan will work unless we meditate." We can join the advocacy work of the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace, which brings together many different groups and individuals, ranging from the moderate to the radical, to try and be a visible presence speaking for non-violent ways of approaching international and local problems. They have sponsored protest rallies, a resolution before the City Council, and petition drives. There are books in abundance that can teach us about the meaning of peace. Beacon Press has just published an anthology of writings about peace and non-violence through the ages called THE POWER OF NONVIOLENCE. Among those whose writings appear in this volume are the Buddha, William Penn, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, Simone Weil, Albert Camus, Rajendra Prasad, and Daisaku Ikeda. Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, in WRITING IN THE DUST, reflects on September 11 and its aftermath. He was three blocks from the World Trade Center on that day and speaks feelingly of his own emotions and of what a religious person might do in the wake of that terrible disaster. One thing he highlights is the importance of listening, even to those whose hatred of us is palpable in terrorist acts of unbridled fury. We must listen, he suggests, lest we too easily fit other people into our agenda when what we need to do is to seek common experience and a common agenda. There is also Scott Shaw's ABOUT PEACE: 108 WAYS TO BE AT PEACE WHEN THINGS ARE OUT OF CONTROL. He writes that " we all know what peace is not: anger, jealousy, lust, desire, fear. Knowing this, leave these emotions behind." Educating ourselves is important. So is joining organizations and attending vigils and protecting civil liberties and living non-violently. Everything that contributes to justice and everything that expresses appreciation for the simple pleasures of companionship, family, and shared responsibility help to create peace on earth. In my more than 40 years association with the Hawaiian Islands, I have been deeply impressed with the spirit of the Hawaiian people. It is a spirit of peace. The Hawaiian people have been deprived of their land by Caucasian settlers, decimated by illness brought in by both westerners and easterners, shoved aside by economic interests that have cared little for their culture or their suffering. Through it all, a wonderful spirit has survived, the spirit of aloha. This is not the hokey aloha served tourists but the spirit that made the Hawaiian people so generous and so sweet. Hula master Puna Dawson writes of this spirit: "Everyone says aloha, but I don't know how many know what it means. Each letter has its own thought. The first is akahai, to be kind. The second is lokahai, to be inclusive. The third is olu'olu, to be agreeable. Ha'aha'a is the fourth, to be humble. Ahonui is the last and means patience. These are the characteristics of Hawaiian people. By itself alo is space and breath is ha. So when you say aloha you say come, share my space, share my breath. That's aloha." That's aloha, and aloha is peace. May it prevail in our hearts and over all the earth. In Hawaii at this time of year, the wish for happy holidays and a good new year, the wish for peace, is spoken in these words: Mele Kalikimaka, Hauole Makahiki Hou, Aloha nui loa. That is my wish for you and for the whole world, that the ancient yearning and the ancient hope for peace on earth might come true. 1