Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist

Why Not Try Peace (Again)?

Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris

September 24, 2006

 

Mediation

Grant us peace, the words of our meditation hymn implore.  Grant us peace.  This morning as we gather, we create a space to look inside our hearts for what is peaceful and what must be dismantled to create more room for peace. 

 

Grant us peace.  We ask where in our hearts do we find the courage to imagine a greater peace, not to push the concept aside as foolish and idealistic, not to require a perfect standard.  Instead to ask, again and again, where is the place where more peace can be created.  Some small space for peace.

 

Grant us peace.  Let us be mindful of what we have been reminded of so strongly in this community—that life is precious.   In this silence that follows, let us name honestly to ourselves those things that get in the way of a more peaceful and imaginative life.  And let us name them with honesty—for it is not our children that cramp our imagination, it is our illusions about what they must have and it is not our employers but the amount of our imagination we relinquish to them and it is not how busy we are, it is the choices we make.

 

Grant us peace.  Grant us peace.  Grant us peace.  In our hearts, wherever it may be found and nurtured.  In our world, wherever it may be found and nurtured.  So may it be.  Amen.    

 

Sermon

Last July I put out a request for views on peace.  One member wrote, ““I have been taken aback just a few times during my uplifting attendance and membership of TJMC, but the recent phrase in our bulletin that really caught my attention was: "Unitarian Universalism is not a ‘peace church’ the way the Quakers and a few other faiths are.  We have a range of perspectives on the use of peace and the use of war"…If we can join together in solidarity to deplore inequality toward people based upon gender then we should have already deplored the use of violence and force upon others simply because they have been born into a different nation, culture or society than ours?”

 

From another vantage point, a friend of the congregation wrote:  “Let me begin with a quibble about your word choice.  The term is not making peace.  Making peace implies that peace can be attained through following a set of steps, like a recipe for cookies or glazing a ceramic bowl.   Sustainable peace can be achieved only when leaders are willing to be activist about trying do all of the things that are necessary for two or more individuals, clans, tribes, or national to recognize that “irreconcilable differences” is an oxymoron.  It can be achieved in a number of different ways, with steps in different order….

 

That said, it is useful here to suggest that UU’s have to revisit our position regarding imposition of belief.  If I had the power of fiat, I would mandate that, like Saint Thomas Aquinas, [that] Unitarian Universalists recognize that there is such a thing as a “just war.”…. Like passive resistance and non-violence, world peace is unattainable unless we eliminate the human race and allow the creator to “start all over again a new kind of animal” (as Marc Connolly put it in his play The Green Pastures).    

 

What is apparent is the obvious:  that as UU’s we have diverse opinions on this subject.  What is also important to remember is that we all have our own context for considering these issues.  Here is mine:

 

“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”  I think I learned that song about the same time I learned the pledge of allegiance, growing up in Amherst, MA.  It was only when I was older that the words I had jumbled together made sense the way I finally figured out that we weren’t one nation “invisible with liberty and justice for all.”  Yet unlike those times, we live in an age where technology makes the world smaller and yet this war has shown us disturbing ways that technology can isolate us from the realities of war.  Our leaders have managed to make talking about the war in anything but nationalistic sloganism distasteful.  With all the events in the Middle East this summer including the continuation of the War In Iraq exploring where we as Unitarian Universalists and as people of faith are positioned in relationship to peace seems essential.  This morning I am honored to share the insights of a beginning dialogue on this issue.  I invite you to reflect as you listen, to note where your voice would enter in. 

 

A number of respondents raised the issue of “just war” though in its original sense this is a set of philosophical ideas about decency in the practices of war and not about which wars deserve engagement.  The sense most people mean this though is the sense that we have tyrannies in our world that we feel a moral call to oppose.  One wise counselor suggested that we start with the premise that one cannot have peace until we have structures to ensure peace and to sustain relationships.  Several noted that if, as a nation, we want peace, we should be doing more to support a World Court system and the United Nations and the other global institutional infrastructure.  These are essential because as Alfred Fernbach, our member and emeritus professor of political science observed, “There must be a sense on the part of the parties that there is life after the conflict—even if I lose.”  Is that the sense we give in Iraq, I wonder? 

 

Few of us can imagine a time when we can lay down our swords and shields.  Peace as a strategy is thought of in a nostalgic sense by many, just as the idea that we would sacrifice when we are at war seemed outdated. Victory gardens and other efforts brought the World Wars home in a way that yellow ribbon decals do not.  In conversation with our Active Minds groups last week several noted that once peace seemed more possible than it does today.  One member recalled being aware that the battleships were being turned to scrap metal after World War I.  Several recalled the sense that we were done with war after Hiroshima and World War II.  And one member wrote eloquently of how the Vietnam War touched her life:

 

 

“My understanding of war was initially forged by the Viet Nam War. I graduated from high school in 1966, when that war and its controversy at home were at a fever pitch.  My father had served as a Navy chaplain during World War II, having put aside his own, early, pacifist inclinations. Both my parents were enthusiastic Democrats and Texans, which put Lyndon Johnson on a rock-solid pedestal at our house and throughout  the network of Texas uncles and cousins who had served in World War II.

 

But I could not see how killing Vietnamese people and destroying their homes would  accomplish any good thing….

 

Most of us suffered a lot during those years, under the rain of verbal blows from our parents -- who passionately believed that we were stupidly, treacherously and disastrously wrong to question the Commander in Chief during a time of war. I know our parents suffered as well, watching beloved children espouse the kind of dangerous ideas that might get us kicked out of school and barred from the career ladders what were the only routes they knew to self sufficiency and prosperity.

