Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God, states one of the Beatitudes. At four thirty last Thursday in Easton, at the five corners bordering Idlewild Park, I saw sixteen children of God.
Some held plaques bearing the timeless inspirational phrases of peace and reconciliation, witnessing to the hope for peace and justice in the world. A ploughshare stood at the front of the small group. The group consisted mostly of aging people who have been witnessing for peace here in Easton weekly for twenty years. A young mother brought her infant and an older child to participate. The older boy waved the U.N. flag. A bevy of small national flags were placed in a semi-circle along at the corner. As cars drove by, some drivers beeped and waved in solidarity, most looked straight ahead and one driver, shaking his fist, yelled from his car, “build the wall.”
September 21st was the World Day of peace. The U.N invites us to celebrate the universal vision of peace and justice. The day comes and goes every year, largely unnoticed, unlike the anniversaries of military victories, which we celebrate with music, parades and bargain sales. Experience reveals that military victories don’t bring peace. Like the eye of the hurricane they bring a brief calm before the violence resumes again, this time from another quarter.
Peace on earth is tenuous. One of the great ironies of our human condition is that while most everyone yearns for peace, it’s achieved only episodically. War and violence, on the other hand, which almost everyone abhors, we wage regularly on one another.
St. Paul understood this: “The good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do,” he writes.
I see peace as something that ascends like incense, rather than trickling down, like water. The faith earned in the hearts of individuals possessing a spiritual vision of peace, like Dag Hammarskjold, has ways of working its way upward and outward, offering the potential to calm and heal a troubled world. A state of peace achieved by warring factions does not necessarily trickle down to individuals – individuals may remain deeply troubled long after hostilities have ended, say, in our own civil war, in Germany between World War I and II, and the transient truces of the Middle East conflicts. Rage can smolder just under the surface of declared peace.
In Christianity, the mustard seed is the signature metaphor for faith. Faith, like the tiny mustard seed may be barely visible but once rooted, it grows to become a sanctuary for other living beings.
I am grateful for the vigil that our faithful peacemakers keep weekly. Without them, who’d keep the vision of peace alive for us?
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