Understand The Language and Vision

I have been on The Peace Alliance e-list for some time now hoping above all hope that finally a force was building that would begin to truly try to understand Peace. They have a mission, strategy, and basic action plan that seems to focus only on the advocacy for a department of peace that resonates well with me, but after review comes to me as another camp-meeting attempt where at the end of the weekend we all go feeling good about what we experienced but having failed to establish the requisite energy that will result in lasting transformation.

The fruit of the work for peace requires self-sacrifice of one’s own desires to ensure the needs of the other is met. I truly support efforts to work for non-violence and to create pockets of cooperation. These are core values that any healthy family system tries to instill in their children. The problem as I see it however is this: It fails to understand the ultimate vision of peace, the need for the wellbeing of every living creature on Earth.

One might say: Yes, but that is what cooperation is all about. But I respond saying that too often cooperation means We can get some of our way if we can negotiate such that the other gets some of their way as well. As such, cooperation as a negotiation style remains focused on our self-interests and never fully achieves the goal of peace.

Authentic attempts to peacemaking must first seek to confront the motives of the parties involved in conflict; then have the desire to meet the interests of others; and finally seek to measure results with measurable rule-sets. In this way we can honestly begin to think about the real possibility for transformation.

Transformation is a long won process of connecting ones current reality to a future reality. Often times this future reality can only be first understood through a negative prism – e.g. to begin to articulate what peace can look like then first ask the question: What is “Not Peace?” I refer the reader to the Biblical vision of peace: turning swords into plow shares, and spears into pruning hooks, and every person will sit under their own vine (implying safety, security, good health, and self-fulfillment).

Current reality is this: the making of peace has been placed in the hands of The Department of Defense and the arms manufacturing industrial complex. Peace is all too often managed through military cooperation agreements, arms sales, and alliances to build military strength. This only serves to make one side stronger than another. Such cooperative efforts are fear based as are most cooperative-based negotiations tend to be.

I conclude thusly, if The Peace Alliance is to succeed it will need to understand the language and science of the DoD. Only then will they begin to appreciate the task of peacemaking before them, and only then will the warriors, into whose hands our government has traditionally delivered the process of peacemaking, take them seriously.

Veteran’s Day Talk Given in Emporia Virginia 2008

Fifteen years ago Deb and I lived in the Northern Virginia area not far from where the Battles for Manassas were fought.  I would often go out and either jog or prayerfully walk along the old unfinished railroad bed known as Deep Cut. It was along this line that a portion of Jackson’s Confederate forces held Reno’s Federal forces during the second battle for the north-south railroad line at Manassas.

For me the journey along that road bed — along that old battle line, whether on a jog or walking, was never easy – not easy to imagine the horror of battle in that place – especially at the one spot where Jackson’s men ran out of ammunition and in a desperate act of panic (some might call it bravery) these men began to pick up and throw stones at the advancing Federal line. It became a time when men became boys again, when the Federal troops threw down their weapons and began to throw back the stones, both sides acting much like street gangs. Such is the desperation of combat I suspect.

Each time I walked down the Deep Cut my soul was stirred. The experience has taught me that we need to listen to these and all who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that in our hearing correctly they may finally rest in peace.

In the two battles for Manassas, the combined losses of American combat soldiers, whether they wore grey or blue, approached the number of our total losses in the Viet Nam War.

Well, it was this war that gave birth to our celebrated Memorial Day each year. Nonetheless these too are veterans worthy of our memory and honor. And, I believe we need to ensure we welcome them into this time of remembering our veterans on this Veteran’s Day.

Veteran’s Day came into being in 1947.  On this day each year the nation is asked to pause and remember the men and women who have served their nation in the armed forces. Previously to this, our nation celebrated Armistice Day – a day of remembering those who were unable to return from our nation’s wars –  particularly the dead in World War I. 

I believe it is fitting that we now honor all veterans – both the living and the dead. In this way, we remember correctly the terrible wounds that many of our veterans carry on their bodies as well as in their spirits, and the terrible grief that their families suffer every day. It is also a time for the few of us who have been spared to say: “Thanks be to God.” It is in this way we become genuine in our remembering.

 And so, let us remember the cost:

1.    In the war to end all wars – World War I: more than 20 million military and civilian dead and an additional 21 million wounded for life.

2.    Because war never ends war another 21 million military and 28 million civilian dead in World War II – roughly half of these Russian.

