IS PEACE POSSIBLE?
August 20, 2006The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
The poet calls us to “pray for peace…like a crazy person,” in everything we do. And I must admit that I sometimes feel these days as if I – and all of you who work for peace – must be a little deranged for thinking that anything we do will make a difference. I even feel a bit foolish for standing up here once again to speak for peace; what in the world difference will it make?
I’m reminded of the story of the CNN reporter who had heard about an old Jewish man in Jerusalem who had been going to the Western Wall to pray twice a day every day for a very long time. She decided to interview him, and when she found him, standing at the wall praying, she introduced herself and asked, “How long have you been coming here twice a day to pray?” The man answered, “About 60 years.”
“That’s amazing!” said the journalist. “What do you pray for?”
“Peace,” replied the old man. “I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the hatred to stop and I pray for all our children to grow up in safety and friendship.”
“And how do you feel after doing this for 60 years?” ask the woman.
“Like I’m talking to a damn wall!” said the man.
And don’t you know exactly how he feels? Don’t we all feel as if our calls for an end to violence around the world have simply been bouncing off walls?
Soon after our government invaded Iraq, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a column in the L.A. Times about the origins of war, in which she pointed out that the earliest evidence of human war goes back 12,000 years, and is found among all groups of human beings.
The research indicates sort of a “mathematical pattern” to war – that it tends to spread like a contagious disease. “Wars produce warlike societies,” writes Ehrenreich, “which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone.”
War is a bit like a parasite, and therefore can’t be used to prevent or abolish itself. “The idea of war preventing war,” suggests Ehrenreich, “is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks.”
And yet, governments continue to play that trick; and we, the public, continue to buy it.
President Eisenhower – a military man – saw the futility and the lie of war. In his farewell speech at the end of his presidency, he warned the nation of the “military-industrial complex,” and of the “misuse of power.” He was apparently overheard saying to someone, “God help this country if someone stands in this Office without the knowledge of the military that I have.”
And of course, today we have just such a person in the oval office. Senator John McCain, interviewed in the documentary “Why We Fight,” said that President Eisenhower’s fear has come true: We are caught in a powerful military-industrial complex, which saw profits for a number of industries rise over 25% since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Said one war historian, “when war becomes that profitable,” there is little motivation to prevent or end it.
We live in a militaristic country, in a time of heightened violence. And I keep asking myself: Is there any possibility for peace, ever? I watch the news of violence on television, or read about it in the newspaper, and despair begins to find a home in me.
Now, I will admit that I am as fearful of terrorism as anyone. I gladly take my shoes off for inspection at the airport, and will find it a small price to pay to pack my hair gels in my suitcase; I worry that my two children work in downtown L.A. – a prime target for terrorists, I’d think, and that my son’s office is across the street from the tallest building; I even began to worry the last time I was at the Hollywood Bowl, thinking what a good target we’d all be!
But I just don’t understand why anyone thinks that the best way to fight terrorists is to invade their tiny countries, bomb their civilians and destroy their infrastructures! Army Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, commander of multinational forces in Iraq, said he knows that for each insurgent he kills, he creates about ten more. They don’t hate us for our freedom, as the Bush administration wants us to believe; they hate us because we act like bullies; they hate us because we have more wealth and use more of the earths resources than an any other nation, and don’t begin to do what we could to eradicate poverty, disease, illiteracy and violence around the world.
And they hate us because we support Israel – not only with our words, but with vast amounts of money for weapons – according to the editor of Sojourners magazine, over 3 billion dollars annually. This is one reason that those in Israel’s peace movement who initially supported Israel’s military response to the attacks by Hezbollah, ended up calling for a cease-fire and lamenting the force with which Israel was attacking the citizens of Lebanon. Even with the help of Syria and Iran, there was no way that the forces of Hezbollah could inflict as much damage on Israel, given that Israel has behind it the most powerful country in the world. According to Jim Rice, editor of Sojourners, Lebanon suffered casualties at the rate of ten times that of Israel.
Yet, despite that, and despite the tragic loss of Israeli lives as well, our government was insisting that a cease-fire would be “premature” until we could get to the “root cause” of the conflict. And what was that “root cause,” according to our president? “Terrorism!”
Has he not been reading the history of that region? Does he really not understand how long the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been brewing, and the deep wounds that have festered for centuries? I agree that it would be nice if we could get to the “root cause” of all the pain in the Middle East, but it’s far more complex than the simplistic answer of “terrorism.” Think how many lives might have been saved had Israel’s government and ours allowed for a cease-fire when that option first presented itself.