 

It has taken decades to start healing those wounds and now, as our parents pass away or need our help, many families still struggle to get around the 40-year-old scars.

 

 

It saddens me today to know that, as a society, we have buried those battles along with the Jim Crow laws that were their contemporaries. We don't tell our children about the beatings and murders that were part of the fight for Civil Rights and we don't tell our children about the beatings and killings endured in the fight for peace in Viet Nam. I fear we will have to repeat this history we have forgotten.

 

Our stories and experiences seem an untapped resource as we grapple with this war which few saw as just in any sense.  I was a child during Vietnam, in a house which always watched the Evening News with Walter Cronkite –and sent us kids out of the room during the stories from the war.  I was in that first generation post-nuclear awareness—being told that the next war would be the last, with the sort of sensibility Peace Pilgrim expressed about the war—that it would.  When, as a young adult,  I heard that George Bush Senior had declared war in the Gulf, I was driving to my Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and I arrived shaking and weeping for the thing I had been taught would be the beginning of the end had come to pass.   When the world didn’t end in a ball of fire a few months later, something shifted for me.  The idea of peace as a necessity became more complicated—too complicated to think of in the hustle and bustle of everyday life and I put it away.  The insight that world peace is seen as a nostalgic concept is frightening to me—as is the idea that current youth are far more cynical and less idealistic.

 

Rev. Gordon McKeeman reminds us that ours is the religion that does not say that some are good and some are evil and yet I sense many uneasy with that legacy.  Common wisdom is that the horror of the world wars took the wind out of the sails of liberalism.  The idea that human nature would continue to carry us on a steady trajectory toward perfection was forever derailed, just as our tinkerings with social problems were discredited when the Great Society programs couldn’t overcome centuries of oppression in a single generation.  Our faith has historically been in the fact that humanity will evolve and yet, as one member put it so well:  “I had to start questioning that reason would do it.  I haven’t found a good substitute but I have come to accept the fact that there will be wars and we must best give our attention to how to minimize their effects.”

 

In that sense, I wonder if peace is not like a recipe, it just may be that the ingredients are a little different than we thought they were.  The kind we tried to make when I was a kid had one part idealism and one part youth and one part ignorance at the complexity of the world with a healthy dose of paternalism added for flavor.  On this point, one member wrote, “Most liberal  peacemaking efforts [are ineffective] because without balance these become paternalistic and condescending by their nature- we only offer what we can afford to give up.  This is the balance problem that addressing poverty, lack of education, etc. fails to counter.”

 

In this spirit, the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office shares with us that they are now joined with other groups to promote not “peace-making” but “peacebuilding.”  “Peacebuilding,” they explain, “goes beyond crisis intervention and focuses on long-term development and the building of governmental structures and human rights institutions.”  This ties into the UN’s philosophy that we will not have development without peace and security and we will not have peace and security without development. 

 

Peace begins in us.  Peace begins in our hearts and it also begins in our nation.  Increasingly informed observers are concluding that the greatest threat to peace in our world is the nation we live in which increasingly takes a unilateral position.  Our legacy has always been mixed:  “The United States is a warrior nation with a heart of peace and a history of generally doing the right thing,” political commentator Graydon Carter observed.   

 

Our peace pilgrimages may be different than those the Peace Pilgrim took when she walked her 25,000 miles from 1953 to 1981.  How can we think about peace?  I suspect our imaginations can give us ideas.  Several from our congregation spent July 4th hoisting banners with Thomas Jefferson’s words on peace.   Others are participating in the Labyrinth Walk for Peace that was launched on September 10th here.  Others want to continue a dialogue about peacebuilding:  if you are interested in that, you can sign up at the UN table after the service.  What is most important to me is that we commit to starting a conversation about these issues, for this is one of the true moral dilemmas of our time.  I simply hope we have the imagination and faith to stay in the dialogue, for as our member Deborah Rose wrote:

 

War is easier than peace. It is familiar and loudly reassuring. Peace is quiet and,

for most of us, not a normal state of mind.

 

Peace requires imagination and faith. It also requires a lot of patience. But war

is always a failure and peace is the only goal that will always be worth the effort.

 

I sometimes wish that Unitarian Universalism embraced a stalwart anti-war position.

Belief in the inescapable “wrongness”  of war has taken root deep in my heart.

But equally precious to me is belief that people need to love one another no matter

how much they disagree.

 

Peace flourishes when it reaches out to everyone, without limits or hesitation.

So, as I aspire to bring more peace into the world, I am grateful for a church that doesn’t ask me to look away from anyone.

 

 

It occurred to me as I was preparing this sermon that our opportunity in NOT being a “peace church” is that we can sift and sort through the complexities of these issues.  Yet we can only do this if we commit to staying in dialogue.  We must do that, even if we know there will be conflict.  If there is one thing I have learned in my lifetime it is that the strongest unity is build across true recognitions of diversity and the false unity of non-engagement is weak. 

 

So in that spirit, let us explore our collective creative imagination.  Let us not look away from the sacred nature of life.  Let us not be afraid to imagine new and expansive forms of peace.  Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and you.  Again.  And again.  As long as it takes.   So may it be.  Amen. 

 

 

Benediction

Words of Thich Nhat Hahn, Zen master and former chair of the Vietnam Buddhist Peace delegation:

A fresh way of being peace, doing peace is needed...Peace work means, first of all, being peace.