3.    2 million in Korea in a war that continues to this day

4.    1 million Vietnamese, 0.5 million Viet-Cong and North Vietnamese; and more than 50,000 American men and women in the Viet Nam war.

5.    And this remembering does not count the dead and wounded in the many secret wars waged nor the loss of life in wars waged in the past three decades in Africa, Asia, Central & south America, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Inscribed on this wall are many names once called out by loved ones – names of people filled with hopes and dreams. Their voices are now silent and they dream no more. If they could talk, what would they say to us? I suppose they would want to remind us what they fought for and what it was they spent their lives to protect. And I suppose they now know better than we that war is the absence of peace and that peace is not necessarily the absence of struggle.

Inscribe on walls in places all over our land are names of war-dead and are cemeteries filled with men and women who gave their fullest measure for the cause at the time. Tributes to war are found all around the world.

In one of many travels to Russia I visited their World War II memorial and museum located in Moscow… the memorial is a powerful witness to the tragedy of a time now gone and of the required sacrifice of millions to hold Hitler’s armies and air forces in check … all Russians continue to carry the scars of this era, but what caught my attention were the many bridle parties visiting the memorial … It is customary there for the bride and groom to travel to the nearest veteran’s memorial where the bride lays her flowers as a way of saying thank you to her ancestors who preserved her land … it is done in great seriousness and sweetness of spirit – done in remembrance of those who sacrificed their dreams that she may realize hers …

This is not a time for hero worship my friends but a time to be serious about the terrible demands a nation sometimes asks of her citizens … when we listen to their voices now silent, what are they saying to us?

When I listen to them in my heart of hearts I hear them say: Work for what we died for … work to over come that age old song that speaks of time for war and time for peace … work for the other half of that phrase that the work we have now completed will bear the fruit of peace  …

The prophet Jeremiah cried out saying: They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying: Peace! Peace! When there is no peace … (6:14). Today we continue to live in a world of a false peace. Even so, peace is the task of every citizen. Even more so is this the task of those of who are veterans.

It was former Commander of Allied Forces Europe and later Commander in Chief Dwight Eisenhower who asked that the nation establish a day called Veteran’s Day. And it was he I now quote: I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than are governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it … 

Who better suited to take up this vision than veterans who know first hand the cost required for our freedom … It will not be easy but if we have the courage to work for peace we will find it ever more difficult but far less costly.

When we do, the voices of those named on our walls and lying in our cemeteries will finally find their wellbeing and truly rest in peace.

 

 

In The Midst of a Whirlwind

For a while I have to leave my home in New Mexico. Today, while driving across the Great Plains I needed radio distraction from the howling wind and speeding semi-tractor trailers. I could find only one station with sufficient power to burn through loud and clear over the many other static-filled ones. Forget about FM.

 

I landed on a 24 hour talk news station and was bombarded with the political debate over Senator Obama’s seemingly lack of integrity. Evidently, according to this particular news host, Senator Obama’s failure to immediately distance himself from the Reverend Wright and other notable un-American clergy (so says the show’s host) puts a large question mark over the Senator’s integrity, trustworthiness, and hence ability to act as President of this country.

 

What interested me most was how folks on the radio program handled conflict. One said that Obama should have immediately and publicly severed all friendships and / or contact with notable un-American activists while others said that open and honest conversation is important for unity (my interpretation). So, on the one hand the show’s host handles conflict either head on in direct confrontation or through immediate retreat while the other advocated for more central way – I call this standing in the middle of the whirlwind holding in tension the two wings of descent.

 

The conversation turned into what to me appeared to be a shouting match between left and right ideology – evidently, Senator’s Obama’s desire to use diplomacy with our enemies is not a popular policy. Thus, I became lost in the noise of the debate while fighting the whirlwind along the Interstate highway. It came to me then that a one-wing airplane acts like a gyro and spirals to its grave. It takes both a left and a right wing for an airplane to fly. 

Peacemaking is the Work of The People

I have been watching from a great distance the work of the Jerusalem Peacemakers. Witnessing their success is very heart warming. I have never been to the Middle East but as a peacemaker believe that violence anywhere ultimately reaches across great divides – if for no other reason than for its own sake. Maybe my saying it this way personifies violence. It does seem, however, that it takes on a life of its own in communities embroiled in distrust giving birth to fear.