Frankly, I am tired of the wars between Israel and her ancient enemies. I am disgusted by the childish accusations of “They began it” echoed by both sides – childish except for the tragic consequences. And I am dismayed to learn this morning that Israel’s army couldn’t even allow the cease-fire to hold a week before aggressively crossing into Lebanon – which resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier and risked the already – fragile agreement. Are they serious about peace or not? Is anyone?
But mostly I despair for the possibility of peace in the world when I observe such a large “coalition of the willing” in my own country who seem to glorify war. How can I have any hope when, despite the fact that there are many more American’s now against the war in Iraq, I know that the underlying attitude in this country is grounded in fear and militarism?
I was at a nursery school graduation a couple of years ago, at which each graduating child was asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. Almost every little boy announced that he wanted to be a soldier, at which point the adults in the audience would break out in loud cheers and applause – a response that none of the other careers mentioned, such as teachers, doctors, firefighters, etc., received. It was very disturbing.
And last February, when about 20 of us from Emerson visited Arlington West – the exhibit of crosses on the beach of Santa Monica, each one representing an American soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was standing next to a young Marine as we awaited our turn to carry a flag-draped mock casket to the storage area. I asked him, “How long ago were you in Iraq?” And he said with great pride in his voice, “Oh, I haven’t been yet. I go next year!”
I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the heart. I wanted to grab him and plead with him not to go. I wanted to take him home with me and protect him. But I couldn’t; all I could say was, “Ahhh…I’ll think of you” – meaning, “I will pray for your safety, and that you will kill no one.”
We must do a better job at de-glorifying violence and war. We must find a way to glorify peace instead; this is the only way to “save us and save our children.” And when I say “save us,” I don’t mean save us physically; I mean save us spiritually. I mean, save our souls and the souls of our children.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, in his book, The Left Hand of God, suggests that the “starting point (for de-glorifying war)…is acknowledging humankind’s mutual interdependence, and building policies and programs that reflect that.
“The well-being and safety of ourselves, of families, of communities and of the world,” Lerner says, “depends on the well-being of every other human being on the planet.” The determinant of peace or war “isn’t winning places or things,” he contends, “but winning the hearts and minds of people. Peace only comes through trust.” This makes so much sense to me; it seems like a “no-brainer.” Why do the leaders of the world not understand it? How can we make them understand it?
The Cantor of the Temple of Universal Judaism in New York City, Cathy Schwartzman, says, It’s time for the quiet voices to get loud. We soft-spoken peace lovers must raise our voices and let it be known that we can lovingly and aggressively reach across those invisible lines that divide us into competing groups. We have to listen hard in order to articulate, loudly and clearly, the truths we have come to understand. We can and must pursue peace with furious energy and focus.
Yet I find often that after seeing all the images and stories of war and violence so prevalent on a daily basis, my own “furious energy” for peace can’t compete with the despair that hovers over me. There has seemed to be little on which to base any hope, and therefore on which to focus my energy.
But last week I caught Anna Devere Smith – a brilliant actress and playwright – on KCET’s “NOW.” And she quoted the scholar of African American studies, Cornel West, about despair and hope. Here’s what he said:
“Any talk of despair is not where you end, but where you start. And then the courage and sacrifice come in, but at the level of hope, not optimism. Hope and optimism are different.
“Optimism,” says West, “tends to be based on the notion that there’s enough evidence out there that allows us to think things are going to be better. It’s much more rational, deeply secular.
“Whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, ‘It doesn’t look good at all!’ It says we’re gonna’ make a leap of faith, go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious, to allow us to engage in heroic actions, always against the odds with no guarantees whatsoever! That’s hope!”
Imagine; imagine spreading our contagious visions of peace to overcome the vicious disease of war! We must work together with the larger interfaith community of peacemakers, to widen our vision – to allow our despair for the world to be our beginning point from which we look beyond the evidence thrown at us daily – evidence that tells us that war is inevitable, that our enemies are unreachable, that there is no hope of peace that there is only “a damn wall.” We must take “heroic…leaps of faith” into new possibilities, “contagious” visions of a world free of violence and hatred, where children everywhere can live not only with hope, but with optimism because the evidence has changed.
We may not see this world in our lifetime, but we will see glimpses of it – just as other carriers of hope before us have. And those glimpses will beckon us on.
This is why we come together as a Beloved Community – to help each other take those “leaps of faith.” We do this with joy, with hope and with courage, knowing we are held always in the Love that will not let us go.
Amen.
© 2006 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