 

I once remarked that sovereign nations do not have the courage to be peacemakers. This was something I intuited in the moment and when challenged by others, was not able to qualify this comment. It is a hard statement and few truly want to accept it, as we all, I believe, want to believe that our governments have this capacity. But, history bears this reality out. I do not know of any government that has survived the centuries without under going significant and painful change – often change brought about through force, if survived at all.

 

I believe that it takes a people to make peace through people to people discourse (track two diplomacy). But here is the rub: This scares the sovereign. It is also easy for the people to wash their hands of non-reconciled interests and scapegoat it on to the back of their governments. Bottom line: The sovereign must provide the listening space for people to people discourse and the people must engage in discourse with integrity. The sovereign then can enforce the desires of all sides.

 

The recent work of the Jerusalem Peacemakers is but one sign of what the conduct of this “discourse with integrity” looks like. Following are commentaries from two religious leaders reflecting on their approach:

 

Rabbi Landes taught from the Midrash (Biblical commentary)– how Aaron would resolve conflicts by going to both wronged persons in a conflict and telling each how badly the other felt for what he did and how much he regretted it.  Then when the two would meet, they would embrace and reconcile immediately.   The Rabbi said that today we have the opposite of Aaron because we have the media and our leaders continually telling us how much the other side hates us and wants to kill us and doesn’t want to reconcile.  He emphasized how important it is for each of us to share our experience here with our own communities, that members of the “other side” do feel badly for what has been done to us and wants to reconcile.

Sheikh Izhak Taha said that the basic teaching of the Quran is a message of love and tolerance and that this love extends to all creatures and all humanity.  Those who do turn to violence are not true Muslims, they are choosing the path of darkness rather the light that the Quran offers. He shared that his grandfather told him many stories of the time when Jews and Arabs lived together here like family, how his grandmother wet-nursed the Jewish baby of a neighbor who couldn’t give milk. Though he hears most often the pain of his own people, the sheikh sees that two nations in the Land are suffering. We should we should eat and dance at each others celebrations, this will build trust and love between us, he said. We have forgotten how we used to live together.

 

What I hear in the above is the important requirement to look at matters through the many different sets of lenses that people bring to the discourse table. These lenses represent life-lived historical contexts and over time have been used to develop the means to evaluate everyday experience live out in community. Right or wrong are never the issue here. It is what truths these lenses bring to the discourse for even though no single lens provides perfect clarity; together they offer the hope needed to make for peace. It takes people to people diplomacy to realize this. 

Who is Planning For Peace?

P2-Planning For Peace envisions a world where nations intentionally plan for peace. Today, peace planning is accomplished under duress of threat of war or economic sanctions. Unfortunately, it seems the nations continue to intentionally choose the “big-stick” way of relating to one another.

In today’s Washington Post, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. “It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability,” he said at a Pentagon news conference. Speaking of Iran’s intentions, Mullen said: “They prefer to see a weak Iraq neighbor. . . . They have expressed long-term goals to be the regional power.”

The Pentagon is on top of matters. Our nation has invested billions of dollars in some of the finest war planning and gaming technologies and capabilities to date. What is desperately needed are similar capabilities to plan for peace. Just as war planners are developing courses of action to wage war with Iran so too peace planners are needed to ensure all of the pieces of the puzzle are on the table for conversation. Sadly, we are not yet ready for this capability. Some might say, “The vision for peace is beyond our reach.” To that I say, a vision within our grasp is a vision not worth our reaching for … 

 

It is the Vision Sought that Defines a Life

Vision sets before us a way of living life, and the realization of this vision is the life-long task of the community that begins again and again with each new generation. Vision is the measure of perfection sought and in our seeking we will discover that it is fall down get up again work. This work is the offering of vision that chooses us and provides us the direction and encouragement to continue going on.

 

Without vision to provide direction for our lives we will discover it too difficult to develop the rigor of character we need to live through our “falling-down” times. Without the rigor of character given to us through our obedience to the vision we will soon lack the needed fidelity that must be rooted in our very being. Such fidelity is required to get up again and again.

 

Peacemaking is a vision. It is not a product that can be bought or sold, but the outcome of our journey made under the guidance of a grace-filled director.  Peace is the fruit harvested and eaten along the way of our disciplined journey made together. The grace-filled director that we need to guide us can be discovered in those all important collection of principled rule sets guiding our decision making. 

Forced Feeding of Forgetfulness

I recently finished reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I notice that the reviews are mixed – not everyone liked the book, which in my perspective makes for an authentically good book. What I liked about the book is its “simple-complexity.” Sorry about that! What I mean is that I appreciate the author’s reaching for the margins of life, even if potentially exaggerating, in an attempt to paint a fuller picture of our humanity. Read it yourself if I am not sufficiently clear for you here.

 

I introduce this book as prelude to what I need to write this day. The setting of the story is Barcelona Spain during a time of Spain’s civil war and what the author has to say about the experience of war brings to my thought – the forced feeding of forgetfulness. I take from page 428 of the book this excerpt: Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.

 

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war – enveloping whole societies in a forced quietude all the while trying to convince everyone that what has been experienced (seen, heard, tasted and felt) about ourselves and others in our world is simply an illusion or a passing nightmare (my paraphrasing). The author then states: wars have no memory and nobody has the courage to understand them until there is no one left to tell what happened… and this all in the service of future wars because hiding the truth perpetuates the myth of glorious sacrifice.

 

I witnessed this growing up as a child watching my father’s generation mesmerized sitting in front of television war shows (e.g.; Twelve O’clock High, Combat) instead of speaking out from their experiences of the real truth of the ugliness of war. Its as if everyone all of sudden exhales at the end of war – having held their breath for so long out of fear.

 

When war ends it is as if a heavy mantle of collective forgetfulness descends the day the violence subsides only to give birth to a new form of violence more destructive – shame filled silence that allows the cancer of guilt to rot the collective soul of whole societies. In the end, our warriors and those abused by war take the secret (truth) to their graves and in so doing leave behind loved-ones with their hearts filled with unspoken shame.

 

Truth telling and embracing the truth found in historical context is one of the principles of planning for peace. This must be done with care of course. When it is not done, however, what is left behind for future generations is a world based on unprocessed shame leaving the burden of guilt with the next generation. This is why wars force-feed forgetfulness – war needs it to ensure its own survival.

What does the Marketing of Eggs and Peacemaking Have in Common?

Don’t put all your eggs into one basket is the farmer’s wife sage advise. Why? Because along the bumpy road the weight of the eggs can crush those on the bottom or should the basket fall off the wagon you loose the whole lot, I suppose. I don’t know. I’ve never raised chickens nor harvested eggs. What I do understand, however, is that good financial planners always advise you to diversify. Don’t put all your investments in only one instrument of investment – that is if you have the capacity to make investments.

Recently heard a news interview of Rabbi / Dr. Marc Gopin of Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC). He was commenting on Vice President “Dick” Chaney’s visit to Palestine/Israel a week back. I greatly value Dr Gopin’s insights as he often lays his own life on the line reaching for peace in the Middle East. The one thing that resonates directly with me, as it speaks to my own experience, is the statement that our nation uses a single-point solution to all her conflicts – the use of force or the threat of force. I believe this is so because we have placed all our eggs in the one basket called Security. Ever notice how all our politicians beat the national security drum? Or, ever wonder why the only governing document for our relationships around the world is called the National Security Document? Who is responsible for developing our nation’s National Peacemaking Document?

Heard an interview program with Scott Ritter broadcast on KATO Radio (Radio Taos, New Mexico) –Sorry I don’t have a link for you of his book Waging Peace. If you remember, Scott was the lead inspector in Iraq (pre-Iraq war). He has been quite vocal about the Administration’s failed strategy not allowing the inspections to continue. As I see it, protraction in that instance was an excellent peacemaking strategy. Any rate, Scott was asked if the US needed a US Department of Peace. He quickly said: We already have one! It is called US Department of State. He went to elaborate that the vision within State does not allow their diplomats to be who they need to be as ambassadors of peace. Well, that is my take on his comment. Sorry Scott Ritter if I have wrong. Even so, this has a ring of truth to it.

 Thus it appears the US Department of State is the agency that is responsible to draft a national peacemaking document identifying the peacemaking capabilities we as a nation need to invest in – investments needed to advance the cause of peace. This of course will be a threat to our national defense (security) – so will be the argument. My response is this: Putting all our investments into the making for war is the greater threat. You know, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will become what we invest our lives in.

Never Lose Sight of the Goal

Wisdom from ancient Sanskrit reminds us that necessity changes a course but never a goal. Necessity has surely visited our nation. These past years while helplessly watching our national goals being reshaped in the images of our national enemies has caused me great agitation. It is surely a time that drives me to my knees in prayer. It is unsettling to see the deep-rooted hatred manifesting itself in our national policies – the most egregious being realized by our nation’s violation of its own human rights values. War powers acts of our national executive body seem to be the catch all phrase that allows the law of humanity to be set aside in favor of human brutality.

The brutality that I have in mind is the mindless and yes, heartless authorizations of torture justified under the auspices of war – even though all my escape and evasion training in the military taught me that if captured I could expect to be tortured by a less than human enemy, and that we were to rest with the assurance that our nation would not tolerate such activities.

Thanks to the Justice Department with the aide of a law advisor who is now professor of law with the once notorious peace-activist / non-violence-set-of-values University of Berkley, the policy for torture was not only authorized but rule of law set aside to justify it if it could be done off our national shores.

I once reminded a colleague that our nation survives because we are a nation under law. If we have a Monarch, it is the Rule Of Law so to speak and it seems that now the ordering of our “national universe” has become as fickle as the days of bickering European princes over the matter of ascendancy to the throne. Lost in the battle for them were the very principles that were foundational to their rule. The suffering of their citizenry became the fruit of their self-serving labor.

I served in the military of this fine nation and like so many before me served to preserve the Constitution – the bedrock foundation of who we are as a people called citizens of The United States of America. Many fine men and women paid with their lives as price for such service and I believe they would not see their sacrifice as being on order of the messianic but simply a duty fulfilled to protect the higher ground – our Constitution and the Rule of Law. These are indeed the best instruments representing the ground upon which can stand freedom and security in our world as it is today.

Our national prosecution of the war on terror is responsible for the unraveling of the costly work these holy sacrifices by our men and women in arms as well as diplomats and let us not forget the many non-government persons as well. I opened with the wisdom from Sanskrit. Indeed, new situations demand of leadership openness to change but such times most never erode our purpose under heaven to serve the higher goal. Losing sight of this is to risk the loss of our very own souls and to be remade into the images of our enemies.

May we remember the view held by the framers of the Bill of Rights and later the Constitution that all men were created equal, not simply citizens but all men (and today we still need to include women). We can ill afford to split hairs between what is right and good for citizens of this nation and what is not for others. Not, that is, if we stand for what the founders of this nation so dreamed for us and sacrificed their lives for.

Dialectic of Accountability

Accountability is a key functioning requirement — a foundation upon which community is built – not unlike the requirement for commitment to community of its members, obedience of the individual to the community and the community to the individual, as well as capacity to “stick to it” so to speak – a sense of providing a stabilizing presence to nurture the good creative forms of conflict required for community and individual growth. Without this form of functioning accountability, trust erodes and the ability to manage and adjudicate expectations within community becomes lost. This is one reason why confession is very important and is at the heart of accountability – the ability for the individual to say “I’m sorry” to the community and for the community to say the same back to the individual.

Just as we strive to praise others for the good that they do and to seek such praise by way of finding affirmation that “we” are on the correct path, so too is the need for correction to helping us not stray too far from the path we have committed ourselves to – that in the end we might learn through both our successes as well as our failings. This is the way character is built, both in individuals as well as whole communities.

Thus it is apparent that accountability is a two way street or like a two sided coin. Just as the community demands accountability of the individual for the good of community, so too is the individual to make the same demand on the community – the community is to be held accountable to the individual (whether this be one person and / or small grouping of people). But here is the “rub.” The “functioning of accountability” is usually directed by the community towards the individual, without any corporate self-examination as part of the accountability process. Biblically speaking, this is like trying to remove a speck from another’s eye while trying to look around the log stuck in your own eye.

I once overheard someone say: “nations do not see their reflection in the mirror too clearly.” As is the same with small groups or individuals, so it seems it is with larger community groups all the way up to national bodies. Maybe it is easier to set aside or sacrifice a smaller portion of the larger group for the greater good (utilitarian ethic of scapegoat-ing). Maybe this is why the concept of confession is so important, because it aides in our seeing more clearly. When we sit across from one another in confession (truth telling) we are putting out on the table our successes as well as failures to be seen and examined. Sometimes this will necessitate a more private and intimate non-judging process such as more private confessor. This, to initially ensure harm is not done to both community as well as the person. Nonetheless, this does not negate the power of confession.

Two things are important here: to know one’s self that “we” may understand how to master ourselves. The first is the beginning of becoming wise and the second to understand how to engage in discerning together the correct path leading to greater and more wholesome community as well as individual. This is the good fruit of accountability.